Springtime at Wildwood

Springtime at Wildwood has been full of change and projects. My nesting instincts hibernated all winter and I had no desire to do more than spend the dark evenings on the couch wrapped in two blankets and an Olive and hope our gas bills wouldn't put us in foreclosure. But with the warmer weather and budding leaves has come an outpouring of ideas and a list of projects a mile long. The yard that made us cringe every time the snow melted this winter has erupted in green. In the mornings I survey the yard and find measured changes in the evening when I check back. The front yard is a menagerie of lady's mantle, day lilies, azaleas and hostas, all of which I couldn't have named a year ago. The back yard's ivy hasn't sprouted new leaves, but the vines are still tangled all over and need to be ripped out as soon as we can clear all the kitchen rubble that was temporarily piled here. The kitchen has made a lot of progress in our eyes, but is still a long way from finished. The walls and ceiling are long gone. The electrical is about finished and Chris built a new soffit above the peninsula. We should be insulating and dry walling very soon and after that it is all down hill (or so I tell myself).

crazy green yard

tangled ivy vines in the backyard

I'm not much help in the kitchen reno, so I have taken on some other projects. I won't touch a room unless I am 100% committed to it, so many of the rooms in our house are being lived in and used without a single attempt at sprucing them up. I've started with the two main rooms in the downstairs - the living room and the tv room. We spend the most time in the tv room and I can finally say that I consider this room completely done. Its been painted, rearranged many times, pictures on the walls and blinds and curtains are hung. It is the first room I can say I am happy with. I've moved my focus now to the living room which is well on its way. Its been painted and blinds and curtains are hung. Yesterday we purchased a new sofa table and lamp from World Market. I'm working on the accents and we need to get the new range which has been sitting in the corner of the room since November out of there, but it is really getting close to done. My next projects are the master bedroom and the guest room. I have ordered wallpaper samples and have been doing lots of searching for furniture. I'm enjoying the process, but would like to have a guest room in time for summer visitors.

tv room - first room done

Living room - on its way.

This surge of inspiration has been 2 parts spring weather and 1 part design blogs. If you are looking for inspiration, this is a great place to start:
Apartment Therapy

Not entirely my personal style, but LOTS of good ideas for rehabing and do it yourself without going broke:
The Lettered Cottage

Lots of do it yourself tutorials and ideas. This blog inspired me to buy a grotsky chair on craigslist and attempt a total rehaul. It is in process, we shall see...
Centsational Girl

Great wallpaper selection:
Walnut Wallpaper

I sent this to Chris to prepare him for this future in wainscoting:
Just Beachy

An my favorite Mid-Century Modernizers. I'm only slightly bitter that they started after us and finished their kitchen already. But mostly I'm proud:
Mid-Century Modernize

Anything but the Kitchen Sink

A very famous kitchen at the Smithsonian

Good advice!

If you have a kitchen sink, give it a kiss.  Here is mine, but not for long.

Chris and I are moving steadily along in the kitchen, can't cha tell??  We actually have a new one, but we'll get to that a little later on.  

Chris began tearing into the soffits the first weekend of the year.  This uncovered a few obstacles.  To begin with, there are hidden pipes in places we were hoping to expose.  And secondly, the demo left a terrible film of dust covering the entire first floor of the house.  We are new to this and didn't realize that we should have sealed off the room with plastic zip-up doors and covered the hard wood floor with paper before making such a mess.  And somehow I didn't realize just how unusable this kitchen was going to be during the project.  

To drive this home further, we received our first winter gas bill - $400.  N.C. (Not. Cool.)  I get a lot of, "so, you gonna replace the windows?"  And while we may down the road, I don't think our 92 year old windows are the culprit.  Sure they could be better, but the real trouble stems from our lack of insulation.  I am going to get some quotes on having insulation blown into the walls, but while we have the kitchen torn up, we may as well insulate the kitchen's two exterior walls.  And guess where the kitchen sink is.  Yep, on an exterior wall.  So say goodbye to that sink.

You don't get too far in a kitchen without a sink and I cannot fathom life without a kitchen for the next few months.  We bought a new gas range on Black Friday, but the current electric range is still in fine working order.  So why not have an extra oven in the basement?  Where there is a sink.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?   

.... and thus our new basement kitchen was born.

Now it doesn't have a fridge yet, but it has everything else and the fridge will be right up the stairs.  Not too bad, eh?

My diligent carpenter & electrician

Tonight we watched the movie Julie & Julia and it got me thinking about kitchens.  Neither of those women had sparkling, state of the art kitchens with miles of countertops to work on.  They had good tools and a love of food.  A kitchen does not a cook make, so I will be just fine cooking from this basement.  Similar to Julia Child, there are few things that bring me more joy than eating and consequently, there are few things that give me more purpose than cooking.

The movie also got me to thinking about culinary projects.  Julie Powell cooked her way through Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and wrote a blog that led to a book that was made into a movie with Meryl freackin' Streep in it, how cool is that?  When I think about what I am really passionate about and how I wish I could spend my time, I always come back to food, not accounting.  I just don't know how to get myself from point A to point B, where point B is a place where I can still pay my mortgage.  So I am putting it out to the universe - I am in search of a new culinary adventure or project. Suggestions welcome.

Dumpster Diving

Can you think of a worse title for a post on a food blog?  Don't worry, while homeownership did bring me to an all time low today, it isn't quite as bad as it sounds.  I've mentioned before that our backyard here at Wildwood is completely covered in ivy and we are attempting to make it not so.  Chris is a landscape architect, so he has the winter to design something better than all ivy yard, and in the mean time, we are tackling ivy removal.  The standard reaction this gets from people is a sarcastic, "good luck", which makes me think this is not going to be an easy job.

I sprayed the ivy with Round Up a month or so ago, which had absolutely zero effect.  Chris went on a mowing rampage and mowed down all the perennials in the front yard and all the ivy in the back.  Obviously it is going to come back, but it was nice to catch a glimpse of what a clean backyard would look like.  My mom suggested laying down wet newspaper over the ivy, cover that with wet leaves and leave it over the winter.  In spring, rototill the whole shebang, plant grass seed and hope that it isn't ivy that pops back up.  

So here is where the dumpster diving comes into play.  This afternoon was unseasonably gorgeous, so we got to the task.  We didn't have anywhere near enough newspaper around, so Chris and hit up a few local paper recylcing dumpsters to get what we needed (I also got two Cooks Illustrated and a Elle Decor, don't judge me.)  Chris, Katie and took turns laying the newspaper, spraying it with the hose to keep it down, raking leaves on top and then hosing it again. We finished the whole backyard, so I'll get back to you in the spring to let you know if our little experiment worked.  

Kitchen Demolition

Work schmerk. It isn't long until my mind drifts to food. And before you know it I have wasted an hour reading food blogs, searching for recipes, and planning my next grocery trip. Shh - don't tell. Or planning my dream kitchen. The great kitchen remodel has begun. So far we have demo'ed one wall and bought three cabinets - progress is slow but steady - or so I keep telling myself.

Moving day was also my sister's (the Little Potato and future Wildwood tenant) birthday. Here is a good before shot of the wall and also her birthday cake. Notice lots of Pimm's scattered around the room and the bottle of Dom left behind - which is being saved for Wildwood's 100th birthday party in 9 years.

Before.

Demo.

It will be awhile before I have an after picture, but I can't wait!!

Check out these beautiful melons - all grown locally and arrived with the CSA. Have you ever had yellow watermelon? It is, believe it or not, juicier and sweeter than the pink stuff, phenomenal.

In the attempt to use the mid-demo kitchen as little as possible, CC and I have been grilling daily. I picked up a whole chicken from Tea Hills on Saturday and thought I would try the beer can chicken craze I have heard about. I used this recipe for the rub, but I forgot to rub some under the skin as well. We don't eat the skin, so I think we missed out on a lot of the flavor. But the chicken cooked up fast (like 45 minutes) and was very moist. It is a simple technique that I want to play around with some more. Plus, it is fun to play with chickens.

Ingredients
Beer Can Chicken Rub:
2 tablespoons smoked paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons garlic powder

For the Chicken:
4 pounds chicken, washed and dried
Vegetable oil
Beer Can Chicken Rub
1 (12-ounce) can beer

Directions
For the chicken rub:
In a small bowl mix all the ingredients together and use for the grilled chicken. You can store extra rub mixture in an airtight container for up to 6 months.

For the chicken:
Preheat your grill to medium-high heat.
Rub the chicken and its cavity down with the vegetable oil. Season the chicken with rub mixture, remembering to season the cavity. Pour out 1/4 of the beer and sit the chicken on top of the beer can. Place the chicken in the center of the hot grill and cover. Cook the chicken for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until an instant-read thermometer registers 165 degrees F. Once cooked, cover loosely with foil and let rest for 10 minutes before carving.