Recycled Computers and Champagne Lobster

We packed up the old computers, heavy CRT monitors and some old UPS units and headed off to the county recycling center.
 

This equipment from the last century has been replaced by this:

On the way home, we stopped off at Home Depot for 8 bags of cedar mulch, which will be used in the front garden bed when we pull out the weeds. 

OK, so that's the clean-up part of today's story.  The exciting part is the champagne lobster, which has the most heavenly sauce made with champagne, shallots, thyme, vanilla bean and butter.  The lobster tails are stuffed with butter, fresh chives and lemon juice.  We served it all with corn on the cob and steamed asparagus, and, of course, champagne to wash it all down.

Champagne butter sauce

Butter, chive and lemon juice "stuffing"

Asparagus ready for steaming

Stuffing the lobster tails with butter

Fresh off the grill

Cheers!

More Clean-up and Custom Cuts

I got a lot of quarter round cut and in place (but not secured with the brad gun yet), and only have part of the hallway and the closet to finish before I nail everything down.  About 15 years ago, we replaced the original carpet in the family room with hardwood floor.  The quarter round that we installed at that time stopped at the corner where the floor had linoleum tiles in the hallway at a lower level than the new wood floor.  Now that we have wood floor throughout the entire first floor, we needed to extend the quarter round.  As luck would have it, the old quarter round is 3/4" x 1/2", so the new 3/4" x 3/4" quarter round couldn't be used in this spot.  Take a look:

Old and new - not a good match!

So, Sharron and I popped over to Home Depot and got some of the odd-ball sized quarter round to finish the interface, which fortunately was just a short, isolated segment at the corner.  Here is the finished corner prior to securing to the baseboard:

I know, the interface to the old stuff should be done with a 45-degree angle cut, but I didn't want to have to rip out the long section to the left just to fix something that is hidden behind the wall unit, so this is how it will be!

Meanwhile, Sharron and Amanda moved the family room couch back to the way we had it originally.  Here, Sharron is pruning the carpet pad for a better fit.

Sharron also removed the hard drive from the old family room PC that we are disposing of.  We still have some clean-up to do in the family room, but we are getting there. 

Sharron into the guts of the PC

Oak Pieces Ready

I gave the oak quarter round and the deck doorway transition piece a couple of coats of Polyurethane and left it to dry overnight in the garage (sorry, Sharron, you can use the garage again tomorrow).

Doorway transition and quarter round

I finished applying the second coat of glossy white paint on the baseboard, and all is now ready for the quarter round installation.

Quarter Round Issues

Oak quarter round

The good news is that during the demolition phase, we recovered 36 feet of the old oak quarter round for re-use. 

Pine quarter round

The bad news is that the quarter round that we purchased about a month ago is made from pine and is NOT a good match for the oak that we have installed throughout the house.

Yuck!

And when you try to stain the pine, it looks even worse!













So, off to Home Depot I went tonight to purchase six sticks of 11'-long OAK quarter round.  I didn't want to cut it to fit it into my car, so I cleverly opened the right front window and pushed it through the ski hatch in the back of the car.  I'll give it all a coat or two of polyurethane tomorrow and start installing it.

66' of oak quarter round

The Valance

I trimmed the valance to size and installed it above the sink this afternoon.  The narrow cabinet on the left made it extremely difficult to get my drill at a shallow enough angle, but I finally got the board secured. 

We received our Wellness floor mat a couple of weeks ago, and in addition to protecting the floor from spills, etc, it really gives a bounce to your step!  It is intended to soften the stress on your feet/legs/back and it certainly does that.  For more info, see http://www.wellnessmats.com/

6' x 3' Wellness mat

Our skylight blinds arrived today.  Something else to install and distract me from finishing the kitchen!

Garage Clean-up

Sharron kindly volunteered the use of her side of the garage for staging the kitchen cabinets, etc, during the construction phase of the project.  But, now that we are down to the finishing touches, I decided to make one more trip to the dump today.  I grabbed those two trash cans full of debris that had remained on the deck and filled one more with floor scraps, moulding and drywall remnants and put it all in the back seat of my car.  I cut up the remaining long pieces of wood and added it to the trunk and hauled it all to the dump.  So, tonight Sharron's car is in the garage for the first time in many weeks (probably two months).

Once again, it's a two-car garage!

I stopped off at Home Depot on the way home and returned all of the un-opened stuff we had purchased for the kitchen project, but did not need.  They give you a store credit card in exchange, and I used this one to pay for a couple of items, including a new door stop for the powder room.  It's the least obtrusive way to protect the wall that I've seen.

Clearing the Deck

Sharron and I made two trips to the dump and cleared off all of the kitchen demolition debris that we had staged on the deck.  This included the sinks from the kitchen and powder room, lots of baseboard, cabinet pieces, a closet door and underlayment for the original linoleum floor.  This is how it looked after the first trip:

Here's all of that cut up with our handy Hilti sawzall and ready to load into my car:

We managed to get it all in with not much space to spare!

And here is the deck after cleanup.  We have two trashcans full of linoleum floor that the trash collectors will take later this week.  The lumber is excess cedar boards from our April fence project that we need to deal with.  The small boards are excellent for cedar plank grilling salmon. 

On our way home from the dump, we stopped off at The Great Indoors and found a support frame for a ceramic plate that we had purchased in Cascais, Portugal and hand carried home on the plane.  We had used it for a while as a serving platter, but it developed a crack and is now a decorative piece.