Kate F____, Girl Reporter

The lightening kitchen reno is underway. We picked the cabinets, appliances and counters a week and a half ago, and the plumber and electrician came yesterday, swapped around radiators, took out the huge sink, and roughed in the outlets! The fridge and cabinets/counters come tomorrow, as does my talented brother, who will be helping us install everything this weekend. Next week the plumber and electrician will come back and finish everything, and the dishwasher comes on Wednesday!!! The wall behind the counter is less damaged than I expected, though it’s pretty scary. I will shoot pics tonight.

I’m in NYC for a while, and hopefully will be able to cook soon–our accommodations do have a kitchen and internet access!

Meanwhile here are some before and not-quite-after pictures of the apartment. I haven’t even started to hang art, really arrange the furniture, etc. I’m struggling with how to balance out all of Ben’s very traditional furniture, along with the formal and traditional style of the apartment, with my more transitional style. I’m thinking once I get to lighting fixtures and rugs I will go sleek.

Click for the Flickr set!

Yesterday I managed to get the oven turned on! This is big news and a big relief. There is actually an active oven pilot light, I found out when I took apart the bottom of the oven. It just doesn’t do anything unless you turn the oven dial to 400 or so, get it lit, THEN turn it down. Of course!

Last night we spent the evening wandering the aisles of the Container Store rather despairingly, and brought home a large number of items aimed at imposing order on the pantry. The kitchen doesn’t have a single cupboard or counter–not one–but there is a lovely butler’s pantry and a regular pantry right off the kitchen. I had heaved everything out of boxes and onto the shelves, and it looked pretty awful. I also had no way to organize all the sort of gadgets you’d normally keep in a drawer, like peelers and graters and measuring cups, since I don’t have any drawers.

Here are the results:

Before:

After:

I promise the difference is more striking in person.

Another view, since I’m pleased with my creativity in….shelf organizer selection:

Before:

After:

Note the in/out box trays used for gadgets in the lower left. It’s hard to see the desk-top cd box holding various boxes (brown sugar, corn starch). I’m very pleased with the different extra shelf thingies we got–smaller ones for the top shelf (there is a lot of space above the top built-in shelf; I may eventually put in another shelf or two for long-term storage) and a big one to use on the floor under the bottom shelf. I also used a big one on the lowest shelf, which is quite large. And the cleverest gadget I found was the thing that clips onto a shelf above it and gives you a place for sheet pans or other flat wide things. At last, I won’t have to unload every single other pan I own to get to the quarter sheet.

In case you think I’ve stopped cooking….you’re almost right. Hmm. I did make a nice pasta dish the other night, and Ben’s family was in town this weekend so we had a barbecue. I made caprese for that, look!

Mediocre tomatoes, sadly–I was hoping they’d be good but they let me down. That’s a BIG letdown, since caprese is only worth it with great tomatoes and great cheese. Luckily the mozzarella, a Vermont-made one, was extremely tasty.

I drizzled it with a dressing I made very quickly by pureeing a bunch of basil with olive oil, salt, and a dab of balsamic vinegar.

I want to try again with awesome heirloom tomatoes!

Coming soon: A whole slide show of house before and afters! Also a very tasty lunch.

*Sigh*

Until a few days ago I had the cord for my camera handy. Now that I’m dying to upload a ton of photos of the apartment and a couple things I’ve made lately, it is nowhere to be found. I will update once I find it!

Well, we moved. And now it looks like this:

Actually that was on Thursday, and things are slightly better now, but the painter hadn’t finished when we arrived, so we have everything piled in the middle of the living and dining rooms. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to, say, unpack a few pots and pans. We’ve been eating a lot of bread (with peanut butter or butter and honey), but last night Ben grilled sausages (the ones from Whole Foods aren’t as great as the Coop ones, we’ll need to find a new supplier) and corn. The corn was delicious, incredibly sweet and a little smokey.

Peel back the husk and remove the silk.

Spread the ears with butter and pulls the husks back up.

Grill…until done. Sorry, this seems really imprecise and recipes online didn’t help. The first time I did this, with Tom and friends, we undercooked it. This time I had Ben cook it with the sausages for about the same amount of time.

Yum. And I had it with a glass of Lambic!

I can’t wait to post all about the week my parents spent with us over Graduation Weekend, etc. As you can imagine, there was lots of great food to be eaten while mom was in the house. Unfortunately (forthe blog, anyway), for the last five days I was in Boston, where we have closed on our apartment, and I just haven’t been able to write everything up yet.

But Sunday night, the third we spent at the new place, I made us dinner for the first time: A simple We-Haven’t-Moved-In-Yet dinner; Rising Moon ravioli (made in my home town!) with butter and cheese, bread with oil and more cheese to dip, and red wine. Here is the sophisticated dining set-up for the time being:

I accidentally bought vegan ravioli but they weren’t bad. A weird trace of curry in an otherwise italian-flavored pasta, but ok!

Up next: Packing! Wheeee. (Sigh.)

I have loved eating out on the porch this spring, on the few nights that it’s been warm enough. Somehow everything slows down when you eat outside–you drink a little bit more, but more slowly; dinner lingers on and the conversation flows. Our new apartment has a porch off of the kitchen, running along the side of the building. It’s covered but not screened, and is very long but narrow (19′x5′).

(That second one is through a screen door–why? Why didn’t I step outside to….never mind. Sigh.)

The narrow width means I have been scouring every website I could think of for long but narrow dining tables, and was thinking I might have to resort to a series of little 2 person café tables all lined up. But today I went to the Ikea site and up popped this:

The Bollö table, which seats 4 and is a folding table 44 inches long and 25 inches deep. Hurray! Two of these come in at $100, and we could fold them up and cover them in the winter. Now on to more exciting things, like getting little lanterns and planning a container garden!

Scrappy Girl asked today about buying real/knock-off vintage furniture, and it got me thinking about why we love old things. Ben and I are true suckers for old music, houses, furniture…You name it. Our wedding song was “I’m Old Fashioned.” The (big) band played only standards—the music Ben also plays on the piano. So of course when we started apartment hunting we focused on things built before 1940, and especially before 1920. The apartment we ended up with was built around the turn of the 20th century, and it shows. The layout is long and narrow, with the kitchen and maid’s room (my study!) at the back. The exterior doorknobs are brass, with beading details around each one. The inside knobs are either brass of painted wood, depending on where they’re located. The double crown molding ends in picture rails around every room, so I can hang art with picture hooks instead of making holes in the wall, if I want (the inspector was impressed that I knew what they were). And then there is that pantry that I already posted pics of… All those details are what make a house feel special to us, and we feel really lucky that we found something that is nearly perfectly intact.

At the home inspection on Tuesday, I took a closer look at the fireplace, which I was already in love with:

That is….not a great photo. But the gorgeous mantel aside, the fireplace is surrounded with narrow green subway tiles, and a border of white ones. Tuesday I actually leaned into look at the interior, and here is what I found:

Ooooh. I think it’s a cast iron liner? I cannot wait to see it with a fire lit!