Kitchen Renos 1.1

Well it's been a busy week and a half since I last blogged about the kitchen.  John's been busy plastering the kitchen since the 20th, having to do a couple coats where the wall cabinets sat, as we are raising the new wall cabinets up and we want to make sure that you can't see the line where the previous paint was.  He's gotten quite good at plastering, I've thought back to when to his first plaster job and compared it to now and I must say he's definitely learned a few things.  It makes me quite proud of the things he's learned and mastered!

First coat of plaster done.

Last Thursday, John was able to get the new light for the eating area done (sorry for the blurry picture, I will try and take a better one later).  He waiting to put up the one for the kitchen part until after the cabinets are in, as there are 6 lights versus the 4 that are in the eating part, so we don't want them to interfere with the cabinets being installed.

It is hard to tell, but there are little leaves on the lights.
It matches the dining room light.

Saturday we started on taking out the base cabinets.  I unpacked the cabinets and found places to put everything (mainly the spare bedroom) and John began the demolition process.  The kitchen began to look a lot more bare very quickly!

When John disconnected the sink, he quickly discovered that there was only a shut off valve for the dishwasher, the only want to shut off the water to the sink was to the entire house!!  That made for an interesting work around....he hooked up the old tap so that we could still have water to you know go to the bathroom or bath...

 We ran into another surprising discovery.  As John took off the base cabinets, we discovered that the flooring in the kitchen was not the original flooring and that it had actually been put on top of another flooring and the flooring that we have now was done after the cabinets were put it.  We began to think that this was going to become a huge issue since we are planning on putting our flooring on top of the existing floor, under the cabinets and the new cabinets are bigger than the old cabinets, meaning that there will be some overlapping, ultimately meaning we could run into some issues with the cabinets being level....turns out that once John took out the corner cabinet, he could that the cabinet was leveled with some wood, so he's assuming that the contractor we have hired to do that can do it.

This flooring seems awfully familiar....Mom/Dad, did we not
have this or something similar in our old house?

With all the cabinets out and the sink gone, it meant that we had no places to wash dishes, but thankfully John was able to hook the dishwasher back up so we had it for a few more days!  He had to do something a little fancy to make sure it wouldn't tip over though, since it is a built in dishwasher and it's since turned into a free standing one!

Hooking the dishwasher back up
so that we have it for a few more days!

 

Clever man used his ladder and a
2x4 to stabilize the dishwasher!

Since the weekend, John finished sanding the walls and washed them down to prepare for painting.  Tonight we went out and got some shut of valves to shut the water off so that neither of us would hit the tap while painting.  We're hoping to get the painting done Friday/Saturday and then start on the flooring and then we are all ready for the contractor!  Hopefully the time will go quickly, because I miss being able to cook properly!

Kitchen Renos 1.0

It's been a while since we have done any renos on the house or anything too exciting this winter, so my blog has been really lacking in the recent months.  However, we have just begun the reno process on our kitchen!  We decided in the new year that we want to finish the house up this year, so we thought that we would start with the biggest project and work our way down the to-do list.  

The kitchen planning process began back in February.  We found a kitchen place in the east end which was really good and affordable, as they are geared more for those who are doing a kitchen on a budget (aka you have to pick up the cabinets and install them yourself!).  After many layout revisions, we finally placed an order and waited for them to arrive.  The cabinets came into the store this past Monday and we were able to arrange for someone to deliver them to us on Thursday, so John stayed home to receive them and now our living room looks like this....

We decided that on Friday we would begin packing up and dismantling the kitchen.  Before we began, John wanted to check all the cabinets to make sure we had everything.  It was a good thing we did that, as it turned out that the blind corner cabinet that goes beside the stove is not going to fit, meaning the bank of drawers beside it is also the wrong size.  They didn't give us enough clearance to be able to open the cabinet door with the stove door, so basically we won't be able to open the cabinet because the stove door will prevent it.  After this discovery, we went through the rest of the cabinets and laid out the kitchen as it is to be installed and then decided not to move forward as we didn't know what was going to happen with the wrong cabinets or how long it would take to get new cabinets and we want to have a functional kitchen for as long as possible.

A last look of the kitchen before dismantling!

Alas, a new morning, a new start and I decided that while I waited for breakfast to bake I could at least start packing some of the cabinets up that we don't use that much.  John came down a few minutes later and decided that not only could we pack up but also start dismantling the kitchen....so much for waiting to hear back for the kitchen place!

He started at a couple cabinets before breakfast was ready and then finished taking down all the wall cabinets after breakfast.  It took him a couple tries with the first cabinet to figure out how to get them down, but then they came down pretty quickly after that.  I packed up and moved the things out of the cabinets while he took them down and I would help him take down some of the bigger cabinets.  Here are some pictures of the dismantling progress and how things look now!

You can tell that I'm a baker.  I used the largest box I had to pack up
my baking cabinet and it was still overflowing!

The dumping ground.

She's bare!

Won't be having dinner parties any
time soon!

That's all we got done today.  Not as much as we would have liked to get done, however the rest should come out quickly, so hopefully we will be able to stay within a reasonable timeline despite the set back with the two cabinets.  Pray it goes smoothly, because I already hate having the kitchen like this, so I'm sure it will only get worse as everything comes out!

Ombre Petal Buttercream Cake

Each year for my sister and my birthday's when we were growing up, our mom would take us to the local bulk food store and let us pick out a cake pan, which she would then make our birthday cake with.  We had all kinds of characters, Ariel, Barney, Blue's Clues etc.  This year, my parents and sister came up on my mom's birthday, so I thought it was a great opportunity to make HER a birthday cake after the many, many years of her making cakes for us.  After looking around at some of the cake ideas I had pinned on Pinterest, I decided to make an Ombre Petal Buttercream Cake (here is the original link).

Mmm, good enough to eat!

 Since they were coming up on Thursday and I am out Thursday evenings, I had to make the cake in stages.  Tuesday evening I made the cake and Wednesday I decorated.  I made a regular chocolate cake, since chocolate is her favourite.

As soon as I got home from work on the Wednesday, I got does to work.  First I made the icing and then leveled the cake while it was mixing, so that it would rest more evenly.  I haven't used my leveler that much, as I hate to waste cake, but it works really well (and the cake taken off was not all wasted....I quickly started to feel sick from the amount of sugar I was consuming hehe).

Bottom layer leveled. 

I decided that since my mom's birthday is on Valentine's day, I would make the icing pink, plus it is more girly :).  I made a double batch of Wilton's buttercream icing in the thin consistency (however, I found that I had a quarter of it left, or half of a normal batch left, so I would only make a batch and a half in the future).  I used Wilton's pink icing dye, with the first colour of pink having only one dab of colour in it to make it the lightest for the cake.

I used the lightest colour of pink to ice the whole cake.  Since I was going to be covering the cake with more icing, I only covered it with a light layer and I didn't bother with how good it looked.

Once the cake was iced, it needed to sit before I could get started, which was perfect since I needed to make the colours and fill my bags.  I thought that I would need to make the icing consistency more stiff, so I added around 4tsp of icing sugar to stiffen it up.  However, as I worked with the icing, I think that I should have just left it at the thin consistency, as I could that the petals were cracking sometimes when the icing came out of the bags. 

 After I mixed in the extra icing sugar, I filled a bag completely full with the lightest colour of icing, I was a bit worried that I wouldn't have enough, however, I had more than enough icing.  Next, I added to more dabs of pink dye to make the medium, filled a bag and then made the darkest using 4 more dabs of dye.  I sort of just eye balled the colours until I was happy with the colour change.

For the "tips" to make the petals, I just used the couplers, as the blog I read said to use tip 1A, which I thought I had, but do not. I found that these worked fine, however because the couples are note perfectly round, but have a slit in it, the icing would not come out in a perfect circle.  I think that having the tip 1A would probably be a bit better.

Along with the icing, I also had a clean cloth, spatula, glass of warm water and a container to be able to clean my spatula off as I went.  The blog I read did not really explain the use of the water fully and it was not until I was almost finished, that I realized that you need to be dipping the spatula into the water and then pressing down on the dot to make the petal, as it gives it a more smooth look.

This came in really handy, as I was taking a fair amount of
icing off as I made the petals.

Making the petals was quite simple, just time consuming.  I started with making two rows of the dark pink on the bottom.  I put two dots on the cake and then used the spatula to spread the icing down until it was thinned out and then would place two dots over top of the thin part and continued the process around the cake and repeating with the other colours.

The top layer on the side only has one row of the lightest pink, that pink was continued around to the top with two rows, then two rows of the medium pink, one row of the darkest pink.  For the very centre, I placed a large dot of the darkest pink and just smoothed it out until it looked nice (ends up looking like a flower right in the centre).

 

I think she likes it!

And that's it!  In all, it look around 2 hours to make and ice the cake, which I do not think is too bad.  The blog I read suggested that you could do this cake in different ways such as making the petals go up the cake or using a square spatula, I think some of those ideas sound really good, although for now, I would like to prefect this way!

New York City Day Five

I know that this last day is a longer time coming than it should have been, but here it is!

Our last day in New York was just as packed or more than all the other days.  It started off with an NBC Studio Tour at 9:30am.  We had to pick up our tickets ahead of time, so we were there about 45 minutes beforehand.  We walked through the store, which I got a Friends t-shirt and mug (yet to take pictures of...) and go some pictures in front of this lit up dome...

Google put our pictures together to make it move, how cool
is that?

We weren't able to take any pictures during the tour, so I'll just have to tell you what we saw!  It started off with a video inside that dome providing a bit of history behind NBC.  I discovered that NBC was started by RCA and that NBC owns way more than I knew!  Next we moved onto the Night News with Brian Williams studio.  That was interesting to see how they put on a new coverage and just the tricks behind the scenes.  One of the most interesting things is that the studio has 300 lights, because they use the HD cameras, if there is even one shadow it can make a woman look like she has a beard or a man look like he's a different ethnicity!  The lights raise the temperature about 20 degrees, so they have to pump in lots of cool air, which is dry refrigerated air, as air conditioning has too much moisture which would land on the camera lens.

Next they took us to the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's studio.  Again, very neat to see how it is set up and how they put it on.  It's a very small studio, apparently to make it look larger they flash from Jimmy to the audience to the band, instead of just moving the camera.  Also, it was not his normal set, as his normal set is getting renovated for him to take over Jay Leno's show.

Next we moved on to the Saturday Night Live studio.  This one surprised me how small it really is, as I thought that they would have multiple stages to put on all the skits, but all they have is one stage for the skits called the "semi-permanent stage".  I am even more impressed with how they are able to get the skits together in the short amount of time that they have!

The tour finished off by showing us the Broadcasting Operations Center, a video and short talk about make-up and then a fake news show that two people from the tour did.  All in all it was a really interesting tour.

After the NBC Studio tour, we did the Rockefeller guide tour.  On our way up to where we started that tour, we saw this chandelier, which we later found out is made out of crystal and suppose to look like the Rockefeller Center upside down.

Waiting for the tour to begin in the concourse.

Most of the tour was outside, which was unfortunate as it was really cold and, while I had a long sleeve top on, I didn't have enough layers for it.  Just the same, our tour guide gave us a great tour with a lot of interesting information!  All I can say is that the Rockefellers are disgustingly rich and Mrs. Rockefeller really liked her art!  Here are some pictures taken along the way!

Radio City Music Hall 

Art work above one of the doors to 30 Rockefeller Centre
(also known as 30 Rock) - it has something to do with
television, as they were expecting it to be the next biggest thing.
The red and green wavy lines are to represent t.v. waves, apparently
NBC owned both at first but late sold the green to ABC.

This is the entrance that the famous people use when they go
to NBC studios.  We started out tour just inside these doors
and John Lithgow walked in!! Of course I couldn't think of his
name at first so I couldn't point him out to John, BUT I definitely
saw him!

Art work in a different building in the center - it is to represent
the evolution of travel.  The yellow has modes of transportation
which was what they had and the white was what
they saw as future transportation

This is the spot where the Christmas tree sits each year.  The
very center piece comes out and is given to the person who
donates the tree

Art over another door on another building.
I don't remember all the meanings for it, but
it as to do with work....

Entrance to one of the buildings.  The escalators are covered in
gold leaf, however they are no longer in use because there is nothing
up there to go into, all the rooms have been closed off. 

Doorway onto 5th Ave.  The marble in this
room was taken from Greece.  The marble was split
in half give it a mirror image look.

Statue of Atlas with St. Patrick's Cathedral
in the background.  When this statute went up
the Archbishop was upset about it, but the artist
anticipated that and said that he left the world
open so that the church could be seen...

and he made him look like he was bowing to
the church.  Apparently this made the Archbishop
happy enough that they didn't have to
tear it down.

Best sign we saw - apparently not many
people follow it.

Art work over the British building - the artist put the
sun at the bottom with the idea that the sun would eventually
set on the British Empire (opposite to what everyone said)
and then a few years later the sun had set.

The walkway between the British and the French buildings, known
as the English Channel.  This is the spot where the Christmas
angels run down.

30 Rockefeller Center - this is where you
can go up to the 'Top of the Rock"
observatory on the 67th floor.

After the wonderful tour, we headed up to the Top of the Rock observatory.  Normally I am fine with things like this, but this one I was not as much.  The elevator takes you up to the 67th floor, but you can go up two more floors, we, however, did not do that.  The elevator gets you up there in 43 seconds.  The ceiling in the elevator is white, but once you get going it is see through and they play a video on it.  You can watch each floor go by, as they had blue lights shining for each floor.  I had to stop looking as we got closer to the top as I knew I'd be too nervous that it wasn't going to stop!  We didn't stay very long on the top, because as I said I was not as happy up there, but John did get a few good pictures of the view...

Once we finished there, we headed back to Central Park to see a few things which we had missed on Sunday when we were there.  I wanted to see the Mall, Bethesda Terrace and the Bow Bridge, all of which have been in movies and T.V. shows, see if you can recognize them!

This statute had been covered up every time we had come
out of the Park, but finally on the last day it was uncovered.
Of course I forget what it is suppose to be of.

Once we finished at the Park, we hopped on a bus and headed back to our hotel to put on some warmer clothes and head down to the habour to get a habour night boat cruise.  We were there well before the cruise started, so we investigated a little bit of what was down there.  We found the Intrepid Air and Space Museum, which had been on our list of things to do, but unfortunately we ran out of time.

Our boat cruise started at 6pm and went around the lower half of the island for a 2 hour cruise.  It was really nice, despite being rather cool.  John and I both made the comment that it was really nice to do it on the last night we were there.  It was just a really great way to finish off the trip, very calm and beautiful sights.  Here are some pictures from the cruise, don't let the light sky fool you, it was really dark, the white light made the camera think it was lighter!

This is pretty accurate to how dark it was.

When we got off the boat, we speed walked back to Times Square for breakfast as it was pretty cold at this point.  We ate a later dinner at the Olive Garden and took some pictures before heading to the hotel for the evening.

The next morning we packed up, got breakfast, picked up a few last minute souvenirs and then headed to Waterloo to do some shopping at the outlets, where we spent the night and then went to Syracuse in the morning and finally headed home (or at least Canada, we stopped at the farm before home).  All in all it was a great trip, despite being very packed.  I can easily say that I could never live in New York and I'm not sure that I want to go back for a while, this small town country girl prefers wide open spaces than small cramped roads/sidewalks/hotels rooms etc.