The Money Pit Kitchen: Finishing the Demo

It is time! Time to remove the last of the cabinets. With the exception of the sink and the dishwasher (which we are keeping hooked up until the very.last.minute) everything has to go.
The remaining wall cabinets and the countertops.


But first things first. Where the paneling was pulled off the wall, there are huge chunks of plaster missing:

Some of the holes are too large for simple plaster patches.

They require drywall:

And I am getting really good at taping and plastering joints:

Skim coat, sand:

Repeat:

And look at that corner. Hand molded over a peice of half round pine trim:

Okay.. moving on. More tear out. We are saving the stove, but it had to come out in order to remove the paneling.

Unfortantely, the rest of the wall reveals more of the same:


And even more:

Patch, sand, repeat.. Oh you know the drill by now:


This is what we are left with. A tiny section of countertop and a sink. Plus a whole lot of plaster dust. (Oh, and in this picture the broken window still isn't installed yet. Nothing like having no window when it is 20 degrees and snowing!)


Hopefully the demo is the worst part of this remodel, since it is taking forever!

MORE Knock-off Girl Scout Cookies (Tagalongs)

Our Girl Scout Cookie order arrived this week. The darling little neighbor girl toddled over and dropped off what I had requested a good month ago. Thin mints, and of course Samoas (you can tell I'm obsessed with those) but unfortunately for me, and LabDad, there were no Peanut Butter Patties, also known as Tagalongs, in my order.

The beloved Tagalong

I don't know what he was thinking, since I do KNOW they are LabDad's favorites, and I don't think they are half bad either.

So there is was.. 10 minutes after the cookie order arrives in the house, a sleeve of Thin Mints already down for the count and no Tagalongs to be had. Fortunately, I knew just where to turn. Once again, Nicole at Baking Bites was able to hook me up with a homemade recipe and so of course I had to give it a shot.

I did modify the recipe a little bit (since the cookie itself is in fact the same as the Samoa base I used before and I knew it was too moist when I prepared it last time. My recipe was:

1 cup butter, soft
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp milk

Mix, roll and cut (although next time I would make them smaller and thicker for a better cookie to peanut butter ratio)


While still piping hot out of the oven. I dented them with the back of a serving spoon (again they were too wide and flat to do this well) Many of them cracked when I smooshed the spoon in, but they were still so soft and hot that I could easily push the crack together and they solidified just fine.


After allowing them to cool a good while, I mixed up the peanut butter filling, again with a small modification to the original recipe.

1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
generous pinch salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

This turned out to be way too much filling. I would only use 1 cup of peanut butter if I was going to do this again. I used a zip top bag with the corner cut of to add a dollop of the mixture to each cookie. Now, if the cookies were smaller in diameter and had a deeper well I think this would have gone better. Instead they sorta looked like a blob of {edited since we are going to eat these things} on top of a cookie.

I then set up my make shift double boiler (a pyrex bowl on a 4 quart pot) and melted down an entire bag of Hershey's Kisses. (This was because clearance Valentine's day milk chocolate candy was way cheaper than milk chocolate chips)


There aren't any pictures of the actual dipping stage because there was no way I could deal with scortched chocolate coated fingertips and my camera at the same time.

To cover up the fact these were lumpy little cookies (and the fact that I didn't have enough chocolate to cover all of them), I thought I would accent them with dark chocolate drizzle. I microwaved dark chocolate chips in a zip top bag. I stood the bag up in the microwave inside a beer glass so that the chocolate would all stay down in one corner.


My tip for this step is cut the TEENIEST hole in the bag that you can. That chocolate runs out of there fast and a thinner, finer stream is much easier to work with.


I allowed these to harden for a few hours and here is what we ended up with:


They aren't really impressive until you cut those babies open:



OH YUM! I ended up once again with 3 dozen.

The cost breakdown for these came out to:
Clearance bag of Hershey's Kisses: ($.49)
Extra chocolate chips, half a bag ($.99)
Peanut Butter, half a jar ($.75)
Butter: ($1.25)
Flour/Sugar/Baking Powder/Milk/Vanilla/Salt: (~$3.50)

Total:$6.98

The Girl Scouts are selling them for $4 a dozen (I was wrong in my last post, this year the sales price in my area is $4/dozen), or $12.

Not bad, I came out $5 ahead.

Fun Stuff: Knock-off Girl Scout Cookies

Mmmmm.. Samoas (aka Carmel DeLites) Girl Scout Cookies! If you haven't had them (and a lot of you coconut haters out there probably haven't) let me describe them to you. Chewy caramel coconut goodness smeared on a delicate cripsy shortbread cookie which has been layered in chocolate and then the whole sha-bang is drizzled with additional chocolate.

How can you not resist?

I saw this post on Blog-her by Caitlin of A Bicycle Built for Two about how to make a homemade verstion of the Samoa Girl Scout Cookies and was inspired to give it a shot.

Now this isn't to say I have heard that this recipe may end in disaster, but I was really craving the caramel coconut chocolate delight. (I also was thrilled with the idea that I could save a couple bucks by not having to shell out big bucks for the original cookies from those little Girl Scout extortionists.. but that didn't really work out. More on that later.)

It turns out Caitlin got the recipe from Mari at Once Upon A Plate who got the original recipe from Nicole at Baking Bites (fantastic cooking website by the way.) Between those folks who had gone before I figured I had all the tips I needed to make sure they turned out great.

Eh. Sort of.

I did end up with FANTASTIC cookies:

And Caitlin's pictures of the process are pretty much what my endeavor looked like, but I do have a couple of tips to add if you are going to try these yourself:

1. Toast the coconut first. Then, if you melt the caramels while the cookies are baking, you can go ahead and add the coconut right away. Because i needed to use the same cookie sheets to toast the coconut, I had to take a long break between after the cookies came out of the oven and when the coconut was ready to mix into the caramel. By then the caramel had re-solidified. If you toast the coconut first, you can melt the caramel and mix in the coconut while the cookies bake. By the time the last batch of cookies is done baking, the first batch is cool enough to start spreading the coconut/caramel mix.
2. Give up the dream about them being donut shaped. Making the hole in the center was a giant pain in the ass. You couldn't spread the coconut mix around it and it just wanted to fill in with chocolate. I ended up just making them round. More cookie for your money!
3. Keep your caramel/coconut mix warm. If you don't keep it warm (I just kept reheating it in the microwave for 30 seconds) it will start to solidify and you will end up breaking the cookies as you try to spread it on.
4. Hold back some of the chocolate chips. When you go to drizzle the chocolate over the cookies at then end, don't melt all the chocolate and add it (already melted) to a piping bag. Instead melt only half the chips to dip the bottom of the cookies and put the remainder of the chips in a ziplock bag and microwave THAT. Then cut a tiny corner off the bag and use it to pipe the chocolate. SO MUCH LESS OF A MESS. I also was able to use milk chocolate on the bottom of the cookie (which I prefer the taste of) and dark chocolate on the top (so the contrast against the color of the caramel was better.)

Needless to say, they came out pretty well.

And to put it in perspective, I ended up making 3 dozen cookies. I needed to buy chocolate chips ($1.99), caramels ($2.39) and coconut ($1.89.) The rest of the supplies I already had in the pantry (Butter: $1.25, Flour/Sugar/Baking Powder/Milk/Vanilla/Salt: ~$3). So it cost me about $10.25 all in.

The Girl Scouts are selling them for $3.50 a dozen, or $10.50.

Uh, yeah. I saved 25 cents and have about a weeks worth of dirty dishes to deal with. I think I better go eat a cookie.

The Money Pit: Coming into the light

Tonight I saw this post by Pretty Handy Girl and was inspired to show you a little side project I worked on a while ago.

Although most of our living spaces have been updated with contemporary light fixtures, our laundry room and back hallway still had some awful lights.

Not only were they a strange copper color, but they also were undersized for the room.

A simple $15 flush mount fixture (twice as many bulbs for twice as much light) and the room has a more contemporary feel.


I actually replaced 3 fixtures, and so I needed to buy a contractors pack of lights (two in a box.)

Now I understand that the majority of do-it-yourselfers are men, but seriously I don't think you need to put THIS on the box in order to grab their attention:

How can you NOT see BOOBIES in this picture?

I guess all I can say is now the room seems much more... uhhh.. PERKY!

How to Boil an Egg: You have been doing it all wrong!

Remember the good old days? When preparing a hard boiled egg was a tedious process:

• Step 1: Drop Egg into Boiling Water
  
  
• Step 2: Peel and Eat

It is so refreshing to know that modern science is making that process so much easier!

In my last post I talked about EZ Cracker. I was convinced that was the stupidest, most useless device ever.

I was wrong.

During my late night TV watching I was introduced to the EGGIE. Believe it or, it is even stupider. Basically it is a plastic container shaped like an egg shell used to hard boil an egg. (I don't know what was wrong with the egg's own shell.. but clearly it must be somehow inferior.)

Instead of peeling your hard boiled egg, you can throw away that defective shell nature incorrectly designed BEFORE you boil it, and can spend all that time you saved washing your Eggies.

How helpful! It ranks right up there with the Inside-The-Shell Electric Egg Scrambler, since we all know how much work it is to scramble an egg once it is outside of that damn shell.

So now, thanks to the good people at As Seen on TV, the "easy" way to make a hard boiled egg is:

• Step 1: Use the Inside-The-Egg-Scrambler to scramble an egg.
• $14.99 (plus $9.95 S/H)
  
  
• Step 2: Use the EZ Cracker to open previously scrambled egg
• $9.95 (plus $6.95 S/H)
  
  
• Step 3: Pour pre-scrambled egg into Eggie and boil
• $10 (plus $15.98 S/H)
  
  
• Step 4: Peel out of Eggie and Eat
  
  
• Step 5: Clean your Scrambler, Cracker and Eggie

How much will this easy process set you back?
$67.82 plus cost of egg.


Ahhh! Yes. Totally worth it.


Image courtesy of howtoboilanegg.wordpress.com (where you can find instructions on how to boil and even poach an egg.. No fancy gadgets required)

Random musings: EZ Cracker and Bleeding Hearts

I saw this on the TV tonight and I just *HAD* to research it since I knew it could not possibly work as demonstrated:


Clearly, it is more work than it is worth, and 99% of the reviews on Amazon agree.

It looks just about as useful as this: "Cube Guard: Protect your Productivity."
Um, yeah. That is just about going to stop someone from talking to you.
If it were that easy to protect productivity, I'm pretty sure the boss would be supplying those to everyone!

Or you have probably seen this: "Now you can change your hem as often as you change your shoes."
Yeah, that wasn't really a problem for me.

Or this: "Looks like Demin, feels like PJ's"
Yeah. Sure. Only if you want to show up on The People of WalMart.

I want to point out that I am not an 'As Seen On TV' hater. I even blogged about my delight in other products before, but the EZ Cracker is moronic. MOR-ON-IC.

On the other hand.. wanna know what is NOT moronic?

CUPCAKES!

And anotomatically correct human hearts. (Sorry, that is as good of a transition as I could get.)

Mrs. Humble posted these beauties over on her blog, (she is the same Mrs. Humble of "Science Cookie Round Up" Fame)
Yep, that is a cupcake. You eat it. The master baker who came up with it was Lily Vanilli (she even provides instructions here.)

Awesome.

I wonder if she used the EZ Cracker.

The Money Pit Kitchen: More Demo!

When I last posted about my kitchen remodel, I had just moved the steam pipes and was finishing up the repair of the trashed plaster walls that remained when I tore out the first bank of cabinets and wood paneling in my outdated kitchen.

You will be happy to know that I finished the final plaster skim coat:

And painted it out to match the exsisting wall colors:
Looks pretty damn good if I do say so myself!


Moving on to the next section of cabinetry. In case you can't remember, the former floor plan looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

The big red "X" is the next section of cabinetry and paneling I needed to remove

The first thing I did was attempt to take down the old vent hood. And although I did discover yet another type of wallpaper:

This proceeds the other paper, since it is laying over the top of it in some areas.. It probably dates back to the 1960s

..Once again it wasn't super smooth sailing. (More demo pics of this step are here.) The hood had been direct wired into the wall through a giant hole above the upper right cabinet.The wire ran down behind the over-stove cabinet and into the hood. I needed an outlet put in above the stove for the new microwave/hood combo I am putting in, so this whole mess needs to be rewired.

As I have said before: I DO NOT DO ELECTRICAL, so I had to just let the stupid thing hang until I had time to call my electrician. I then got to work removing the cabinets and paneling.

Cabinets before:

Note the lovely hood, propped up upside-down on top of that upper cabinet.

After:
Ewwwwww. Gross.

Yes, that is the old cutout where a wood/coal burning stove used to be hooked up to the chimney, plus you can see the kick-ass job some electrician did of ripping up the lathe to put that outlet in, and of course, the lovely brown paper of doom.

Fan-flipping-tastic.

I knew I could patch the upper round hole with one of the drywall repair patches I had been using on the previous wall, but I knew it wouldn't work with the hole around the outlet since I couldn't cut a hole in the aluminum base. It was time to bring out the big guns: drywall patches.

The first step was knocking away more plaster until I came to some lathe that would be strong enough to tolerate drywall screws:

Just what you want to do, make the holes even bigger.

Then using my mad geometry skills (STAY IN SCHOOL KIDS) I was able to cut a patch to fit:
Fit the patch into the hole and screwed it down. I then taped the joints and it was ready for plaster:

The whole process was a dirty endeavor.

About 15 coats of plaster later I ended up with:

NOT BAD.

Cost for this section of the renovation:
Joint Compound: $5
Patching Plaster: $6
Drywall repair patches: $5
Drywall: $6

TOTAL: $22

Quote for plaster repair: $400/half wall

Money Saved by DIY: $378

Next up. Taking out the stove and remaining cabinetry on this wall. Jeesh, we aren't even half done with demo yet.

True Confessions: My Biggest Lab Mistake

I have been so busy blogging, renovating and surviving ThePrincess' stomach flu, that I forgot to mention I have a new post up over at LabSpaces.

My biggest lab mistake. It involves a brand new autoclave and the remnants of the Stay Puft marshmallow man. You don't want to miss it!

Moving the Radiator and Steam Pipes

One of the problems with this remodel is that I have removed cabinets that were covering up exposed steam pipes which attach to the radiator. Now I am stuck trying to figure out how to hide the pipes but still get steam to my radiator.

Because the pipe that comes up out of the basement and into the kitchen is original cast iron it is not possible to unscrew it and hide the piping in the wall without a pretty good chance of cracking the pipes. After consulting with a plumber about my options we decided the best bet would be to loop the pipe back towards the wall, and run in along the wall under a soffit disguised as a baseboard.

The plumber quoted me $600-800 to do this.

Yeah. Right.

Now I don't know much about plumbing, but re-routing some pipes didn't seem that hard. Plus it was all exposed, nothing was going to be hidden in the wall so I figured I would give it a shot. I also figured if I screwed it up it would still cost me $600-800 to fix it, so why not try it?

Here is what the piping looked like after we removed the cabinets:
You can see the footprint of where the cabinets use to sit.
Here is a close-up of the pipe coming out of the wall:
At this point you can see we have removed the paneling. There also (not shown) is now a HUGE foot sized hole in the plaster above the pipe where the plumber kicked the wall in to look at the fittings. That is how we learned the pipe and fitting inside the wall were cast iron. The elbow joint and the pipes parallel to the wall are much newer (probably 1950s) so he thought those would be okay to try to remove.

First things first: LabDad and I spent a good hour trying to get ANY of those fittings loose. We had a teenie bit of movement in the elbow joint, but without removing the long pipe there was no way to unscrew it.

Plan B: HACKSAW.
We cut the pipe right next to the fittings in order to allow us to rotate the elbow joint. At that point we were left with the original cast iron pipe sticking 4 inches out of the wall (5 inches if you count the 1 inch thick baseboard molding we planned on removing.) We also successfully unhooked the valve (to turn the radiator on and off) so we wouldn't have to buy a new one.


I went to Home Depot and bought all the parts I needed for the new line. After dry fitting it all, I realized that in order to hide the pipe most effectively, I would need to remove the baseboard and the plaster so that I could hide the piping in the wall.

This is where my nightmare began. The baseboards in this kitchen are original to the house, and so when each consecutive floor layer was laid down, they just stacked it up against the baseboard. (I counted at least 4 different floor layers.) Meaning now, 100 years later, the baseboards are actually embedded below floor level by a good inch. There is NO WAY we were going to just pop them off. We instead had to pry them up section by section, and using a hacksaw, cut them off bit by bit.

It took at least 3 hours to remove 4 feet of baseboard. I have no photos of this step since it was not something I ever want to commemorate. It just plain sucked.

Fortunately, with a lot of help from LabDad, we were able to successfully remove the baseboards and notch out the plaster so we could snuggle the pipe right up into the wall.

You can almost make out the foot hole above the pipe in this picture. You can also see where we hacksawed through the molding (just above the left hand corner of the mud pan.) We left the molding in tact here because it will be hidden under the new cabinetry.

Once we knew we had all the right fittings and pipe lengths (and after 2 additional trips to Home Depot to make substitutions) I then went back, disassembled the whole sha-bang and finally reassembled the new piping making sure to use pipe dope on every joint.

To put that in perspective.

The old pipe path was:
90 degree elbow joint
65 inch black steel pipe
Valve
Radiator

The new pipe path is:
90 degree elbow joint
2 inch nipple
45 degree elbow joint
8 inch black steel pipe
45 degree elbow joint
36 inch black steel pipe
45 degree elbow joint
8 inch black steel pipe
45 degree elbow joint
2 inch nipple
Valve
Radiator

And because this is a closed system, we had to ensure that every segment increased in elevation to pooling of condensate which causes the banging sounds often heard in steam heat systems.

Ahh.. At last. We had her all hooked up!

It was then the moment of truth. We turned the furnace back on and waited for the steam to build up. Thank goodness we had no leaks (although the smell of new piping heating to 200 degrees for the first time is pretty gross.)

One more project down.

Cost for this section of the remodel:
Piping and Fittings: $33.00

Other costs (not included in budget):
WD-40: $4
Second pipe wrench (I already had one for bathroom remodel project): $17
Chinese Take Out: $30

Money Saved by DIY: $567-767