Snow Day!

Ok, not really, considering I work from home and therefore have to work everyday no matter what the weather. BUT! Snow in Raleigh is still pretty exciting, since it doesn't happen very often.

{Rewind} Building a Fireplace Facade: Installing a Mantel on a Brick Fireplace

After we built the PITA bulkhead that would support the tops of the shelves, the next step was the mantel.

Mantels are kind of tricky business. First, since it is sticking off the face of the brick so far, you have to make sure it is really well supported. And second, if you're adding one to an operational fireplace like ours, there are code restrictions that specify both how close the mantel can be to the firebox opening, and how deep the mantel can be, given it's proximity to the firebox.

To recap from my design post: In our area, the building code states that you can't have any combustible materials within 6 inches of the firebox opening. Then, at 6 inches and further away, the combustible material (wood, in our case) can only be projecting 3/4ths of an inch off the face of the fireplace, and can project further out by 1/8th of an inch for every inch you move further away from the firebox opening, until you get up to 12 inches away from the opening. This seems to be the standard guideline, according to the National Fire Protection Association, but we also verified this with our county's building inspections department.

So using that information, we determined that we could have a 10 inch deep mantel at the height we were aiming for. But since we wanted it to wrap around the sides of the brick fireplace, we needed to attach side pieces to our mantel top. We did this with some hidden pocket screws, wood glue, clamping and then sanding.

Plastic baggie between the mantel and supporting wood used to for clamping, so they wouldn't be glued together if any glue squeezed out

{Rewind} Building a Fireplace Facade: Building a Bulkhead To Intersect Beams

So, my last post about our short term kitchen update reminded me of something. I never finished posting about our fireplace facade project! I kicked off the project about a year ago, describing the design plans, and then just never got around to actually posting about how the build went.

But since we found it so useful to see other's photos and process when we were researching how to build a facade over our brick fireplace, I thought I'd do a little blog rewind and actually write this project up.

First, as a reminder, here's our full design plans post. In short, our fireplace looked like this when we moved in:

Floor to ceiling dark red brick, over 10.5 feet wide, and not a whole lot going on, other than the glass fireplace doors on the left and a deep box on the right for wood storage.

We wanted to update the fireplace, but without painting the brick, and add interest and function, without it being permanent (hey, we're planning in living in this house for a long, long time. Who knows, dark red brick might come back into style!). So we researched building codes, found some inspiration online, verified that we didn't need a permit to do the update we had in mind, and my husband put together this mock up of our design in SolidWorks.

We planned on adding a long, beefy mantel across the full width, mounting our TV above the fireplace, and building out cabinets and shelves to balance the right side of the fireplace, while adding storage for all of our TV cables and accessories.

Project Plans: Short-Term Kitchen Update

After a nice break for the holidays, and to recover from our mad scramble to get the dining room ready to host Christmas dinner, it's time to jump into the next house project: the kitchen.

In all of its wood paneled, dated tile floor, sometimes grey/sometimes pinky-beige counters (depending on the lighting), cream colored faux brick backsplash (with cracked grout due to it being installed incorrectly), and spaceship looking florescent lighting glory, I've gotten tired of looking at it from the family room.

We haven't really done much of anything in here yet, except on our first day in the house when we removed the bank of cabinets above the peninsula to open up the space to the breakfast nook and family room, and when I made over the pantry. The above photo was taken last March, and since then all we have done is get new bar stools for the nook.

Eventually we plan to gut the whole kitchen and re-do it all, like we did to the downstairs bathroom. In fact, my husband was ready right now to jump in and just get started with the full kitchen renovation. However, I talked him into a short term update for now, that will get the kitchen to a more tolerable state for not a lot of money, and hold off on the complete gut for 4-5 years.

I know, that doesn't sound like me at all, does it? Being responsible and not jumping to spend money on home projects! Is there something wrong with me??

But I've got a few good reasons to wait on the full kitchen gut job. First, because I think I can build new cabinets, now that I've gotten into furniture building. I really enjoyed building our dining room table and coffee table, and have learned a lot. But I don't think I'm ready yet to take on a whole kitchen worth of cabinets, and I would like some more practice first. But in the long run, this will save us considerable money if we can DIY all new cabinets. My second reason is that our existing appliances aren't in horrible shape. In fact, our dishwasher is only a couple years old, but of course, isn't the color we would choose for ourselves. So it seems like a bit of a waste to me to trash (or list on Craigslist for cheap) them just yet, when we've definitely got a few more good years in them. And my final reason, and probably the most important, is that I'm not yet set on the final configuration of the kitchen. To me, the kitchen is the most intricate and important room in our house to organize and renovate it just right for our needs. And considering I've only been an actual cooking adult for a little over a year (prior to that I was only a pro at sticking frozen meals in the oven!), I don't yet feel ready to settle on a new kitchen layout. It was as recent as cooking during Christmas, my first attempt to cook elaborate meals for 8-9 people, that I had new thoughts on how I'd change something in the current kitchen set up. So it makes sense to wait a bit longer to make these decisions, and make sure we're incorporating everything we could ever want into a new kitchen.

So for now, we're just doing a few small, budget-friendly updates to make us happier with the room until we're ready to do the complete update. I present to you, my quickly Photoshopped plan:

A Visit to the Duke Lemur Center

A few days before Christmas I had the opportunity to visit the Duke Lemur Center, which is an 80+ acre sanctuary with the largest population of endangered lemurs in the world. Dedicated to the conservation of the primates, as well as one of the top lemur research facilities around, I'd been wanting to take a tour of the Lemur Center ever since we moved to North Carolina, and I'm so glad I finally got to go!

We took the Lemurs Live basic tour, which started with an introductory presentation and video at the visitors center. It was both cute and educational, and we learned a lot of neat lemur facts.

After the intro, we got to visit the lemur enclosures. Our tour started in the nocturnal building, where they have the lemurs on a swapped schedule to think it's night during the day, which not only makes for better viewing for visitors, but makes it a lot easier for the caretakers.

Sadly, photos were tough in the low lighting, and I didn't get a single one that wasn't blurry. This is an aye-aye though, the ones with the crazy long middle fingers that they use to pull bugs out of holes in trees.

After the nocturnal building, we headed outside to the indoor/outdoor enclosures. There were two layers of fencing separating us from the lemurs, for apparently good reason....