Blog de Puree

Some demolition continues and there is actual construction going on now. Yesterday, the work crew concentrated mostly on installing the door and window. We bought Andersen doors and windows, with terratone (brown) vinyl coloring on the outside, and wood trim on the inside. Today’s photo highlights: The door, inside and out: The window, inside and [...]

More gutting of the kitchen. We’re down to the studs and the wall between the kitchen and the dining room has been eliminated. Demolition has also started in the hallway and behind the chimney. Low and behold, we found wood flooring underneath two layers of tile and laminate flooring. We were this close to having [...]

Things went pretty smooth on the first day and we hit only one snag. It’s an old house, so it’s pretty inevitable. It turns out that the joists between the first floor and the finished attic are only 2x6s and the pot lights and ducts for the range hood require at least 2x8s. So we’re [...]

Okily, dokily! Randye and I spent a combined 7 hours clearing, packing, cleaning, reorganizing and moving furniture to make ready for the demolition to come. Bring on the sledge hammer! Here are some pics to see what the house looks like before the contractors do their worst, and God willing, best. (Fingers crossed everybody!) The [...]

I finally broke down and bought us a digital camera: a Nikon Cool Pix L3. I’m a resolution snob, but it’s not bad on quality. It is a little slow on the shutter speed, but I’ll forgive that flaw since I love that it also takes videos!!! Quite a handy little camera for the price. [...]

As most of our readers may know by now, we are renovating our kitchen–and we’re talking a complete overhaul. It will be gutted right down the studs, a door will be moved, we’ll change a window, expose the brick chimney smash down the walls and reconfigure them and add all new appliances and cabinetry. A [...]

We finally have a start date on the kitchen. According to our contractor, Bill Perry, his crew will be starting the kitchen renovation on Monday, August 21. If he’s delayed, it’ll be on Tuesday, August 22. On an interesting side note, when Randye called today to ask when we should order the cabinetry (If we [...]

Well, there are no deer in the town forest, but there are plenty of great trails for mountain biking.  Randye went online to find a few nearby spots with good trails and found two in Amesbury, one in Topsfield and one in Georgetown. We decided to check out the trail loops in Amesbury town forest. [...]

At the suggestion of Randye’s mom, we went out hunting for shooting stars last night. Her mom had heard of the famous Perseid meteor shower that occurs in the night sky, annually, at this time of the year. According to reports from Space.com, August is known as “meteor month.” And since I had been neglecting [...]

Randye and I decided to do some culinary exploring in our neck of the woods this evening and we checked out a barbecue joint that received great reviews from Phantom Gourmet. It’s called The American Barbecue and it’s in Rowley, MA, just a few towns south of us, on Rt. 1A. On a side note, [...]