TGIFF: My Pineapple Log Cabin Quilt is Finally, FINALLY Finished!

Happy Almost Friday, y'all!  I'm hosting the TGIFF Thank Goodness It's Finished linky party this week and I have THREE "Big Quilt" finishes to share with you -- one made completely by yours truly over the past SEVEN years, and two large beauties that I recently had the privilege of quilting for clients.  At the bottom of this blog post you'll find the link up where you can share a recent finish that YOU'RE proud of, whether it's a finished top, a completely finished quilt, a finished garment/bag/home dec project, or just a finished quilt block.  

First, oh my gosh, you guys -- Colleen, are you still out there somewhere???  I have been posting about my progress (and lack thereof) with this monster of a pineapple log cabin quilt off and on since I started it in 2014, and I know some of you longtime readers thought I would never finish it.  One reader, Colleen, used to regularly encourage/nudge/plead with me to finish this quilt, but I haven't heard from her in awhile.  Colleen, if you're reading this right now, THANK YOU for keeping the faith!  

My 120 x 120 Pineapple Nostalgia, 2014-2021

You can learn more about this quilt from this previous post, written when I finished quilting it but before it was labeled and bound.  It was foundation paper pieced on my Bernina 750QE, the logs finish at 3/4" wide, there are 97 pieces in every block and 36 blocks in the quilt, and the batting for my Pineapple Nostalgia quilt is Quilter's Dream Wool to get some loft without weight, since the heavily pieced quilt top weighed a ton all by itself.

The One Where I Bake a Pumpkin Espresso Bundt Cake, Drench It With Rum, and Foist It Upon My Choir Friends: Baking Secrets Revealed

So I tried out a new bundt cake recipe over Thanksgiving and liked it well enough to do a reprise for our choir's Christmas party over the weekend.  The recipe is from King Arthur Flour and you can find it here.  

Pumpkin Espresso Bundt Cake with Rum Espresso Glaze

This cake is nut free and dairy free, made with whole wheat flour, and it's moist and delicious without being overly sugary.  It's relatively quick and easy to make, and the Bundt cake pan makes for pretty presentation straight out of the oven, no further decorating required.  My friends and family were raving about this cake and indulging in some ridiculously huge "slices"...  (Bernie!  Lars!)  

Fancy Styled Photo of Sliced Pumpkin Espresso Bundt Cake, King Arthur Flour

The interesting thing about this recipe is that, on the King Arthur Flour web site, reviewers either loved it like we did and gave it five stars, or else they were really disappointed and complained that it lacked flavor.  Poking around for some more recipes, I noticed that reviewers tend to have the same love/hate reactions for other espresso flavored baked goods, with the haters complaining about a lack of flavor.  My personal opinion is that the disappointed bakers were using inferior espresso powder and/or inferior brewed coffee in their glaze, perhaps along with old, stale spices that were well past their prime, because my cake was ANYTHING but bland tasting.

Here's the deal: You know how you end up with a better quilt or garment when you start with high quality fabrics and threads?  The same is true with baking; ingredients matter.  I'm no baking guru, and I am not a fan of wildly complicated recipes (except for Thanksgiving!).  I just use the best quality chocolate I can find, real vanilla instead of artificial vanilla extract, fresh Penzeys spices instead of stale grocery store spices that have been dying a painful death in my pantry for over a year...  If you don't believe me, do the sniff test: get a jar of cinnamon from your grocery store's baking aisle and a small jar of Penzey's Vietnamese Cinnamon and take a good whiff of each one.  You will be amazed by the difference.  If your spices don't smell like anything anymore, they won't deliver much flavor in your recipes, either.  Spices don't "go bad," but they do fade away over time.  When you bake with the good, fresh stuff, you really do end up with better tasting desserts.  

I get it that not everyone is as particular as I am about their baking ingredients, and you can still bake really good brownies and chocolate chip cookies using Hershey's chocolate chips and fake vanilla.  I will eat your brownies, enjoy them immensely, and I promise not to judge.  But if you want to try a recipe that is predominantly flavored with espresso, I can assure you that the hunt for the good stuff is worth your while!  I had trouble finding my usual Italian import brands of instant espresso powder this year so I tried a couple of other options.  

Do Not Buy This!

First, I bought some espresso powder from Williams-Sonoma.  They carry all of the best bakeware, pots and pans, so I hoped their specialty ingredients might be of similar quality, even though the label says it's made in the United States.  Alas!  I unscrewed the lid when i got home, took a sniff, and I swear the jar could have been filled with dark brown saw dust.  Blech!  Interestingly, this product does get good reviews from Williams-Sonoma customers, but those reviewers report that they are adding this espresso powder to their chocolate baked goods in order to enhance the chocolate flavor.  No one mentioned using this coffee dust stuff in a recipe that actually calls for instant espresso powder as a primary flavoring ingredient.

Not This Either!

The next instant espresso powder that I was able to find locally was this DeLallo brand that I'd never heard of before, and it was stocked in the baking aisle (first strike) of one of the high end specialty grocers, either Earth Fare or The Fresh Market.  The label says it's from Mexico (second strike) and instead of a picture of a cup of coffee on the label, there is a picture of a slice of cake and "perfect for tiramisu" on the label (third strike -- I should have known better!).  But I had no other option, and it had to be better than the Williams-Sonoma stuff at home, right?  Wrong!  The DeLallo Instant Espresso Baking Powder product is even LESS aromatic than the Williams-Sonoma.  But guess what it says on their web site?  They are promoting this product as "a baker's best-kept secret" that "makes chocolate richer without adding any distinct coffee flavor."  Aha!!  These baking aisle espresso powders are really more like chocolate enhancers than flavoring agents that can stand on their own.

My Son Anders With His Favorite Espresso Recipe: Cinnamon Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies

The thing is, with both the Pumpkin Espresso Bundt Cake recipe and my Fine Cooking Cinnamon Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, success depends on using a high quality instant espresso powder that DOES add a distinct coffee flavor!  If you have ever been disappointed by a recipe calling for instant espresso powder in the past, I urge you to try the recipe again using one of these brands, both of which I finally found on Amazon (score!):

THESE ARE MY SECRET INGREDIENTS!  SHHH!!!

These are Italian instant espresso coffees, and if your grocery store carries either of them, they will stock it in the coffee aisle as it is intended for drinking.  Just as you get the best results when you cook with real wine that is good enough for drinking instead of using "cooking wine" that tastes like vinegar, you get the best espresso flavor for baked goods when you use an instant espresso powder that is meant for drinking.  As I said, both Medaglia D'Oro and Ferrara instant espresso are available online at Amazon (with Prime free shipping even) if you can't find them in your local shops, and although they are both vastly more flavorful than the brands that are marketed to bakers, they are LESS expensive.  That's right, LESS EXPENSIVE.  Whereas the bland 1.8 oz jar of Willilams-Sonoma espresso powder cost me $10.95, I can purchase a pack of three 2 oz jars of Medaglia D'Oro espresso powder on Amazon for just $14 with free shipping.  The DeLallo brand was $4.95 for an almost 2 oz. jar, but I can get three 2 oz jars of the much better Ferrara brand on Amazon for only $12.97 with free shipping.  Sometimes the good stuff actually saves you money.  It might seem absurd to buy baking ingredients online, but if I factor in the wasted gas and wasted time driving from one grocery store to the next, looking for espresso powder...  

So, back to my cake recipe: I baked my cake with fresh, strongly aromatic Penzeys Vietnamese Cinnamon and Pumpkin Pie spice blend.  I used real Vanilla, also from Penzeys.  For the filling, I used Medaglia D'Oro Italian instant espresso mixed with brown sugar and Penzey's Cinnamon, and then, for the glaze... 

How I Make "Strongly Brewed Coffee"

The recipe says to dissolve the granulated sugar in 1/3 cup of "strong brewed coffee" with the option of adding rum (and of course I added rum).  But I didn't glaze my cake with ordinary brewed coffee because I don't own a regular coffee maker.  I have a shiny espresso machine, a commercial coffee grinder, and a cupboard stocked with fresh Lavazza espresso beans.  I heated up my espresso machine, ground my beans, and pulled two shots of espresso like I was going to make a latte.  

Perfect 25 Second Espresso Shots

I dumped the shots into my measuring cup and they were almost exactly 1/3 cup, so I just dissolved my sugar into my freshly-pulled espresso shots, added 1 1/2 tablespoons of Captain Morgan, and then drenched my bundt cake with it.  What better way to ensure a rich espresso flavor than to actually soak the cake IN ESPRESSO, hmmm?

Okay, so that almost felt like cheating.  But if you want to make this recipe and you don't happen to own an espresso machine, you could totally go to your Starbucks or local coffee shop and buy a couple shots of brewed espresso to go for your recipe.  You just might need to heat them up in the microwave if they have cooled off too much to dissolve the sugar.

I've spent WAY more time on this post than what I had intended.  Hopefully someone will find it helpful.  If not, at least I will have a record for myself of where to find my espresso powder next year!  Do you have a favorite holiday baking recipe or a secret ingredient to share?  Let me know in the comments.  :-)

Again, if you'd like to try the King Arthur Flour Pumpkin Espresso Bundt Cake, you can find that recipe here, and if you'd like to try the Fine Cooking Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies, you can find that recipe here.  Let me know how it turns out.  Happy baking!

In Which Rebecca Eats Crow, As Long As It's Decaf

I have been known to say things like, "Never trust people who drink decaf coffee, nonalcoholic beer, or who have fake tattoos."  We can talk booze and tattoos some other time, but today I'm coming clean on caffeine.

I've been drinking coffee almost as long as I can remember, definitely going back to high school, maybe even 7th or 8th grade.  As a young adult I was drinking strong coffee all day long, convinced that the caffeine had no effect on me because, after drinking a few pots of coffee a day, if I tried to drink even MORE coffee to pull an "all-nighter" it would make me so ill that I had to go to bed anyway (and would fall immediately asleep). 

I have also "not been a morning person" for as long as I can remember.  I thought I was just an outlier on the bell curve, someone whose body needed 10 hours of sleep to feel rested...  Except that I never did wake up feeling rested and energetic, no matter how long I slept.  When my alarm went off, my subconscious would harness my imagination and use it against me in a desperate plea for more sleep-- I have had so many dreams where I am standing in front of my home security system panel, trying to shut off the alarm, and I can't remember the code so the alarm is blaring away...  Or it's the smoke detector going off and I'm on a step stool trying to smack it with a baseball bat and it keeps going off anyway.   Sometimes the dream is a little more honest, and I'm standing in front of the alarm clock and can't find the button to turn it off.  But eventually I wake up and realize that the alarm clock actually has been going off for an hour and I am still in bed.  And no matter how long I did sleep, I would wake up groggy and irritable, looking forward to that first cup of coffee that would make me feel sharp again and get me going.



Rebecca With Latte

Aside from the caffeine-free interludes of pregnancy and breastfeeding (I developed a strong aversion to coffee with both boys -- go figure!), the caffeinated coffee cycle continued for years.  When I was juggling my interior design business with home and family, I was drinking an average of eight to ten shots of espresso per day, stopping at Starbucks once or even twice every time I got in the car.  My kids thought that I-485 was a toll road and that the Starbucks drive-through was the toll booth.  My husband added up the Starbucks charges on my American Express statement and we decided that we would SAVE money by installing a commercial espresso machine and a commercial coffee grinder in our kitchen so I could make my own lattes at home.  Bernie even hooked the machine up to the plumbing so I would be spared the inconvenience of ever having to fill the water tank.  And I discovered Lavazza, a strong, intensely flavored Italian espresso that makes Starbucks coffee taste like wet cardboard.

My Crazy Espresso Machine

So a few months ago I was annoyed that my jeans were fitting tighter than I'd like, and after adding up the calories in those four or five lattes per day (130 calories in each Starbucks grande nonfat latte), I decided to cut back.  First I cut off the coffee after 3 PM, then pushed it back to noon and allowed myself two double-shot lattes each morning -- one when I first woke up, and another as I headed out the door.  I didn't notice any kind of caffeine withdrawal or anything -- so again, I felt that the caffeine did not affect me, that the nice, hot lattes in the morning were more of a comfort ritual than a true need for caffeine to wake me up, and that I was drinking "high test" coffee instead of decaf because the decaffeination process strips too much flavor and makes the coffee taste bad.

Meanwhile, I finally listened to my father and joined our church choir at Christ Lutheran this past Fall.   I have been having some difficulty with the upper range of my singing voice for the last few years for whatever reason, so my plan was to hide out in the Alto section and blend in.  I did not know about the choir hazing that happens at our church, whereby new choir members are randomly assigned to sing solos.  There are no auditions for solos, no calls for volunteers -- Mark just passes out the music and says "Rebecca please sing the solo" in the same tone of voice that my father used to say "Rebecca please wash the dishes" or "Rebecca please be home by eleven."  And so I find myself on the Internet, googling things like "performance anxiety" and "how to sing better in the morning."  And I find that not only is caffeine bad for singers because it dries out your throat and tightens your vocal folds, but caffeine has also been shown to relax the lower esophageal
sphincter muscle, which can lead to gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) (Boekema, P. J., Samson, M., van Berge Henegouwen, G. P., et al (1999) Coffee and gastrointestinal function: facts and fiction. A review. Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology Supplementum, 230, 35–39):

This could explain the acid reflux diagnosis I got from my ENT doctor, who stuck a camera down my throat two years ago and informed me that stomach acids have been coming back up my throat while I'm sleeping, burning and inflaming my vocal folds.  Incidentally, I know of at least two other coffee-swilling Lutheran singers whose doctors attributed their voice problems to this same silent acid reflux disorder.  Hmmm...  And here I thought those ENT doctors were just getting really good kickbacks from the pharmaceutical company that makes Nexium!  Granted, one cup of Folgers every morning probably doesn't instantly cause GERD, but remember I was drinking four or five double-shot lattes per day for years, each one containing somewhere between 80-100 mg of caffeine.  Even when I cut back to two lattes in the morning, that was still probably close to 200 mg of caffeine on a daily basis.

But the thing that really got my attention was when I read about the connection between caffeine and anxiety:

"Clinically, caffeine may be involved in the precipitation, exacerbation or maintenance of anxiety disorders (Kruger, 1996). Sensitivity to caffeine is increased in people with panic disorder and social phobia, and administration of caffeine can provoke panic attacks in these individuals (Charney et al, 1985; Tancer et al, 1991, 1994). There are clinical reports of anxiety symptoms improving on caffeine withdrawal or limitation (Greden, 1974; Bruce & Lader, 1989), and people suffering panic attacks may benefit from a reduction in their intake (Charney et al, 1985)".  You can read the full text of that article here.

I do have some general social anxiety that escalates into full-blown panic just THINKING about singing a solo, especially when the song sits near the register shift where I've been having trouble with my voice cracking.  What if that happens during the solo, in front of everyone?  My heart pounds, my hands get sweaty, and my breathing is shallow -- I can't get enough air.  The muscles in my neck, shoulders and throat get tight and rigid.  I feel like I'm going to vomit.  None of this is conducive to good singing technique!  So now I'm thinking about my Sunday morning routine -- Get up, turn on espresso machine, feed dogs.  Guzzle down 100 mg of caffeine.  Shower and get dressed.  Make another double shot espresso beverage to drink while driving to church and imagining all the horrible things that could go wrong with the solo, and all of the nasty things people will probably think and say if I mess up the anthem for everyone.  Instead of "The Scream," let's call this "The Solo":



Der Schrei der Natur  or "The Scream," by Edvard Munch (1893)

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch wrote the following poem and inscribed it on the back side of a later pastel version of "The Scream":

"I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."  -- Edvard Munch, 1895

That's exactly how I was feeling about an upcoming solo entitled "Let There Be Peace On Earth."  How was I supposed to sing about peace on Earth while feeling anxious and terrified, and fighting the urge to flee the sanctuary?!  I figured it was at least worth experimenting to see whether cutting out caffeine might help with my anxiety.  I could always have a triple espresso as soon as I got home from church, right?

So I stopped by Rush Espresso Café with Bernie on a Thursday and rather reluctantly ordered a decaf nonfat latte, which tasted like a cup of warm milk flavored only weakly with coffee, but better than no latte at all.  On Friday morning I made myself a decaf skim latte, took one sip, and dumped it down the drain.  Then I made a half-caff latte by putting one scoop of ground Lavazza Dek decaf coffee and one scoop of Lavazza Gold regular espresso in the filter basket.  It didn't have that instant "zing" of a fully caffeinated latte, but it was tolerable.  I turned off the machine for the day.  And on Sunday morning, I didn't turn on the espresso machine at all.  The solo went better than the last one, but that could be attributed to the wonderful sermon about not listening to negative voices in our heads that say we aren't good enough, or maybe nerves just diminish on their own from getting up and doing the thing we're afraid of again and again. 

[NOTE: Interested friends and family can listen to the anthem and/or Kevin Vandiver's inspiring sermon on the church as the body of Christ by going to the Christ Lutheran Church web site's Online Worship page here, clicking "On Demand Video" and scrolling down to the Feb. 1st 2015 Traditional Service video.  Kevin's sermon starts about 22 minutes into the service, and the Let There Be Peace On Earth anthem with my solo starts around the 50 minute mark.] 

I couldn't be sure that caffeine was the sole culprit behind my anxiety attacks, but to my surprise, I wasn't experiencing any of the caffeine withdrawal symptoms I had expected.  And I had bought a whole bag of decaf espresso beans...  So I continued with my experiment, making just one half caff latte each morning and then shutting off the machine for the day.  And something really weird started happening to me, within just a few days.  I have been waking up EARLY in the morning, BEFORE the alarm goes off, feeling wide awake and CHEERFUL!  Between 5:30 and 6 AM!  Before having ANY coffee!  Me, who could sleep undisturbed until noon -- I am seeing SUNRISES every morning!  It turns out, I LIKE sunrises!

Winter Sunrise in the Carolinas

And I am dumbfounded.  My caffeine had not been keeping me awake at night.  I never had insomnia.  I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I was usually pretty good about getting at least 8 hours of sleep in each night.  Could all that caffeine have been messing with my sleep cycle somehow?  Back to the Internet, more research -- and I find studies showing that yes, caffeine inhibits our ability to develop and sustain the deeper non-REM stages of sleep.  So all these years that I thought I was just genetically wired to require 9+ hours of sleep, maybe caffeine was causing me to "sleep shallow" so that I never woke up fully rested no matter how long I slept.  Despite my late morning snoozing, I've been chronically sleep-deprived for decades.  This sounds bizarre, right?  But it has been two weeks now since I had a full-caffeine latte, and I am consistently waking up on my own, without an alarm, after only about 7 1/2 hours of sleep, and I have never felt better in the morning.  I don't drink any soft drinks or energy drinks, so my total daily caffeine intake is below 50 mg per day for the first time in probably 25 years.  And it is making such a huge difference for me that even my husband is cutting down his own coffee consumption -- and that man couldn't drink more coffee if he was hooked up to a coffee IV!

I'm not saying everyone should immediately stop drinking coffee or completely eliminate caffeine from their diet.  Most of the studies concede that genetic differences result in a lot of variation in the way that caffeine affects different individuals.  Apparently I'm one of those people who are very sensitive to caffeine, because most of the subjects in those studies did not have diminished sleep quality as long as they cut off their caffeine 8 hours prior to going to bed, and I didn't see this weird personality change (going from Oscar the Grouch to Ernie in the space of two days!) until I had almost completely eliminated caffeine consumption.  I plan to continue with my half-caff lattes while I experiment with different decaffeinated espresso roasts.  Hopefully I'll find one that tastes good enough that I can enjoy a decaf latte without mixing in any of the high-test beans.  And I'll take life one sunrise (and one solo) at a time.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Meet the Hood that Could Suck a Small Child Out of the House

Ah, yes, there it is, looking so innocuous in its partially cut-away shipping box.  This is the Viking range hood that required replacing the 7" diameter ductwork with 10" diameter.  It looks a lot like the stainless steel GE Monogram range hood that was there before, but I decided to replace the hood for two very important reasons. 

Number One: The old range hood had a big 8" scratch across the front of it that was there when we moved in.  Ding-a-ling (Bernie's loving pet name for the previous homeowner who was apparently not as "handy" as he fancied himself to be) probably scratched the hood when he installed it himself.  Bernie knows Ding-a-ling installed the previous range hood himself because he used the wrong kind of screws that weren't threaded all the way, so instead of it taking a few minutes to remove the old hood, Bernie had to fight with it for about an hour.  We already knew from the gas company that Ding-a-ling ran the gas line to the GE cooktop he put in all by himself, too, without getting it inspected.  The stove was leaking gas when we moved in and so little gas was actually getting to the burners that it took 40 minutes to bring a pot of water to a boil.  I am so grateful to the nice man from Piedmont Natural Gas for saving our house from blowing up!  We replaced the cooktop, refrigerator and wall ovens when the local Home Depot Exp closed and we were able to purchase brand-new Viking appliances out of one of their kitchen displays at a huge discount.  Anyway, I digress: Reason number one for replacing the range hood was that the scratch on the front of the old hood got under my skin and bothered me.


Bernie getting ready to install the new range hood

Reason Two: The old range hood sounded like a 747 was about to take off in my kitchen.  It was so loud that I couldn't have a conversation with someone standing three feet away from me if the hood was turned on.  What good is it to have an open floorplan so everyone can hang out with the cook if no one can have a conversation while you're cooking?  The new range hood has a 900 CFM in-line ventilation kit -- the 900 CFM part means "Uff da, that's a powerful fan!" and the in-line part means that the motor that sucks all of this air out of the kitchen is going to be nowhere near the kitchen.  Instead, the motor is at the other end of the ductwork, in the crawl space under my house, right before it vents through the exterior wall.  That alone should cut down on the noise significantly.  However, the motor for this fan is going to be a lot more powerful that the previous one, and the vaulted ceilings in my kitchen tend to amplify sound.  I have a low tolerance for appliance noises anyway; even the noise from the fan in our bathroom makes me irritable (we'll address that one of these days when we get back to the Master Bathroom project).  All of the appliances I've selected after taking sound ratings into consideration (the Miele laundry machines, Bosch dish washer, even the new Insinkerator garbage disposal) have been significantly quieter than their predecessors, and worth every penny to me for the peace and calm they bestow upon my home.  With two little blond hooligans running around howling most of the time, we need all the peace and calm we can get.  So when I found out that Viking sells a Vibration Silencer Kit for our hood model that will further reduce the noise by 50%, I had to have it. 

Here's Bernie right after he installed the range hood in the kitchen and connected the power.  He says it was a lot easier to install than he expected.  At this point, he hasn't yet installed the in-line ventilation kit (the motor that will suck small children out through the 10" duct) because he's waiting for the Vibration Silencer kit that hasn't been delivered yet.

...But the hood is connected to the power, so the lights work.  Hallelujah!  I missed having light over the stove!  I'm enjoying the undercabinet lights, too -- we put them on a dimmer switch and they are dimmed in this picture.

Today the Vibration Silencer came; it's that thing that looks like a giant Pringles can.  Bernie seems to find something funny about this contraption.  Oh, and sorry for the vampire eyes -- for some reason the Red Eye Correction tool only wanted to let me fix ONE of Bernie's eyeballs, and I decided that one blue eye and one red one is way creepier than two red eyeballs. 

I don't know when Bernie will get a chance to finish the installation of the ventilation system.  We've been having an Espresso Crisis of Epic Proportions -- ever since my commercial grinder and espresso machine were relocated to their new home in the butler's pantry, with a special sink and all new plumbing added just to accommodate and pamper said espresso machine -- the lattes have had a strong, intensely unpleasant plasticky chemical taste.  I have run the water, I have cleaned and backflushed the machine, and I have investigated online.  Bernie used the same pex pipes that are everywhere else in our home, yes he used the kind for potable water with the NSF endorsement, and no he didn't buy the cheapest stuff he could find, but apparently this gross taste is not harmful to my health (snort!) and will dissipate over time.  So now I have gone to all this trouble and expense only to go from sublime lattes made in my kitchen, to rotten lousy poisonous lattes made in the butler's pantry.  I am so desperate, I could almost -- almost -- drink the coffee at the gas station!

Anyway, Bernie changed out the rubber-lined flexible braided steel hose that runs from my water filter directly to my espresso machine, reasoning that if the chemical taste was originating in the pex tubing it would be removed by the filter before it got to my machine.  We're flushing out the boiler tank on the espresso machine right now and tomorrow morning we'll see if there's any improvement.  Wish me luck!

Woo Hoo -- Kitchen Granite Installs Tomorrow!

Look how busy my sweetie has been!  The new sheet rock is up and ready for the backsplash tile, light rail molding has been installed on the bottoms of the existing cabinetry, and the back of the kitchen island has a coat of the elusive Burnt Umber stain that the builder used on the original cabinetry.  It still needs brown glaze and a satin finish oil-based varnish or polyurethane, but I'm very pleased with how well the new carpentry blends in with the old.  As much as this remodeling project has spiraled out of control, at least we were able to keep the existing cabinetry!  Well, mostly we kept the existing cabinetry...

After ordering the new wine fridge (and 50+ bottles of wine to fill it up with), we discovered that the base cabinetry in the butler's pantry was only 20" deep rather than the standard 24" depth that our wine fridge was designed for.  So Bernie spent the better part of a day ripping out the old cabinet, removing the door casing, and building this new 24" deep cabinet that will accommodate the wine fridge on the left, and the copper bar sink on the right.  I need to order a new drawer front and pair of cabinet doors in the same profile as the existing cabinetry, but we don't need to have those before the granite can install.  Tile Collection graciously sent a guy back out to redo the template for this area.  I'm lucky they hadn't cut the stone yet!  Bernie and I were both saying we should have known better.  I think our subconscious wino selves knew the cabinet wasn't deep enough, but suppressed that knowledge in order to get the wine fridge anyway.  I know all about that psychology stuff because I used to watch Frasier before it was cancelled. 

There it is, all stained up with the wine fridge installed.  Bernie had to run water over to this area for the sink as well as for my plumbed espresso machine (the filter is for my espresso machine, too), and I finally convinced him to move an outlet and a light switch so I wouldn't have to reach behind the coffee machines to turn on the undercabinet lighting, and so the machine cords will be as inconspicuous as possible, plugging in directly behind where the machines will sit.  So this "how about we put the coffee machines in the butler's pantry" idea ended up being pretty involved.

Oh, and one more thing: Up until a few days ago, this ugly plastic utility sink lived in my laundry room.  My husband liked to use it for cleaning paint brushes, muddy boots, watering cans, etc.  I never knew what might be splattered in this sink, so I never dared to use it for soaking stains out of the laundry -- this sink probably would have done more harm than good because it was always dirtier than the laundry I wanted to soak in it.  Bernie should really have a work sink out in his garage, and I should have a clean, attractive sink in the laundry room that can safely be used for laundry.  This laundry room is off the kitchen and the door is usually opened, and it has wall cabinets above the machines that match the kitchen cabinetry.  There's no reason the laundry room can't be an attractive extension of the kitchen, especially since there's enough leftover CD Volcano granite from our slabs to do this little countertop in the laundry room, and the not-so-old existing Venetian Bronze kitchen faucet can be reinstalled for the new laundry sink, too.  We're even going to be able to reuse one of the drawer fronts and cabinet doors that came off the dismantled former butler's pantry cabinet.  The only thing I needed to buy was a sink...

Didn't Bernie build me a beautiful laundry cabinet?  Now they can template for the counter top, but the new sink probably won't be here for several weeks because I had to custom order a RED ONE!  :-)

The granite installers are supposed to be here first thing in the morning, and we're finally ready for them!  By this time tomorrow, all of the Baltic Barf countertops will be gone and the CD Volcano will be in its place, hopefully looking as amazing as I have envisioned.  I can't wait!

The Slippery, Sliding, Treacherous Slope of a Mini Kitchen Remodel

Can you believe this was an IMPULSE project?  It started with the innocent selection of wallpaper for the boys' bathrooms, then the realization that it was now-or-never if I wanted to change out their cultured marble vanities for scrap granite pieces...  Then I had to go to the granite fabrication facility to select my scraps, where my single-minded focus crumbled in the face of slab after slab of seductive stone, each one more beautiful than the next, and ALL of them more attractive than the Baltic Barf that is splattered throughout my own kitchen.  I got a quote on upgrading my kitchen countertops to a mid-range granite and decided it was worthwhile, but then when I went to the granite importer's warehouse to select my stone, I wandered in circles for hours and kept coming back to the same ultra rare, dramatic and risqué CD Volcano granite.  I know this stone is outrageous.  I know it has no place in my neighborhood, and that I'll never get the money back when I sell my home.  Blah, blah, blah!  It's unique, it's exquisite, I've never seen anything like it anywhere else, and my whole family is as excited about it as I am.


So, at that point, we were going to change out the countertops and backsplash tile, and that's it.  Ha ha ha ha ha (that's my Maniacal Laughter, by the way).

That's what the back of my boomerang-shaped kitchen island looked like up until New Year's Day.  It's just sheetrocked with a frame of white-painted 2x4 lumber holding up the Baltic Barf countertop.  That raised bar is only 12" deep, by the way, instead of the standard 18" depth, so it's not really enough space to actually sit and eat there.  I don't remember why there is a patched hole there, either -- it's one of those things that was all fixed except for painting it, but my darling husband forgot about the paint before he got around to doing it.  We won't be too hard on him, though, because he has been very busy over the past couple of weeks...

Bernie pried the first piece of Baltic Barf off and carried it out of the house on New Year's Day.  Normally, the granite company handles demolition of the old countertop and backsplash, but Bernie is going to be trimming out the back of the island in hardwood paneling with decorative corbels and staining it to match the rest of the cabinetry, so he took off that part of the countertop himself.  He's also going to remove all of the backsplash tile and replace the sheetrock himself, since I want undercabinet lighting and a pot filler installed and those will be easier to do with the sheetrock off, anyway.  I told you it's a slippery slope.

Ta da!  The ledge and the funky framework supporting it are gone by the end of the day.


So far, we have ordered new granite countertops and beveled marble brick backsplash tile, a pot filler, a new sink and a new faucet (because who wants to install the scratched up old sink and old faucet into a lovely new countertop?), as well as a new disposal unit that is supposed to be quieter than the one we have now.  And we're done, right?  Wrong!

On January second, Bernie moved my car out to the driveway and transformed the garage into a woodworking palace.  See how happy he is to see the table saw again?  After lamenting the absence of even MORE large tools that are still in his parents' garage in New Jersey, and improbably claiming that if only those tools were here, he could complete the entire project in ten minutes without spending any money, Bernie rolled up his sleeves and went into carpenter mode.

This is what the back of that same island looked like by the end of the day on January 4th.  Quite a difference, don't you think?  In designing the back of the island, I wanted to kick things up a bit, but I was careful not to go overboard so that when all this is finished, hopefully all of the trimwork in the kitchen will make sense together and look like it was all done at the same time.  I could have just ordered more raised panels like the cabinet doors, but I wanted to be a little bit more custom, so we did flat panels with quarter-round maple rope molding along the inside edge instead. 

Bernie told me what the tape was for, but I've forgotten.  It was temporary.  Maybe it had something to do with wood glue drying or something.  The acanthus leaf corbels are bringing in a new decorative motif to the existing trimwork, but the acanthus leaf is repeated on the light fixtures so it's not totally out of left field.  Also, smaller versions of these corbels will be incorporated into the design of the new fireplace mantel in the keeping room just off the kitchen.  Shh; don't tell my husband!  He hates it when he's in the middle of one project and I start hatching additional grand schemes that involve his labor and ingenuity.

On January 7th we went to the Tile Collection's fabrication facility and spent FOUR hours moving templates around on my three granite slabs until I got the layout the way I wanted it.  The template you see above is for the raised island bar.  I've added some curves to the outer edge that are not reflected on the template.  See how I got a balance of light and dark areas, and incorporated as much of the cool multicolored swirls as I could without necessitating a seam?  When I got there, they had this template taped on upside down so that most of my countertop was going to be black and white and neutral and tame, and most of the cool stuff would have ended up as someone else's scrap treasure.  That's why it's so important to be involved in the layout process when your stone has this much variation.  The little square you see below is for a tiny cubby where my purse lives near the door to the garage.

This piece is for the lower portion of the island countertop.  It's getting cut from a separate slab that is bookmarked (mirror image of the first slab) so that the movement of the granite will be somewhat continuous from the countertop, up the backsplash, and across the raised bar.  The section with a notch at the top is where my sink will get cut out.  Isn't it a sin? Again, my objective was to have as much of the complex, multicolored portions of the stone as possible, yet retain enough of the lighter areas to have the contrast and dramatic impact that I loved so much in the larger slabs.  Also, with a stone like this, if you're not careful you could end up with some countertop pieces looking mostly gold/green/black, and others looking mostly black/white -- there is so much variation in the stone that it might look like you used completely different granite from one countertop to the next.  So I tried to keep things as balanced as possible.  There's a long stretch of countertop to the left of my wall ovens, adjacent to the island, that will be cut from the area beneath the template in the photo above.

There goes my granite, getting put away until it's time for cutting!  Granite installation is scheduled for January 24th, provided we (I use that "we" very loosely) get everything else done in the kitchen by then and we're ready for the countertops to go in.


Now, as much as I hated the Baltic Brown granite in my kitchen, I really thought it would look good in the little en suite bath off of Bernie's home office.  All the black in that stone gives off kind of a masculine vibe, the busy blotchy pattern would not be so overwhelming on a small vanity, and the brown and pinkish-brown tones complement the horrendous builder tile in the office bath shower that I have no intention of ever replacing (that shower is only used once a year).  I had originally arranged with the Tile Collection to recut one of my old countertops for this bathroom for $150 labor.  Maybe if I hadn't been calling it Baltic Barf for the past three years Bernie would have felt good about this plan, but alas...  He has been working so hard on the kitchen, and he looked so forlorn at the granite shop, looking at all of the other stone, so we selected this Madique granite remnant for his office bath instead:

Slip, sliding away... 


Lars's laser tag birthday party with his school friends was on Saturday the 8th, but we had snow days in Charlotte yesterday, today, and again tomorrow due to ice on the roads.  Bernie had to cancel a scheduled business trip, which was good news for the kitchen project!

Goodbye to the hated backsplash tile, once and for all!  Don't you love that hole in the wall behind the stove?  This part reminds me of the scene in The Money Pit when Tom Hanks comes home at the end of the day and says to his contractor, "They destroyed my house!" and the contractor smiles and says, "They sure did, didn't they?  I tell you, they're work ANIMALS!!"  We love that movie.

This is a very misleading picture that makes it seem as though I was actually helping with all of this.  Bernie left the last two tiles behind the range hood for me to remove, stuck his night time Harley Davidson glasses on me in case I sent shards of tile into my eyeball, and sent me up the step stool so I could feel involved.  Thanks, Lover!

Here we are at the end of today, with all of the tile and sheetrock removed and the range hood gone.  Apparently the range hood was installed by Dingaling the Previous Homeowner rather than by the builder, because he used the wrong screws and the hood that should have popped off fairly easily instead had to be wrestled with for quite some time.  We also found dangling live wires behind the range hood once the sheetrock was down.  Lovely!  We had originally planned to reinstall the same GE Monogram range hood we had before, but we ended up ordering a new one for several reasons.  First and foremost, Dingaling scratched the front of the range hood, either when he installed it or by cleaning it against the grain with something abrasive.  The scratch on the front of the hood has always bugged me.  Second, the thing was filthy through and through, and not just the parts that come out and that are easy to clean in the dishwasher.  But the main reason we ordered a new range hood is that the one we had before was so loud that even on the Low setting, you can't have a conversation with anyone in the kitchen when the fan is running.  The new fan is going to have in-line ventilation, which means the noisy fan part will be down in the crawlspace under my house where I don't have to listen to it.  Slippidy-doo-dah, slippidy-ay!

We also found some dangling live wires behind this wall, apparently for undercabinet lighting that never got installed.  This is so unbelievably dangerous!  Pardon what appears to be snow; I got sheetrock dust on my camera lens.

Also, yesterday Bernie was complaining that my commercial espresso machine and burr grinder duo are taking up too much of what little precious countertop workspace we have in the kitchen, and we had an epiphany.  We decided to move my in-house coffee bar to the butler's pantry area between the kitchen and dining room.  I am okay with this because right now we get in each other's way when he's trying to cook breakfast and I'm trying to make myself a latte.  Creating a separate beverage center outside of the main kitchen, yet adjacent to the fridge, is a perfect solution as long as we can make it look more elegant than utilitarian.  After all, you can see this butler's pantry through the dining room as soon as you walk in my front door.

This new twist to our plans requires running plumbing to the butler's pantry for the espresso machine, moving an outlet and a light switch, and adding a hammered copper bar sink and faucet.  Oh, and a refrigerated undercounter wine cellar, because I miss the one we put in our last house before we moved, and I won't be able to store my wine in racks on this countertop anymore now that the coffee machines and a sink are going in...

Here we have more sloppy electrical work.  A random hole and a bundle of exposed wires that we discovered at the back of the butler's pantry cabinet.  You have to get down on the floor to see it, and neither of us had any idea it was there as we're shoving metal cooling racks and baking pans into the cupboard.  It really makes me wonder what else is wrong with my house that I can't see!

What's next for this project?  Well, Bernie's still got to finish up with the plumbing and electrical, and then he'll put new sheetrock up in the backsplash areas.  The base cabinetry in the butler's pantry is going to have to be rebuilt to accommodate my 24" wine unit, and Bernie was able to find out exactly what brand and color of stain was used on our existing cabinetry so we're waiting on the stain to come in as well as the new bar sink and faucet, wine fridge, and range hood.  Oh, and did I mention that the in-line ventilation requires a 10" diameter duct, and what we have now is only 7"?  Yeah, the ductwork has got to be replaced now, too. 

I swear I'm not ordering anything else for this kitchen!!

Sliding Down the Slippery Slope: The Espresso Obsession Continues!

I ordered a new espresso machine.  Yes, I ordered a new one AGAIN, even though I just got a new one a couple of weeks ago...  In case you missed my earlier posts on the exciting topic of Latte Love, click here and here and then come on back to this post for my latest adventures in coffee obsession. 

So for the first week or so with my Expobar Office Pulser espresso machine, I was pulling consistently good espresso shots with a layer of crema on top.  The shots were running a little fast (ideally, it should take 20-25 seconds from the time I press the "go" button until the espresso is up to the little lines on the shot glasses.  If it takes longer for the shot glasses to fill, the shots taste bitter.  If they fill up faster, the espresso tastes weak and you don't get that caramelly crema on top).  The way you correct this problem is to adjust how finely the coffee is ground and/or how much pressure you're using to tamp (pack it down into the portofilter thing).  Not owning a coffee grinder, I always bought Starbucks' Espresso Roast a pound at a time and asked the store to grind it on #3 for my espresso machines.  But lately they keep screwing it up.  I wish I took pictures for you of what the espresso shots look like when you use coffee that is ground on #6 (particles the size of Folgers in a supermarket can for an automatic drip machine), but I was way too upset to think about getting the camera.  Anyway, after two separate Starbucks stores managed to screw up grinding my coffee beans three times in a row, I decided I'd had it with Starbucks and I needed to take the grind into my own hands! 

I headed back to my favorite online coffee store, Whole Latte Love, and read through numerous tutorials and reviews before selecting my grinder, the Mazzer Mini.  When I get my grinder, I will be able to grind just enough beans at a time to make one latte.  This means much better freshness, and it also means that I can make small adjustments to fine-tune the grind from one latte to the next until I get it exactly the way I want it.  I'm also not going to be limited to only Starbucks coffees anymore.  There are so many other beans out there, waiting to be discovered!  One key feature of this machine that appealed to me is that it's so quiet -- supposedly, when it's grinding beans, it's no louder than the interior sound level of a running BMW.  Since I have cathedral ceilings in my kitchen, sound ricochets off the walls and ceilings and amplifies considerably, so the last thing I wanted was a grinder that sounded like a jet plane taking off in my kitchen at 6 AM.

But wait, that's a grinder -- didn't I say I bought another espresso machine? 

Okay, so it turns out that when I was reading the manual for the Expobar Office Pulser machine and read the part about how the machine could be plumbed for a continuous water supply, I was reading about a different model, the Expobar Office Lever Plus.  It only costs $200 more than the machine I purchased, and when I made this discovery I was still within the return/exchange period.  Although I really enjoy the Office Pulser, the things I dislike about it are having to fill that water tank every day (which I can only manage with a funnel or else water splashes all over the place) and the fact that there's no way to tell how much water is left in the tank without removing the top of the machine.  There's a fabulous instant hot water dispenser on the machine that would be great for making hot tea or hot chocolate, except that it drains too much water out of the tank.  Plus, there's a little water softening filter thingy attached to the hose inside the water tank that I'm supposed to change every 300 lattes or so.  Who wants to remember to do that?  We're planning to change out the kitchen backsplash one of these days anyway, and Bernie wants to add a pot filler behind the stove, so adding a plumbing line for the espresso machine at the same time should not be a big huge deal.

This is the new EspressoBaby that's on its way, on some UPS truck somewhere between New York and North Carolina, carefully packaged and nestled in foam.  Isn't it beautiful?  I love how it's open at the top of the machine, too, for better visibility as well as aesthetics.  Plumbing the machine is optional, not required, so I can continue to fill the water tank with my funnel until we get around to replacing the backsplash tile.  I want to find some distressed terra cotta subway tiles, I think...  That will be another quest for another day.