Welcome to our nightmare.....soon to become dream kitchen.

So we are in the process as you know of remodeling our kitchen. So instead of our Monday date, I went to work(cook) and Brian stayed home and ripped out our surprise chimney. I know the jealous bug is starting to nip you again;) But as a promise to document the process I thought I would document the nightmare. I must preface the following pictures with some fine print....we are no longer eating in our house and I am no longer making anymore than cold cereal and school lunches in our house. These decisions have been made in hopes to avoid anyone being poisoned in this process:)

I must warn you the picture that follow are graphic!

First up is what we like to call our surprise....a chimney hidden in the existing cabinets. Not the kind of surprise we would describe as positive or exciting though. More terrifying and exhausting.
So Brian spent most of his day removing it.

How I remember life before.

The Surprise....nothing ever goes as expected in this beautiful old house. Thankful for the millionth time that my husband is handy and capable!

After removal.

The empty chimney shaft. And just to clarify he had to remove bricks from the kitchen all the way up to the rooftop. Which included cutting holes in other walls. Damaging and breaking things, cuts and bruises and much more. But now its done. He texted me a picture of the chimney shaft this afternoon with the sunlight coming through and told me he had found the light at the end of the tunnel:)

Now on to the other side. This wall was an original wall to the original house so all of the wood is original. It is pretty interesting to rip things out in this house because we always find layers of floor, wallpaper, paint etc. we try and leave as much as possible so others behind us can find the same types of reminders of kitchens past. This 105yr old house holds a lot of history.


And my pantry, I mean dining room, filled with everything my cabinets used to hold, I also have to ginormous rubbermaids. The scary thing is my lower cabinets are still full to the gills with stuff and I need to find room for it somewhere, I think a few more bins will do the trick.

So now you are caught up. I will keep you posted we are 7 days out from the new cabinets coming in and we still have electrical work, a new wall to built, ducting etc. to be done. Please pray for my amazing hubby and all of our various helpers, they are working hard all the time to make this deadline!! I am a lucky woman, even when I am surrounded by chimney soot on every surface of my home:)

It feels like Christmas around here...

without the biblical meaning and family obligations. It mostly feels like Christmas because packages and deliveries keeps coming. Why you ask? Because my kitchen remodel project is starting in t-minus 14 days. Woohoo!

Remodel = Renovation and Renovation = complete demo and removal of everything old in the space:) And I couldn't be more excited.

So I thought I would share some of the pieces that have arrived over the last three days.

Number 1 and what may have been the biggest decision for me.

My range:) It came today and even though it is now a piece of furniture staged behind my couch for 14 more days I am so excited I could pee my pants. That's right people I said it, I could pee my pants. I spend at least half of my life in our kitchen by free will and to have appliances that do what they are supposed to do is a huge bonus for me.

I chose a KitchenAid Convection Gas Range form their Architect Series. It has so many amazing features I can not hardly contain myself.
I was toying with two different ranges the other one didn't have quite as many raving reviews, and the only difference was rolling shelves and a perfect turkey button, and not to toot my own horn but I have been making a pretty close to perfect turkey in my hunk "o" junk oven for 5 years now so I am pretty sure I don't need a button to do it for me.

Notice all of the torn up packaging, told you its like Christmas. Did I mention it has a warming drawer? Perfectly warm buns,pancakes, and waffles for us:) It also has a built in temperature probe, wok compatible cooktop (yes I own and use a wok on a regular basis), the ability to dehydrate food and about a million other options:)

Next up and a another difficult decision was a faucet. I do not understand why something that provides one luxury is so expensive. So after looking at two million different ones I chose one in the correct color that was on sale(I use this word loosely). It also has a retractable spray nozzle(Brian's requirement).


Last but not least on our given date day we drove to Aberdeen to pick up our counter top. It was one of the longest dates we have taken on date day, and after 12 plus hours mostly spent in the car we couldn't wait for to get home. We chose a Mocha colored Paperstone. It is made completely out of recycled paper. It is for the most part a sustainable product which was important to me. We got a couple of friends to help us move it onto our patio which was no small feet at about 500lbs.


Lat two things I need to pick out are the back splash and the sink. So more to come on the kitchen remodel.

Kitchen Plans and What Not.

I know I have not done my kitchen must have for this week..I know what I am going to do though, so maybe tomorrow.

I was hoping to share the plans for the new kitchen but I am experiencing technical difficulties so you will have to live with the picture of then new stove for now. We are having brand new cabinets put in (can I get a woo woo?). My goal was to get all of the appliances purchased first so we could build the kitchen around there dimensions and now that I finally chose the range, my goal is complete.

This is the range.



The drawer is actually a warming drawer and it has a triple rack, I am excited its super nice and after living with apartment ovens and the oven I have now, lets just say I could pretty much throw up I am so thrilled:) Its a Kitcheaid

This is the dishwasher we purchased.

Its a Kitchenaid. Ours is white though.
Its virtually silent when it runs and gets my dishes cleaner than I could have ever dreamed. I may be in love. It has a pot scrubbing feature and a food grinder, which is great because Elliot has started loading the dishwasher and although he is a whizz at puzzling everything in there the rinsing gets forgotten. When we moved into our house 5 years ago the dishwasher was the first thing we replaced, not having bought kitchen appliances before we for the middle of line, thinking no big thing. Well we found out about 6months later it was a big thing because the electrical panel went out and when faced with a hefty repair bill we decided to put the old one back in and throw the new one out:) We now buy protection plans and research what other people are experiencing. It seems to work better this way:)

So far I love all the new appliances. I haven't tried the oven yet I suppose, it will be here in a few weeks..right about the time the new cabinets will be put in.

Our Families Newest Addition.

So my fridge started dieing pretty much the day we bought our house. I have nursed it, taped it, laid hands on it, prayed over it, and that seemed to help. Every other time you opened the door the condiment shelves would pop off and they would proceed to roll over the floor because this old fabulous house is anything but level. And although that provided endless entertainment, we figured before it completely went kaput we would put it out of its misery and get a replacement.

(Insert a Hallelujah Chorus HERE)

Anyway, one of Brian's accounts happens to be at Best Buy and he has a connection in the appliance dept. who told him that we could get a sweet deal if we bought our appliances there so that's what we did. I had a few requirements, no water dispenser (I really do not like fridge water, had to have a inside the freezer ice maker, white was my preference (I am old school like that), and it had to be big and when I say big I mean the biggest possible:) What can I say I know what I want. So long story short he found me what I was looking for at an AMAZING price and 6 days later I have 29 cubic ft of cold happiness.

So back tracking a bit into the story, a few days after the purchase I realized that since I bought a new fridge that had a much larger capacity then my current fridge we may have space issues while we wait for the kitchen remodel to take place. And after some handy internet searching for exact dimensions of the new lovely appliance we found that yes indeed it was about 10 inches deeper than the current fridge. And this is where the praying began for the new fridge. From my measurements that meant I wouldn't be able to open my oven for the next 4 months......hmmmmmmmmmmmmm....worry worry worry. Well Wednesday came...delivery day. Nice little free delivery man came to the door and said he had my fridge. He looked at my kitchen giggled and said okay:) I giggled told him to set the fridge in the dining room and my husband would take it from there. He laughed again and said you see from my measurements the fridge isn't going to fit through your door. (As I mentioned before our house is old and nothing about it is typical and things never can be done easily.) The the persistent little Best Buy guys said don't panic. After removing the doors, the freezer drawer, the bottom of the fridge, my front door, and the hinges from the trim. They barely fit the fridge through the front door. He laughed again and said congratulations. Basically it took them 1 hour to get it into the house because of all the fanagaling, but whats done is done.

And guess what else it fits where it needed to fit the one door can not swing all the way open but most of the way;)

And now I have the biggest fridge I have ever seen and boy am I spoiled and happy:)

Without further ado here are some pics. I do have a few bottles of champagne at the moment, we are having some friends over tonight to ring in the new year so don't worry we aren't drinking all that ourselves;)


The freezer two layers...what, what:)


Look it all the space it makes it look like I need to go grocery shopping however I just did:)


Isn't it shiny!?

Sarah said she wants to marry it.........

I love it and I am so glad it fits, I never can do anything the easy way its seems like!

Happy New Year to all of. I hope this year was a good one and I hope next year is even better!!

A Post for Lea....The new shelves, bookcases, desk, and what do I see in the Jager house Storage....

First of all I must say, I generally do not post about things that we acquire, and to save the long explanation of what I believe....I will just sum it up by saying I just don't. However today and tomorrow I will be, 1st time because Lea asked me two and the 2nd time because I have made a decision on an appliance that will create some kitchen oddities until our remodel projects are finished (more on that later).

So without further ado, we had Bob Matter with Heirloom Cabinets create some beautiful built ins for our old dining space and into our new dining room. He did an amazing job and will do some more work for us in the near future. I must say that you would never know he had an old crooked house to work with when looking at the project. I would recommend him a thousand times over.

So here goes. I still have some space to fill but I really have a hard time committing to thoughtless doo dads so that means it can't go on if it doesn't hold some meaning or purpose. So those are the rules.

Here are the pics...my flash wasn't cooperating so what you get is what you get.



I have wanted a desk built around that window for a long time and its for real. We chose the butcher block because this room is attached to our kitchen and that is the counter surfacing we have chosen for the kitchen project.


We now have some cupboards in our house and proper space to store coats and shoes. We have zero storage in this house because back 107 yrs ago they had less stuff so closets and such were not necessary. This makes storage a huge need and desire in this house now:) But now we have some yeah!!


Speaking of shoe storage...WooHoo!


A few of my favorite things...Some free nature books I got from the second chance free bin (yes I browse through there from time to time, don't judge), a shell from that belonged to my husbands great grandma (my MIL gave it to me for one of my bridal showers with a sweet little note that I still keep inside it), some of my favorite cookbooks, and my rarest piece of Fiesta. Its been nice to have a safe place to store some of my specials:) Things are really just that things, however I know where each thing came from and like I said before, to me each one holds something special for me.

So there you go I posted some pics of my lovely built ins. And remember call up Bob if you need something built ...He Rocks!

What We Jagers Won't Do For Some Fun....

It all started with a noise. I heard for the first time 30 minutes or so before we actually identified where it was coming from. I chalked it up to the washing machine because it was running and the noise sounded like rushing water. The next time I heard it was about 30 minutes later as I laid down on the couch to watch some Myth Busters with my wonderful husband, "Is it raining?" I asked. Nope.....So I walked back to the laundry a second time because I thought to myself the washing machine can't still be running. Nope...it wasn't. But I could hear the sound of rushing water coming form the heater vent which means there was rushing water in the cellar and there should never be rushing water in the cellar (except for that one time....).

And the pictures show what we found. I may have said a few inappropriate words although at the time they seemed very appropriate. I can't tell you how much I love my husband in times of stress though, he and I make a pretty good team. He never yells or gets frustrated or stomps around really. We have this odd way of almost silently just getting down to business and taking care of whatever disaster has occurred at the time. And then after a few minutes we usually look at each other and laugh really hard and say it could have been so much worse. And it could have! Thank goodness I cleaned the cellar last summer for fear of this very thing happening and there were only a few cardboard boxes left. Nothing was severely damaged....I take that back a bit, the new flooring for the new dining room maybe slightly damaged we will see.?

So what happened a pipe burst, ruptured really and proceeded to dump hundreds of gallons of water into the cellar and there is no drain people. I found a hole in a corner so I created a push of sorts to shove water into the hole and eventually the water went away. When the push didn't work anymore I used a mop that worked pretty well too.

I am not sure there is a moral to the story. I did recite Romans 5: 1-5 out loud over and over during the clean up. It felt better to do this:) What can you do really?

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the waterfall in our basement before we shut it off. It was quite the sight.

This Old House Part Four

Plus a cute Elliot!!

It has begun I would say the siding is about half way finished. I had between 6 and 8 men here all day Saturday from sun up to sun down working away. It is weird to look at still because even though it is not painted yet it looks completely different.

Thanks for all the help guys...we couldn't do this without you. And also a big shout out to Grandpa!! You are absolutely amazing, we love you!

Elliot telling the guys how to roof the house

Somehow I took a picture of Elliot watching the roofing process but no picture of the guys working on the roof. Well the roof looks great in that area and we have no new water features in our dinig room.