The Man of the Place Has a New(ish) Toy

The Man of the Place picked up a new lawn care toy in May (hence new(ish)). He has done all of our yard work himself for years and our old ride-on tractor mower finally bit the dust. But since we got it 20 years ago, we figure we got our money’s worth 🙂

After a lot of research, the Man of the Place decided on a zero turn radius Toro Timecutter SS 4260 with a 42″ inch deck – that’s a mouthful!

It works great and he loves it. He even looks forward to mowing the grass – now that’s really saying something!

The Pantry Shelves are Done

It’s only been over 5 months since I last posted.  You might think a lot’s been going on, and you’d be right, only very little of it has had to do with the renovation.  Other things have needed our attention and Jim has been pecking away at the pantry when he’s had the chance.

Right now all the shelves are put together and installed.  Jim is currently working on the finish trim.  Here are the photos from the shelf installations.

I love, love, love my pantry! It’s my new favorite room in the house.

Out Of Odor

This post is, as the Man of the Place would say, “out of odor”. Of course, he means “out of order”, but he is my own resident Norm Crosby, and he cheerfully and intentionally mangles certain words and phrases in the English language. For example, he’ll admire the “ambulance” of a certain restaurant. And if you ask him about something, he’ll answer with an affirmative “I bereave so.”

Anyway, this is out of odor, but that’s OK. I just wanted to show you that Jim has temporarily hung our pantry door.

We salvaged the pantry door when we demo’d the old reach-in closet pantry.

 
I thought the door was cute, and they cost $199.00 new at Home Depot, so that was a nice salvage.  Anyway, the Man of the Place hung the door to get it out of the way, since we were stashing it in what is our new walk-in pantry.

He’s been doing LOTS of work on the shelving in the new pantry, and I’ll share that in a future post.

How To Recover From a Stress Test

1. Stretch out in your easy chair.
2. Cover up with your favorite quilt.
3. Let 2 of your animals snuggle on top of you.
4. Nap until well-rested.

Score: Sheet of MDF – 1 : Jim’s Big Toe – 0

OUCH. Even though it wasn’t a full 4×8 sheet, that MDF is heavy stuff! Although the Man of the Place fractured his big toe, the bones weren’t out of place, so the doc just buddy-taped it to his second toe. Ah, the hazards of DIYing!

The Corner Cabinet

If you tried to guess the mystery items in my last post, and you guessed “vertical supports for pantry shelves”, you would have been right! Check out the pictures below to see how they look in a finished unit.

My last pantry post was about the Man of the Place building the base for the first pantry cabinets. He decided that he would build the corner unit first, using 3/4″ MDF. He cut the two vertical sides and routed slots for the L-shaped shelves. Since the assembled unit would be fairly heavy, he brought all the pieces inside to assemble it.

Once the shelves were assembled, Jim maneuvered them into place on the base.

I like it!

The next job for the Man of the Place was to put trim across the front of each shelf. The trim provides a more finished look and adds stability to the shelves.

After all the shelf trim was installed, it was time for two coats of primer and two coats of paint.

After the paint cured, I couldn’t wait to move the top shelf of the rednecque pantry…

…to my brand new corner cabinet in the walk-in pantry!

Can You Guess What This Is?

Before I post my next entry about Jim’s latest renovation work, I thought I’d see what kind of DIY guessers are out there.  Can you guess what the big things in the middle of this picture are?  (Or maybe I should say, what they’re going to be.)  Post your guess in the comment section below!  I’ll tell you in my next blog entry.  Better yet, I’ll show you the finished product.

Happy 3rd (House) Anniversary to Us!

Today is the 3rd anniversary of when we closed on our house!  I can’t believe time has passed so fast.  We’ve done a lot, and still have a lot left to do.  But that’s OK since we’re both retired and don’t want to be bored 🙂

Here’s a quick look at some of the highlights from the last three years:

• Installed a new back door
• All our stuff was delivered
• Put the camper in storage
• Installed new bathroom door
• First time to do yardwork
• Removed popcorn ceiling in master, first fire, new doorbell
• Two new A/C units installed
• Removed popcorn ceiling in master closet
• Began irrigating with reclaimed water
• Master closet is framed up
• Installed new patio lamp posts
• Repaired insurance inspection items
• Installed LED lights in master closets
• Schroth wall bars installed
• Installed ceiling speakers in family room
• Textured, primed and painted master ceiling and walls
• Installed bamboo flooring and new baseboard in master
• First Christmas in our new home
• K’s room – removed popcorn ceiling; realigned walls; textured, primed, and painted ceiling and walls; installed bamboo flooring and new baseboard
• Had new roof installed
• Installed new doors on master closets
• Dining room – removed walls; installed new wall; removed popcorn ceiling; textured and primed ceiling and walls; removed parquet flooring
• Living room – removed popcorn ceiling; textured and primed ceiling and wells; painted walls; installed bamboo flooring; installed new baseboard
• Had billiards table set up
• Installed custom closet in K’s room
• Got new refrigerator
• Installed fire pot deck in backyard
• Removed load bearing wall in kitchen
• Removed concrete wall between kitchen and den
• Moved refrigerator
• Finished framing pantry; drywalled outside of pantry and wall behind refrigerator
• Plumbing leak floods several rooms 😦
• Extended wall between family room and den
• Finished dry walling walk-in pantry; textured and primed ceiling and walls; painted ceiling
• Had tall palm next to house removed

Whew!  We did more than I thought we did!  (And by we, I mean mostly Jim.)  There are a few more things for me to catch up on blogging about, like the LED lights in the family room and the shelves that the Man of the Place has put in the pantry so far.  It’s been a good three years!

Mixed Recycling Arrives

My name is Donna and I’m a recycling nerd. How do I know this? Because I got insanely, freakishly excited when our new mixed recycling container showed up in our driveway recently.

It was shiny and blue and brand spanking new. I loved it!

To at least partly understand my excitement, you have to know what our old recycling was like. We have had two blue bins in the garage, one for paper and one for plastic bottles with necks. The City of Largo would pick these up curbside one day a week. If you had any cardboard, you needed to flatten it into pieces no larger than 2’x2′ and put it under one of the bins.

For glass and metal, you had to take them to the local recycling center and dump them yourselves. This led to our fancy schmancy recycling center in our walk-in pantry.

We had been discussing how to build in a 3-bin recycling shelf into the next set of shelves that Jim will make for the pantry. Now, with mixed recyclables, everything can be dumped into one bin in the pantry.

When that’s full, we can take it out and dump it into the big blue bin, which will be rolled out to the curb once a week.

I. LOVE. IT. This makes recycling so much simpler for us. Not only that, but the City of Largo has expanded the different types of items you can recycle.

I was so excited that I had to take a picture of the contents of our bin the first time we rolled it out to the curb last week.

Yes, as I said, I’m a recycling nerd. I even had to run look when I heard the recycling truck coming down our street. It has a cool gizmo on the side which reaches out, grabs the big bin, lifts it up and dumps the contents into the truck. Very neat.

I’ve been slacking off on posting about the pantry shelves…I’ll try to get some pictures up soon. Jim’s done some nice work and we’re already putting it to use!

The Pantry Base

My last post about the pantry showed how the Man of the Place finished off the inside of the room to get ready to work on the shelves.  The next step was to install a base on which to put the cabinet-style shelves.

Jim had to create a nice level line around the perimeter of the room, so that the base would be perfectly level.

Next, he was able to begin installing the base, which is basically a structure of 2 x 4’s, elevated off the floor by little pressure-treated legs.

While this might not seem too difficult, keep in mind that the floor is not perfectly level, plus we’re going to create a toe-kick under the shelves, so everything had to be done with great precision. At times like this, it’s really nice to be married to a structural engineer 🙂

In a future post, I’ll show the first shelves that Jim has put in.