An Upcycled Wooden Play Kitchen for Jericho!

 

Happy Birthday Jericho!

As our daughter turned two last week, we were able to give her a really awesome present. Inspired a while ago from a Pinterest posting, Laura suggested we find a small cabinet at Goodwill or Resource York to turn into a play kitchen. But as it turns out, the perfect start to this project was already in our house: a section from the upper cabinets over the fridge in the old upstairs bedroom (in the process of becoming Jericho's new room). Follow along in the transformation!

 

1) An old cabinet

 

 

 

                    2) With one door turned vertical and new shelving added

 

3) A "backplash" and the "stovetop" added

 

 

 

4) Trimmed out                                     



 

 

5) Painting in progress

 

 

6) Final details including sink and burners

 

Cheese!

 

 

With just a few exceptions,

 everything in this project was recycled or we already owned.

 

Hardware from the cabinets was reused, the backsplash was made with plywood and 2x4s rescued from a demo project in the basement, the trim came from the old kitchen on the first floor and leftovers in the garage from the 1970s basement finishing job. All of the paint we already owned, used in our real kitchen. The shelf was made of the bottom of a cabinet drawer and the wheels were mounted on recycled 2x4s. The stove insulation was a leftover scrap from our kitchen remodel and finally, the wire baskets inside the stove and on the side came from our restored 1950s MacDougall built-ins. We bought: 4 wheels, epoxy, two wooden knobs and two flat wooden cut-outs, and a dog bowl.

 

Roof Job Unwanted: Why You Should Fix It Now, Not Later

This spring, while we we were making wild plans for a privacy fence along our corner lot backyard, rain water was slipping between crumbling slate and nonexistent sheathing on our porch roof. Its sudden condemnation re-routed our plans and we immediately launched a semi-DYI roofing project. Go-week was June 14th until finished (one week to the day), and I hired friend Steve Williamson for the expertise and tools [I am likely the most tool impoverished DYI'er in the U.S.]. Happy to provide a contractor recommendation for anyone in York County!

As it turns out, most of the roof damage was a result of a leaky roof that had been fixed some time ago, albeit very shoddily. The fix had come a bit too late to prevent serious rotting.

Since our neighbor's had already shed the slate from their side of the porch roof and the slate on our side was in very poor condition, our decision was easy. Pull off the slate and anything rotted beneath (crossed fingers, crossed fingers...) and replace with asphalt shingles.

Here's a few pictures to show what we did:

Demolition day rolled around and we made fairly quick work of removing the slate. It's a job best done primarily with a small pry bar and your hands, working from the top down. We dedicated a significant amount of time huffing the 1/3 or so of the slate tiles that were in good condition to the garage for re-use on our slate main roof or for landscaping purposes. We found significant parts of the old planking completely disintegrated, and I fell through on one or two occasions!

Proving that TV ads do occasionally work even on those who don't have a TV in their house, I signed up for WM's "Bagster" for this project and was impressed by the amount of stuff we put in it. A few days after scheduling pickup, a large truck showed up and lifted the bag by remote control crane into the bed of the truck. I paid short of $40 for the bag and $144 for the pickup. Totally worth it.

After removing all the old sheathing, we found the beams to be in pretty good shape, save for some rotting on the tops of the wood beams as seen below. It was beyond irritating to realize that the rotting was all dated and now completely dry. The previous owners had let the roof become leaky for some time, before they finally decided to do something about it. Excited that we'd be able to sister a few 2xs and get on with the new roof...

We got held up by the middle section of the eaves shared with our neighbor. There the rotting was significant. This wasn't altogether surprising- we knew water was slipping between some broken tiles and filtering down into the eaves. We just hoped that there was something left to hold the new roof up.

In the picture below you can see a new beam we managed to wedge on the neighbor's side of the roof to prop up their sagging shingles, and then a second sistered beam on my side (the right side). In retrospect, I wish we had extended a new beam the full length of the roof for peace of mind. The reality is, however, if we keep water out by maintaining the roof, it really won't matter.

We also took a big dip out of the roof by slapping 2xs along the beams.

Here's the repair on the eaves and corner of the roof a bit further along. We put the aluminum soffit (just like the neighbor's on the right) back up once we were finished.

At the end of day 2, this is what the roof looked like.

The old roof had no true flashing. Here, we used a grinder and then tucked the flashing into the brick.

On a side note, Linden Painters finished our neighbor's house, which included portions of shared architecture. Below, the left window is our and the right window is our neighbor's. Interestingly, the neighbor's window opens into a closet, whereas in our house the closet was removed to make more space in the bedroom.

Free stuff!

I've always had trouble accepting free things. Most fundamentally it is a pride issue. But here's a few free things that you can get without any one ever knowing.
First Energy is offering a number of incentive programs, two of which I recently took advantage of. If you go to www.energysavePA.com you can fill out a home energy survey and they will send you a box of high efficiency light bulbs and a very nice power saving power-strip. I would guess the value of what they send you is over $50. The survey took about 5 minutes and now I can begin replacing all of the hot and in-efficient light bulbs in our old house.
The second incentive is that they will pick up your old refrigerator and pay you $50 for it. The idea is that they are getting an older and less efficient refrigerator off the grid. Since scrap prices for fridges are around $20, they are undercutting the market! I've got my pickup scheduled, which means I won't have to be the one to carry the fridge down my front stairs, out the front door, down the porch stairs and the sidewalk stairs and then all the way back to the alley, where admittedly, a scrapper would grab it in 30 minutes or less. You can sign up for the fridge pick up at the same web address, www.energysavePA.com

Mortise Lock Repair 101

Now the the big renovation is complete, I've been able to find some time to get to the finer details of owning a 92 year old home. A few weeks ago we installed a rice paper window film to the bathroom door off our kitchen. The previous owners had used a curtain to provide the necessary privacy but we wanted something a bit more modern. It looks great! One problem: the heavy solid wood and glass door naturally hangs about halfway open. Since it took about an hour of shimming, adjusting, and cursing to get the door to close at all, I wasn't about to try anything fancy. Another problem: the latch on the door was not working and I haven't yet been able to find the correct Corbin key for the mortise lock. If you haven't seen an antique mortise lock up close, see below. They are truly amazing little gadgets:

They just don't make stuff like this anymore. The lock that I am holding is close to 5 lbs. of probably brass. But something is missing... Can you find it?

The spring, which causes the latch to rebound after the door knob is released had broken. In the picture, you can see most of the spring attached to the stationary peg while a small part is still attached to the hook and lever controlling the  lock. Where could I find a replacement? Lowes had a few springs, the smallest of which was the correct diameter but more than twice the needed length.

The picture is fuzzy, but what you're looking at is the spring from Lowes, snipped in half and re-bent on the end to make a loop.

I slid the mortise lock back into the door, re-installed the door knobs and face plates, and...

Voila! The Bathroom door stays shut! You can see the privacy film clearly in this picture, although not really the rice paper pattern.

Demolition Update: Before and Now...and after?

Demolition Day got us off to a great start with the remodeling of our 1912 Arts and Crafts house in York, PA. But so much has happened since then!

The kitchen walls have gone from yellow faux-brick wall board, to the mounting lathe beneath it, to bare plaster.

We've pealed back the walls around the back stairs in preparation for their removal and expansion of our kitchen.

 (These are the basement stairs, in their place will

be the fridge, stove, and countertop.)

The dining room closet is ready to be converted to the new basement stairs.

 (We're hoping to recycle the wood flooring we

carefully pulled up in the closet by using it to repair

flooring in a second floor bedroom!)

And most recently, and perhaps most exciting: the kitchen floor has gone from three layers of linoleum (one for every three decades I suppose) to bare wood. Thank to Jon Allen for his assistance in getting the floors to this point!

(While we sanded a lot of lines, stains, and old adhesive off the floors,

another mystery line appeared. It appears to be some sort of cut made when

installing previous flooring but even more interestingly, it seems to have dyed the

wood around it!)

We can't wait for the final product. Then we'll have true before and after photos!