tiny kitchen – turtle + mole

Arwen has been working on her modeling again… trying to get a nomination for “Cutest Cat.”

Never outdone, Bella’s doing her best…

You know, humans aren’t the only ones obsessed with computers.

We got a real tree again this year. My family came over for a Christmas celebration, and we managed to get the tree up a good couple of hours before everyone showed up. Arwen decided that this present was for her. I think she knew that Janeen would like the purple paper.

Here’s Janeen, Eva and Leo comparing stripy socks.

Christmas dinner around our little table: Seats eight.

We even took a conventional family picture. That’s Mia on Skype on Dad’s phone.

I did two batches of beer last month: an English Brown Ale, and a Chocolate Stout. I plan to give most away as thank you gifts for sponsors of my AIDS/LifeCycle ride. Let me know if you want some!

Arwen and Bella are very “helpful” when it comes to making the bed. They love to play “thumbtack” when you move the sheet.

OK, so this blog was supposed to be about working on the house. Well, not been doing a lot, but I did tear out the old tile flooring in the laundry room (no photos), and put in cement board ready for new tile. Looks cleaner already.

Continuing with my goal of reusing old wood, I have a pile of short scraps of old wood that is still left over. To make baseboards (nice, thick, big baseboards), I cut the pieces of wood into identical sized strips, planed and glued them together. Here’s one of the boards, using lots of clamps.

Before and after going through the planer. I routed the triple bead into one line of the wood strips before glueing together. On the right, I’ve filled the nail holes, and the board is smooth after going through the thickness planer a few times.

Here’s the baseboard going in, and the start of the wainscot. I’m finally using the recycled wood I made and talked about back a couple of months ago. I still need to make boards for the window sill. I’ll probably buy molding for around the windows, though.

Happy and Peaceful New Year, from turtle, mole, arwen and bella.

Bella and Arwen got into some remodeling of their own:

I think Bella likes the additional area that the walls provide for sleeping space. The house is also centrally located in the middle of the dining room. Arwen (above right) looking through the window at Bella inside.

MY house.

This weekend we bottled the most recent batch: amber ale. I’ve tried a bit right after bottling (still too sweet from the bottling sugar, and no carbonation). The previous brew, though, a brown ale, is really good. We decided to call this “Tiny Kitchen” brews.

Finally finished all the rough plumbing for the shower (had been waiting for some parts to be delivered). And true to form, I can’t keep things simple: I’ve put the shower controls centered on the wall in the shower, but there’s a window, so I have the pipe crossing over. And, I got clever with 45 degree bends, even using a pipe bender on part of it to get a smother flow. The hardest part is drilling at 45 degrees through a stud.

Here’s all the insulation in place, and a view up at the ceiling in this tiny little bathroom.

Now the hard part: putting up drywall. As you know, I love plaster — the real stuff. So here we are using ‘blue board’. It’s supposed to make it easier to adhere the veneer plaster. The only problem is that the supply place only had 5/8″ thick blue board. Heavy. Here I’m cutting out the openings for the recessed lights.

Oh, that looks easy? Let me tell you: That one board weighed over 70 lb. Hefting it overhead, and screwing it in place is hernia material. Luckily all my measurements for this board were correct, so the holes all lined up, and everything fit.

I came up with one little idea to help get the pieces of drywall in place overhead. I temporarily screwed a piece of wood to the wall just below the edge of the board. That way we could rest that edge of the board in place and only support one side while trying to position it and screw it up.