Blog de Puree

With the foresight of a reknowned fortune-teller, Randye told the contractors to save the kitchen cabinets when they were pulling them out while gutting our old kitchen this past summer.
“There has to be some use we can find for them, rather than filling up some landfill,” she told me after I rolled my eyes and [...]

On Monday, Nov. 20 the Amesbury building inspector came to our house, loved our new kitchen and signed off on the final inspection. We sent the final payment to our contractor today. The Kerstein kitchen renovation project is finally finished. Here are some photos of the final product. But they don’t do it justice. Friends [...]

We’ve been wicked busy over the last few days as the kitchen project and all the gritty details get finished and ironed out. Here’s a quick run-down of what we did:
- Replaced the fill-valve in the toilet. (Not related, but flexing my Uiberall family plumbing prowess. Took me 20 minutes. Booyah!)
- Touched up the painted [...]

After what can only be described as a comedy of errors, the last of our replacement cabinets arrived on Halloween. Trick or Treat, indeed! But due to all the delays our contractor had had to move on to other projects instead of sitting idly by a-waitin’ on us. But on Friday, he came and installed [...]

This week is all about polyurethane. In order to make sure that our woodwork is sealed and protected, we’ve been going back and giving a second and third coat to certain areas, such as the island trim, which could get spattered with cooking grease. Floor thresholds are another area of concern that will get numerous [...]

The excitement continued today and yesterday, with the testing of the dishwasher on Saturday morning. We loaded it up with all of our daily dishwear, testing the slots and spots where the respective dishes might fit. The dishwasher takes a boat-load of stuff. And to my military mind, it was nice to see the dishes [...]

It’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting at the island kitchen, on one of our new Asian style stools while I type away over a hot cup of tea. It’s raining out, which I can see out our new kitchen windows and the wonderful new back door. I can hear house sparrows chirping away outside. There’s [...]

We’re close. So very close.
Yesterday, the plumber came out and officially installed all the appliances! (They no longer tease me from their boxes.)
Today, the electrician is here to hook up all the outlets to the circuit breakers and do his finish work. So things are really cookin’ (pun intended!).
We’re still waiting on our replacement cabinets, [...]

After such a busy weekend, sanding and staining all the trim in the kitchen, you’d think we’d be finished. But, we’re not.
On Monday, after the 2nd coat of stain settled, we were back at it, this time with a 320-grit sandpaper sponge and a tack cloth. The purpose? To smooth the tiny bits of wood [...]

As most of our family knows, we live in a bungalow home. From the research we’ve done so far, it looks like our home is a hybrid of the craftsman bungalow and a beach cottage. (We’re a scant 5 miles from the beach.) Since moving in, we’ve been planning and working to shift the house [...]