Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Weeks 16 and 17: Project 365, the 2015 Edition

You might want to get a cup of coffee or tea and maybe a snack, because this could take a while. Besides having two weeks worth of photos, I share our bathroom door drama and include a bonus at the end.

Wednesday, April 15

Since we're having gorgeous, sunny weather Ivan has spent almost every siesta scraping, sanding, cleaning or painting. Here's a shot of him painting the rejas (bars) on the kitchen window:

Thursday, April 16

Windows, window frames and rejas all done! Here's a shot of each window from the outside:
(left: kitchen; right: bedroom)

We're going to paint the exterior of the casita a soft gray (Sherwin Williams Gray Screen #7071), but the cement "frame" around each window will be painted the same bright white as the windows and rejas.

Friday, April 17

Just because the windows are done doesn't mean Ivan's finished with the aberturas -- he still has the door, door frame and screen door to do. Ivan needed to replace the rusty screen that was on the used door, anyway, and this made it a lot easier to paint the frame:

Saturday, April 18

Ivan went to a men's retreat this weekend while I participated in the virtual retreat I talked about in my last post. I also decided to paint the bathroom door and frame. We bought the bathroom and bedroom doors at a salvage place, and they were in pretty rough condition. We cleaned them up but they seriously needed a paint job. But until recently, we haven't had space in the garage to work on projects like this. Early Saturday morning Ivan took the door off the hinges and carried it to the garage for me before he left. Then I sanded, cleaned and taped off the door frame:
Like I said, very rough condition.

Sunday, April 19

Ivan and the three guys who went with him to the retreat had a wonderful time. I borrowed a few photos from the camp's Facebook page to create a little collage. Top right photo, the three on the far left are the ones who went with Ivan: Sebastian is in the maroon shirt, and sitting on the short wall next to him are Charlie and Joaquin. Lower right photo is a shot of just Charlie and Joaquin. The organizers asked Ivan to say a few words at the beginning of the retreat.
Some of you may remember Charlie from years past. He was Ivan's right-hand-man when we started working on the property and there were a number of photos of him in my P365 posts that year (2012).

Wednesday, April 22

So we've had a bit of bathroom door drama the past few days, and I didn't remember to take photos until the door was back on its hinges.

As soon as I applied the first coat of paint to the door frame on Saturday morning, I knew it wasn't going to work. We painted the interior of our casita bright white, to try and visually expand our very small space (395 square feet total), and this paint was not a true white so it looked very dirty and dingy next to our bright white walls. I decided to apply one coat to everything and then wait until Monday when we could get some bright white for the second coat.

Ran into another problem, though. After he carried the door to the garage, Ivan had quickly filled in on the bottom of one side of the door where several chunks of veneer had come off. He'd instructed me to let it dry, then sand it before painting. Only it never dried! Not the whole weekend. It was still soft and kind of tacky on Monday morning. So I left that side alone and applied one coat to the other side.

Which is fine because, in the end, Ivan ended up scraping the paint off both sides of the door. And peeling off the filler he'd used.

The paint that was on the doors when we bought them did not pass the "scratch test" -- which test Ivan had not thought to do before he left for the retreat, since I decided to paint the door sort of last minute and he was in a bit of a hurry. We also discovered that, in the rush on Saturday morning, Ivan had inadvertently mixed an oil-based paint with a water-based paint for me to use. So really, all in all, it's a good thing I had not done much painting.

Once he'd scraped all the paint off, peeled off the weird-filler-that-never-dried and re-did it with another filler and sanded that down, it was my turn to show the door some bright white love. It required three coats, so between coats and drying time, it took all of Tuesday and part of Wednesday.

It's impossible to get a photo of the whole door, from either side, because the space is just too tight, so here's the best I can do:
This was taken from the corner of the hallway so you see the top of my washer. And it's before Ivan put the hardware back on the door.

Friday, April 24

On our walk today we noticed this house had gotten a new paint job:
Took this with Ivan's phone so you can't see it very well, but that bush in front of the fence has bright orange flowers the exact same shade as the paint. And they have a bunch of these bushes all over the yard. Can't you just imagine the owner taking a flower to the paint store to color match it?

Saturday, April 25

Skyped briefly with Tina this afternoon, and asked her which of the quilt designs she liked best so far. I'm not sure how many I've sent her altogether; maybe 5-6? About a week ago I'd revisited one of my earlier designs, doing two different color versions (the design I shared on P365, April 2nd):
She said she really liked the color-blocked version (on the right) where I used green as the main color for the rectangles, coral for the circles and aqua for the triangles, with lots of grays and whites mixed in. I hope to get started on the quilt soon. I plan to do each shape section separately and then join them. That will let me try to balance the middle, circular section the best.

Sunday, April 26

During church we decided to see if Charlie and Joaquin wanted to come over for lunch. Since it wasn't a planned thing, I had to quickly come up with a menu. As soon as I got home, I made dessert (chocolate pudding) so it could be chilling while I fixed the rest of lunch. I let it sit on the counter to cool down for a bit, then put it in the fridge. After we ate lunch, the guys went out to the garage and I decided I'd put the puddings in the freezer to cool even quicker. But when I went to open the fridge, I shrieked and pulled my hand back quickly...
Y'all, this was on the handle on my refrigerator -- one very big spider! You'd better believe I waited until Ivan came in to take care of it. I. Do. Not. Like. Spiders. At. All.

Tuesday, April 28

The scraping, sanding, cleaning and painting during almost every siesta continues. Ivan finished the front door last night, but it was too dark to get a decent photo. Here's from outside:

And here's from inside:
Love the soft butter yellow color. (Also seriously love having a screen door!) Ivan's going to build me  some kitchen cabinets with a long counter top, and I plan to paint the cabinets the same butter yellow.

Bonus:

While trying to get a photo of the door, I thought now would be a good time to take photos of the rest of my kitchen. I'm pretty sure I haven't shared any photos since right after we first moved in 2-1/2 years ago. I'm going to share six photos, starting at my front door and moving around so you can get an idea of the space. It's tiny and we've packed a lot into it! This serves as our kitchen, dining room, and it's also where I come to sit and read late at night or early in the morning when I can't sleep.
I'm standing at my front door looking kitty-corner across the room in this first photo. My father-in-law built the hutch many years ago, and we 'borrowed' it from the house in Sta. Rosa. I have a very colorful mix of canisters, as you can see. Not by choice; it's what I've managed to cobble together. The few canisters I've picked up here have ill-fitting lids and are not airtight, so I'm constantly on the lookout for tried-and-true Tupperware whenever we go to the states. You'll also see the bottled water set-up next to it. Our water has a weird taste, plus I've been nervous about drinking water from the tap ever since our first year when I ended up with parasites and was so sick.
Now I'm standing in front of the window looking straight ahead. The kitchen is 9 feet wide, which was just enough to fit the stove, sink and fridge on that far wall. Do you see the small bit of countertop space I have on either side of the sink? Now you know why I'm excited about the cabinets-with-long-countertop that Ivan is going to build me! Oh, and I'll repaint this cabinet butter yellow, too, to match the ones Ivan's building. You can just see the big basket I keep on the floor, in front of my 'pantry'. Inside one end of the basket is a large ceramic container and I've stuck my most frequently used, long-handled utensils in that. On the other end of the basket I've shoved in rolls of aluminum foil, wax paper, etc.
Now I'm by the bookshelf facing the corner with the stove, instant hot water heater mounted above, and apron hanging on the wall. I am messy in the kitchen, so that apron gets a lot of use. The bookshelf is my 'pantry', and next to it is the dresser-I-pretend-is-a-buffet. I keep tablecloths, the hand crank meat grinder, spices and a bunch of other stuff crammed in the drawers. The KitchenAid stand mixer and crock pot sit on top, under fabric covers I made, the coffee grinder which gets used every morning, and that's also where I keep my oils and vinegars. Ivan built the shelf unit above when we lived on Canning Street, to house our toaster oven and the transformer (that I need for my American-made-for-110 appliances). This is the wall where we'll put the new cabinets Ivan's going to make. It will replace the 'pantry' and the 'buffet' as well as the hutch (which we'll take back out to Sta. Rosa).
Standing in front of the fridge, facing the front door. Wondering what that thing with the valve is on the shelf next to the toaster oven? It's a CO2 canister that Ivan uses to turn plain water into soda water. We have quite a collection of recycled soda bottles that we can use over and over. We like agua con gas, so we were pretty excited when Ivan found the valve necessary to 'gas' our own bottles.
Standing in front of the sink looking across at the window. The chair below has a tablecloth covering it now, but I plan to reupholster it. One of the many things on my "to do" list. I wish we'd hung a longer curtain rod to completely cover the window when it's open, but we moved in during winter and didn't even think about how it would look when the window was open. I do want to switch out the curtains so maybe that would be a good time install a longer curtain rod, too.
And finally, standing in front of the stove, looking kitty corner at the lone bookshelf. I have to use one shelf for some bowls and my steamer, but otherwise, the bookshelf serves its primary purpose, which is to hold books and magazines. All our other bookshelves are in Sta. Rosa, as are most of our books (I'm constantly rotating books from there to here, and back again).

So there you have it, my 9' x 15' kitchen/dining room. There's not a lot of space around the table and chairs but once we take the hutch back to Sta. Rosa, we'll scoot the table and chairs against that wall and I anticipate the room will feel downright spacious at that point. (By the way, this is a folding table from Sam's Club that measures just under 2' x 4'.) The bookshelf stays. I have to have at least one bookshelf!

4 comments:

riTa Koch said...

Thank you for the walk through your kitchen. I enjoyed that detailed virtual visit!
So good to hear of Charlie again! Is he attending your current church?

sara said...

I loved the walk through your kitchen! and that butter color is wonderful. I may have to look into it for my new home!!!

I QUICKLY scrolled past the spider!!! ick!

Mari said...

Yikes on that spider! I would have shrieked for Ivan too!
The quilt is going to be so pretty.
I really enjoyed your kitchen/dining room tour. You fit a lot in it!

The Bug said...

I thought our kitchen was small! But it also has to fit our washer & dryer too :)

Love the grill-work - so pretty!

And I can't wait to see the quilt!