Office progress: Ready for paint!

As of Friday evening the office is officially ready for paint.  It is nearly primed (Shayne just needs to cut in around the trim), and my mom is coming over tomorrow to help with the "real" painting.  Then we'll paint the trim (don't worry, it was already painted!), and it will be as finished as it's going to get for now.  Floor sanding and refinishing is going to wait until spring, since I don't want any residual fumes in the house when baby arrives.  Plus, we're just about out of time, and I'd rather concentrate on other things. 

I can't believe I'm due in 4 weeks!!  Yeek!

By Tuesday we should have all the office crap out of the nursery and into the office.  It'll be so fun to finally get to set up the nursery!  Not that the baby's going to sleep in there for the first few months, but still...  I'm especially anxious to bring up the glider I bought as a surprise for Shayne (he already knows, don't worry).  Babies R Us was having a floor model sale at the same time as gliders were 20% off, so I managed to snag the reclining glider Shayne really wanted for 40% of the original $400 price.  And with all the gift cards we had received, I only had to pay $50 out of pocket.  BRU cleaned up the cushions for me, and aside from one little stain on one side of the seat cushion, you can't tell it from new.  Yay for bargain shopping!

In the master bedroom, the Pepto-Bismol pink plaster was removed completely, and we're down to the studs.  It was a difficult decision for me, since I really prefer to keep the original materials when possible.  Sadly, part of my concern was time; it takes much longer to patch in drywall, skimcoat, and feather in the differing materials.  I really want this done and painted before the baby gets here.  Another issue was the plaster itself.  It wasn't in terrible shape, but by the time we removed the parts that were crumbling, there wouldn't be enough left to make the work worth it (IMO).  I'd have felt differently if it was the living room or dining room, I think, since we're really trying to keep as much original as possible in the main areas of the house.  But since the bedrooms have already been butchered...  I obviously feel guilty about my decision, since I'm trying so hard to justify it.  Oh well.

Also in the master bedroom, the closet opening is going to be reframed to better match the scale of the house.  It's currently 84" tall, making it a little taller than our bedroom doorway.  If we were to add matching woodwork to an opening that size, it would look odd.  So it will be shrinking to a more reasonable 72" to match every other closet door in the house.  Tony thought I was crazy to want make the openings so short, since we'll probably have to order custom doors (or find salvaged ones), but I'm convinced we should match the other closets as closely as possible.  We might be taking the width of the opening down as well, but I'll have to go up and measure to see. 

I'm not sure when we'll get woodwork for the closets to match the rest of the doors.  I have some bits and pieces out in the garage that may work.

Paint in the master bedroom should happen within 2 weeks, barring any catastrophes.  Talk about cutting it close!!

Spaghetti sauce from fresh tomatoes: Take two

Last year on a whim I bought a Roma food mill and made my own spaghetti sauce from fresh roma tomatoes.  While the sauce was decent, it wasn't anywhere near as wonderful as I'd hoped.  The food mill performed much better than I ever expected though, and it's become one of my favorite appliances.  How neat is is to plop whole tomatoes (or cut in half if they're big) into the hopper, turn a crank, and the tomato pulp and juice are quickly separated from the skin and seeds.  I was skeptical that it would work as advertised, but it really is that easy.  Definitely the best $45 I ever spent on a kitchen item.

This year, armed with an actual recipe instead of trying to fake my way through, I bought 10 lbs of tomatoes and tried again.

My results were WAY better.  My sauce is still not as thick as I would like, but the flavor is excellent.  I probably should have added an extra can of tomato paste, but I was afraid to because I liked the flavor and didn't want to ruin it.

Here's my recipe:

10 lbs of ripe roma (paste) tomatoes
1-2 16 oz can of tomato paste (or more if desired)
1 medium-large yellow onion
1 medium red pepper
3/4 head of garlic
1/2 c olive oil
2 tbsp dried oregano
2 tbsp dried basil
1/4 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

You can add other veggies if you choose, but no cheese if you plan to water bath can.

Process tomatoes in a food mill to remove seeds, skin, and stems.  Cook puree and juice on a low boil for 3 hrs. 
After 3 hrs, add tomato paste until desired consistency is reached.  Stir in brown and white sugar, olive oil, spices, and salt and pepper.  Add finely chopped peppers, onions, and garlic.  Cook an additional 30 - 60 minutes, stirring and tasting often.  Adjust spices and veggies to desired taste.

Once sauce is finished, pour into canning cars, seal, and process.  Water bath 15 minutes for pints, 25 minutes for quarts.  Yields approximately 5 quarts of sauce.

Bathroom Idea Board

As usual, I'm obsessing about the bathroom.  Big surprise there.  To organize my thoughts, I put together a little idea board of the products and materials I plan on using. 

Starting in the upper left and moving clockwise...

1. Subway tile.  I love the classic look and easily-maintained surface.  Unfortunately, we can't afford to tile a wainscot around the entire room, so we're planning on using it for a tub/shower surround.  American Olean seems to have discontinued their "Greenwich Village" line, so we'll be looking for a suitable substitute.
2. Pedestal sink.  This one is American Standard's Retrospect.  I like how this sink combines both rounded and squared elements.  It's not too mission-y, but not too colonial revival-y.  It also complements quite a few styles of faucets.
3. Built-in medicine cabinet.   I haven't seen this particular style for sale anywhere, but I'm keeping my eye on salvage stores.  The open shelf underneath would be great for often-used items (q-tips, jewelry tray).  I definitely want the cabinet to be inset into the wall.  
4. Some kind of square, mission-style sconce.  These are for either side of the medicine cabinet.  These are from Restoration Hardware, but I found some at VanDykes that are a little less expensive but still have the same feel.
5. Kohler Bancroft faucet.  Not too rounded and swoopy, just clean and classic looking.
6. Hex tile.  I'm definitely using this for the floor.  Not sure if we'll include some kind of pattern or accent in black tiles.  Probably.  What;'s the fun of mosaic tiles if you don't get to play with designs?
7. Kohler Bancroft tub.  Big compromise, for both of us.  Shayne wants a longer, deeper tub; I want cast iron.  Budget and space dictate otherwise.  To keep costs down we're going to move the plumbing as little as possible.  The sink will scoot over 2-3 feet, but that's it.  So there's no room for a wider tub in the current floorplan, and the cast iron one I want (Kohler Kathryn) costs over 3 times as much. The Bancroft is a good compromise with a little vintage character, relatively deep bathing area, standard dimensions, and thick acrylic walls.  Anything's better than the 8" deep, cheap, POS tub we have now, though.
8. Color.  Some sort of soothing, gray-green.  
9. Beadboard (not shown).  Poor-man's substitute for a subway tile wainscot.  :)  Plus, since our house is something of a farm house, and is very simple with its detailing, I think beadboard is more true to its style. 
   

Since we're not changing the floor plan, I was concerned that the room would look closed-in.  It does now, but there are big, oak cabinets and a huge vanity hogging up physical and visual space.  I'm hoping with a smaller sink and no gigantic cabinet it will open things up.  I found a few pics online that show a bathroom almost identical to the look we're going for.  Currently, these are my inspiration pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfwithee/2799120167/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfwithee/2799120167/

Dumpster Diving

How cool is this??

 http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/20/arts/design/20090720_POOL_SLIDESHOW_index.html

 

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/07/10/dive-into-a-dumpster-guerrilla-pool/ 

Some creative folks have been taking unused Dumpsters or shipping containers and making them into pools.  A 30 yard Dumpster (the big ones you see parked in driveways) are 22' x 8' x 5' and would make an nice little lap pool for me.  I guess I'll be on the lookout for abandoned waste receptacles or shipping containers...

Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches...

Gonna can a lot of peaches, more like.  I bought almost a half bushel at the market yesterday, just for canning.  Peaches are the only thing I don't like to can.  Cutting them up is a pain, even when they're freestone it seems like only about half separate easily.  Peeling them sucks (I've tried dipping them in boiling water, which didn't work for me, so I'm stuck peeling by hand).  They're slimy and difficult to handle.  And they taste SO much better than store-bought that I can't make myself eat anything else.

My mom helped me yesterday, for which I am eternally grateful.  She seems to have better luck peeling than I do, and I did better with cutting them up, so we made a good team.  I knew I only wanted to can 12 pints, so we stopped about 2/3 of the way through the basket so we wouldn't have too much.  I got 7 pints out of the first batch, so I had to finish up with the rest this morning.  I got 11 pints total, with 3 peaches leftover to eat.  With peaches a little smaller than my fist, I seem to use about 4 peaches per pint, meaning that we only peeled and cut up maybe 4 dozen.  It felt like a LOT more.  Oh well.  I'm done now, and I'll have yummy tasting peaches to eat all winter!

As far as cost goes...  Meijer sells a case of peaches (12 - 15 oz cans) for $16.76, or $1.40 per can.  I paid $10 for my almost-half-bushel and would have gotten 12 pints if I hadn't saved some to eat.  That's $0.83 per can.  If you add in the pain-in-the-ass factor, I'm sure mine are more expensive, but they are much firmer and tastier, so I suppose it's worth it.

Next up is tomato sauce, then applesauce and apple butter.  I'm considering potatoes, too.