Kitchen---Part I

The Little Brick House has a nice size kitchen. 19 x 14 will be plenty large for all kitchen activities...cooking, eating, gatherings, game nights, and laundry. (Yes, laundry.) No longer is the laundry room banished to the basement or a far away room in the house where nobody wants to be. Rather than putting a wall up and closing down the kitchen, we decided to go open and spacious.

We had a plan to wait and just make it a little brighter by painting the walls a lighter color.

Then one day, Bill cleaned the existing cabinetry (with a toothbrush) and asked me, "what color we should paint them?" So our oak cabinets have been painted with Benjamin Moore Hepplewhite Ivory; the dirty brass cabinet knobs (and hinges) were removed and spray painted matte black.

The very next thing on the list is to lift up the existing linoleum floor; buy windows for the south side; and figure out how to heat the space this coming winter. Our kitchen is very usable right now. We will be doing laundry in no time!

Chiminey Crickets

We love the Little Brick House. Yes, we do, really. And when things come to light...for instance, both chimneys are in decay and need repair...we take a deep breath, and figure it out. We want the house to be around for another 170 years.

It all began with a small patch of bubbled ceiling paint. There is water coming in because we don't have a cricket*. Or a chimney cap. Or maybe because the brick chimney needs to be re-pointed. Or maybe a combination of all three.

We did not expect that the furnace and water heater would be tied into the repair of the small patch of bubbled ceiling paint...but, they are. The oil burning furnace and the oil water heater are both venting through our historic chimney. The simplest way to avoid re-building? A super-flue...a concrete liner. The problem? The current building code will only allow one appliance to be vented because of the interior dimensions.

So, we have some homework to do now...to figure this all out. In the meantime, I think we'll fix that small patch of bubbled ceiling paint.

*A cricket is a small false roof, sloped to shed water away from chimney.