The O-Zone

Yeah, I know I said we weren’t doing remodeling this year, but we couldn’t stand it anymore!  It is the pantry’s turn to get a face lift. Actually instead of merely a face lift, its more like a complete makeover including plastic surgery, liposuction, in addition to every cosmetic procedure known to mankind.

It all started with mice.  We’ve had a problem with mouse invasions since we moved into this house which is no great surprise since the house began it’s life as a small log cabin (the kitchen was the original whole house), with additions being made to it.  First addition was the living room and 2nd floor bedroom, then the bathroom and original master bedroom (now our exercise room), and downstairs laundry room which also has the solar equipment (inverter, controller, panels and batteries), was added.  Since we moved here, we added the current master bedroom off the kitchen.

Due to this method of additions to the original log cabin, there were mouse entry points throughout the structure and we’ve been working to eliminate these miniscule doorways to keep the mice out.  Judicious trapping and Mishkin have helped to totally eradicate the population that was living in the house.  The colony is gone.  Hurray!

So, now the pantry was the last obvious place that needed serious attention.  To describe the original room when we moved in here, the original door into the pantry was a homemade door that looked like a hatch door on a submarine.  It was roughly a foot off the kitchen floor, and when you entered the room you stepped onto a small one foot deep landing not much wider than the doorway, which immediately descended stairs.  Off to the left of the stairs was a platform which had some doors in the base of it, used for storage.  The woman who used to live here seriously hurt herself once on this arrangement, breaking her leg in a fall.

The only light natural light came from a very small two feet wide by one foot tall fixed window, and the other light in the room was a very (and I do mean VERY), funky 18 inch long 12-volt florescent light fixture attached to a beam running across the ceiling.  The roof was pitched to match the exterior roof line except where the light fixture was attached, where a false dropped ceiling was built, making a flat ceiling for the rest of the room.

The walls of this room were logs on two walls, roughcut wood planks on the opposite wall, and a combination of roughcut and hard foam insulation on the last wall.  Shelving was built into place using that most lovely of materials known as pressboard plywood, a very rough type of plywood usually used for an underlayment for flooring.  In other words, all surfaces in the room were impossible to clean, and very unsightly.

We replaced the original door, cutting it down to the floor so tripping was no longer an issue, and we built a floor in front of the door, and then built stairs down to the lower part of the room.  This basic layout exists to this day, but has been improved somewhat.

Part of the demolition was to remove the false ceiling and raise the height of the ceiling to its original height, a huge relief for Dan who is over six feet tall and was forever hitting his forehead.  We knew this demolition was going to be a horrible job to tackle, so we hired Jack and his sons! 🙂  They found a packrat nest from last fall up in the ceiling.  Horrific discovery in our opinion!!!!  We knew a packrat was getting into the ceiling last fall and we were able to chase it out of the house and close off that entry point.  Actually, Mishkin is the one who chased it out the house, thereby earning his keep for the rest of his life!

Jack and sons basically gutted the  pantry room, and started over with fresh insulation.  By removing the old insulation and ceiling we found multiple openings along the top of the wall which were plenty big enough for mice to enter the house.  Those were all blocked off prior to installing the insulation and sheetrock.

The other thing they did was to replace the old tiny fixed window with a new three foot by three foot sliding window, which will have a screen when the building company gets it for us, and we will be able to see in the room without having to turn on a light, and air out the room in the summer when the house gets warm.  Hurray again!

After putting in some new walls to cover the old log construction and rough rock foundation, we now had a place to put light switches, electric outlets, and ceiling lights which are in walls instead of having to be surface mounted with galvanized metal boxes and flex tubing.  Another huge improvement!

Sheetrock followed next, and the final shape of the room is coming into focus.

We extended the floor of this upper platform, boxing in around the stairs.  It feels a lot safer now to walk down the stairs, no risk of stepping off an edge and falling.

Having a source of natural light will mean no need to use the overhead lights during daylight hours, a savings on our power consumption which is always a good thing indeed.

The messy part of the job is in process.  It has taken two and a half days to reach this point; it would have gone much faster if anything was square or level.  As if! 🙂 Sheetrock creates an enormous amount of dust, and that’s before sanding off the mud the covers cracks!  This messiness will continue for a week until two coats of mud are done.  Then a massive clean up will occur and we can begin painting.  We’ll use the same color of pastel yellow as is in the kitchen.  This is the fun part of remodeling, getting to that stage.

While Jack and his boys were here yesterday finishing up the messy bits, we got them to help move the cookstove from its home in the corner of the kitchen, and we are going to work on replacing flooring in the kitchen from varnished pine board which are really impossible to clean to a laminate flooring that matches what we put in our master bedroom.  Our plan is to lay enough flooring today that when they return on Monday, they can help us move the cookstove back in place.  With four of us lifting and moving the stove, it’s no big deal.  But the darn thing weighs about 600 pounds and with just Dan and me trying to lift it, well we could do it years ago but not a chance now.

In the middle of the kitchen floor where the table used to sit there now resides a chest refrigerator and freezer, and space for walking around is now at a premium.  We are both trying to maintain absolute calm while completing these two projects, but it’s hard.  Disruptions in our living arrangements are a lot harder to take now that we’re older.

The other thing Jack is going to do on Monday is to relocate and replace the water filter down in the laundry room.

It will take a couple of weeks before both of these projects are done.  We still have to figure out what we want to do in terms of storage in the pantry.  We had originally thought about using cabinet storage but since I think we’ve totally solved the mouse invasion issue, and cabinets will make the room seem much smaller, we’re considering either the white melamine shelving, or wire racks on both sides of the room, flanking the windows.  We’re a ways away from installing these two options, so right now we’re still considering.

It’s going to be nice when it is all done, and we can’t hardly wait.  Mishkin will get to stay in his bedroom while we’re working on flooring.   He would have entirely too much fun whacking things across the floor and pouncing on the workers, namely us.

It is a gorgeous spring day here, temperatures slightly above freezing already this morning, and nary a cloud in the sky.  It is a nice contrast to yesterday morning when it was snowing!  We have a pair of Mountain Bluebirds here investigating the nest box already claimed by the Western Bluebirds.  They will have to work out ownership.

The grass is beginning to turn green but up here, none of the bushes or trees have leafed out yet.

The sun now sets immediately to the left of the white capped Mount Baldy.  In another couple of months, it will set far to the right of this mountain.

The solar panels are going to have a field day today producing power.  We’ll do laundry courtesy of the sun and not touch the batteries at all, and be able to watch our new television as much as we want, and I can do any baking that I fancy doing.  All after the flooring is laid but that should really only take us an hour or so once we figure out the first line of flooring.  The first wall is anything but straight.