A new old stove

April 16th, 2008

Our vintage O’Keeffe and Merritt is installed and almost ready for a pot roast, pork chops, or bundt cake. While I would have loved to go industrial and stainless, the price for a new stove was prohibitive. We have a 40″ stove gap and a tight budget, so even the cheap dent and ding 30″ Sears stoves were out of our price range.

I bought this classic beauty off of craigslist, aahhhh my first love – craigslist.

Theres a bit of an issue with the broiler and oven – they won’t get hot! The griddle and stove top burners work like champs, so I’m forking out $40 to have the pros come and assess the issue.

Oh well, you get what you pay for with vintage. But JESUS that thing looks amazing, which is all that matters…

The interiors of the Youngstown steel cabinets got a new coat of baby pink Rustoleum. We all agreed – they now look like vagina’s.

This is the plug of DOOM. What the hell is going on? There are 3 circuits and a cluster fuck of cables.

This is the plug for our fridge, and isn’t grounded. I tried to screw it back in the wall after we inspected the mess and almost killed myself. An exposed wire hit metal and the thing sparked and went BOOOOOM and threw the breaker. I almost wet my pants, and thought I was going to die. Electrical work is now left to the pros.

FILED UNDER: electrical, kitchen

4 Comments »

Moving on up

April 14th, 2008

This weekend we loaded up the absurd mass of stuff that has been sitting in storage, gathering dust, and moved into the Brick House!

Thankfully the school had a relocation budget, so we hired the good folks at Bekins to help lug our stuff to the house. What a glorious thing to have movers. It makes the whole process so much more fun and easy, well except for deciding were things should go,

The bathroom floors were finished being installed and Sunshine Janitorial is coming Wednesday to scuff them up and make them shiny. For $200 I approve of the professionals doing it right, and getting the paint splatters out of the kitchen.

Everything is a mess, we have a new old stove, and our dog is freaking out. A few more weeks and it might be inhabitable.

FILED UNDER: move

No Comments »

VCT Floors

April 7th, 2008


Although the project is still not quite complete, the new black VCT floors are going in and looking fabulous. We decided on the Armstrong 12 in. x 12 in Classic Black Imperial Texture – classic indeed.

The process of getting the kitchen floors ready for installation is what took the most time, labor, tears, and cash. We scraped up 4 layers of vinyl and linoleium and we ripped out the damaged plywood areas – one water damaged spot under the fridge and a termite damaged spot near the shower stall.


(shower stall termite damage – EWWWWW and the water damage in the kitchen)

The termite damage extended beyond that small section and eventually half of the bathroom floor was gone, revealing the sub floor underneath. The holes were patched with 3/4 inch plywood and screwed down to the sub floor and then the entire floor was filled with a gypsum based floor patch and leveler.


(Crazy Dave – the tile expert extraordinaire who made it all happen! A talented and mentally unstable fellow as well as a good friend)


(this is the gypsum covered and troweled floors – smooth as plaster and ready for VCT)

Crazy Dave went way overkill and did about 4 layers of floor leveler and hand troweled it level and baby butt smooth. It was amazing and something I don’t recommend anyone attempt as a DIY.

Once the floor patch was dry and level- putting in the actual VCT tiles was a snap. Lay down the VCT adhesive and after it is troweled and left to dry for an hour (so that you can touch it without it being sticky), lay in your tiles and walk on them immediately. It went very quickly, in a few hours we had a brand new floor in our kitchen and back bathroom with a total cost of about $350.

I couldn’t be happier. We still have to buff and wax the whole thing and install the left over tiles in our pink bathroom, but for a weekend project it turned out quite successful. I love VCT!

FILED UNDER: floors

3 Comments »