Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Wendy and I have long dreamed of an intimate wine bar area somewhere in our house. While I have grand plans for a hidden and climate controlled wine storage area and tasting bar in the basement (many years down the road), the small area we've created in the kitchen will have to suffice until we can even begin to entertain grand plans similar to this.
To tell you the truth, we're thrilled with how the small "wine bar" area in the kitchen has turned out. We love the cabinets, fridge, and counter tops, but the addition of the shelves we built and installed last week really brought the whole space home. But one of the items I thought long and hard about building is now my favorite aspect of our shelves and wine bar -- the inverted wine glass storage solution.
As I mentioned, I've thought about how to build this aspect of our shelves for quite some time. I have high hopes of being able to construct row upon row of wine glass storage in a tasting room area of the house, so this first go of my idea is more of a proof of concept or prototype for what will eventually come.
The end result of our efforts were so successful, and the cost so reasonable, I want to share the process with you so that you may be able to do the same, if you're so inclined.
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In case you didn't see our post last week, we had our copper downspout ripped off of our house...literally. Unbeknownst to us, a thief showed up in the middle of the night and snatched our copper downspout in order to take it to a scrap metal yard. At about $6 per pound, he probably walked away with almost $100. Thanks a lot, jerk.
After discovering this serious annoyance and financial inconvenience, we're moving onward and upward. Rather than stew in my general anger and hatred for the person/people who stole the downspout, and to avoid focusing on the ideas of what I would have done if I had actually caught the guy in the act (which I'm sure is far more intense and much different than if I had actually caught the guy in real life), I instead focused on a short and long term fix for the problem at hand.
In the short term, we needed a downspout. Rain is in the forecast, and our replacement downspout won't be here for at least a week or more, so we needed a solution that would drain the massive amount of water from our roof without letting it pour all over the side of our house and flood the backyard.
Are you familiar with the website "There, I fixed it!"? If not, it's a photo blog from the Cheezburger family of websites (things like LOLcats and FailBlog) that contains collections of photos submitted by users with interesting fixes to problems. I'm talking lots of duct tape and any necessary level of makeshift solutions you can think of. Well, I sort of feel like my short term downspout solution is a pretty solid candidate for "There I Fixed It."
We actually have some experience with a short term gutter solution from years ago, prior to our copper gutter installation. We were working on replacing our siding and needed a downspout that we could work around, so I used a length of flexible dryer duct.
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I hope you'll forgive me for that bad early 2000's sitcom reference, but today we're talking ravens. Specifically, the avian Halloween decorations adorning the outside of our home.
Each year we throw a costume party to celebrate my favorite holiday of the year. Last year I dressed up as Tippi Hedren's character in the Hitchcock movie, The Birds.
Having purchased a gaggle of crows to complement my 2011 costume, I wanted to put them to use for a second year running. This year I opted to use all of the birds on the exterior of our home, clustering them in groups for a more dramatic effect.
First I started with the lower window sill, affixing the birds with floral wire and 3M Command tape and hooks.
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Thursday, October 18, 2012
We have big news today, and much happier news than that of yesterday's gutter downspout theft! After roughly two months since we began our little kitchen upgrade with a fresh coat of paint, and after our kitchen upgrades seemingly spiraled out of control and turned into a major overhaul, we've finally checked the final items off of the list (for now).
Without any further delay, here's our grand "wine bar" reveal!!!
And our more or less the final view of the main kitchen area.
From the warm butcher block counters to the sparkling subway tile back splash, all we can say is that we are beyond pleased with how this whole thing has turned out. Just look at how far we've come in such a short period of time.
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Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Today's post is a little unique, primarily because today's post is actually going to be two posts. One from my perspective, and one from Alex's perspective. We both wrote the posts without the other knowing, so we figured we should go ahead and just share both of them. We hope you enjoy, and that you'll check out the other post in today's "series."
We were the victims of burglary. It saddens me to even type that sentence. Broken are my rose colored glasses, from behind which I gaze lovingly upon my town. Gone is my sense of security, and I feel completely violated.
Yesterday Alex discovered that the new copper downspout we just replaced this summer, had been ripped from it's home against the side of our house.
Could it have been worse? Sure! In the grand scheme of things, losing a piece of copper to theft is not a big deal. It will cost us roughly $300 in materials and an hour of Alex's time to replace it. No one was hurt, nothing sentimental was stolen, and our home wasn't broken into.
But knowing that someone out there cased our home, identified the copper downspout as an easy target, and entered our walled back garden without our knowledge leaves me feeling downright uneasy. The fact that no one saw it, and neither our, ahem, guard dog nor we heard so much as a peep.
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