Antique Kitchen Stove...so cool!

I really love how my kitchen is turning out. My antique stove/cooktop is one of my favorite parts. The inspiration for it came from this article from the Good Time Stove Company. If you have the funds, by all means utilize a company like this to fully restore and update an old stove. If you just like the look but don't care much about reusing antiques you can get really awesome reproductions from several companies, one being Elmira Stove Works. If you're like me, however, which means you have virtually no budget and you are interested in treading lightly on the Earth, go with the following method:

Find an old antique stove that you think looks really cool and that your budget can afford. I found our awesome 1930's antique gas stove for $25 on our local classifieds website, KSL. If you aren't in Utah check craigslist and your local classifieds. You can also check at salvage yards and antique stores. For this method, it doesn't need to work. In fact, its better if it doesn't work because you can probably get it for cheaper. It can be gas, electric, or even a woodburning stove. Take a look at it to see how easy it would be to alter it in someway to fit a modern cooktop. With ours, all we had to do was remove some metal plates and it was the perfect size to fit a 2 burner, electric, smooth surface cooktop (also purchased off of KSL for $100). I can't give really specific details here because each stove will be different. Some you may have to cut some metal or figure out a way to fill in gaps. We just used a little bit of sheet metal, spray-painted black, and screwed around the edges to fill in the small gaps we encountered. Basically, think of the stove as cabinetry. If you purchased a standard kitchen cabinet and a cooktop you would have to make a cutout in the countertop to fit the cooktop anyway. Make sure there is some kind of opening in the back for the wiring.

That's it! Connect the electical and then use the cooktop for all of your surface cooking. Use the baking oven compartments as storage cabinets. I use one of mine for spices (nice and accessible right where I cook), one for my bread drawer, and the other for storing my plastic wrap, baggies, and such. I have a separate wall oven for baking (see earlier blog entry).

I'd also like to point out a few more details from the photo. The pot rack was purchased at an antique shop for $12. Notice I only use stainless steel or cast iron cookware; none of that nasty Teflon for me, thank you very much. The open shelving consists of Tryggve shelving from IKEA, cut to size and finished with pure tung oil, and Hall brackets, also from IKEA. By using unfinished shelves, metal brackets, and the pot rack I was able to avoid VOC's completely for my upper not-cabinetry. The lights attached to the bottom of the shelf are from, you guessed it, IKEA! (notice I haven't hidden the wires yet). The small white cabinet and butcher block top are also from IKEA, with legs instead of a toe-kick to make it look like a freestanding piece. The blue table in the middle with the matching chair is another antique. I purchased the table and 4 chairs for $30 off of craigslist. It is in need of some serious stripping and refinishing which will be the subject of another blog entry sometime in the future.

And for fun, since we just finished the holidays--when I watched "A Christmas Story" this year I noticed that Ralphie's mom cooks on a stove almost identical to this one. Take a look! I thought it was pretty exciting.

A Tile Tale

This is my kitchen floor and I absolutely love it! We installed it ourselves a few months ago using a crate of miscellaneous tiles purchased from a tile store for $25. (They were selling them individually for $.20 a piece for crafts--you know, those cutesy sayings people put on them with vinyl letters?) Most of these tiles were large, high quality, porcelain tiles, typically in the range of $5-$8 a square foot. We didn't have quite enough for all 200 plus square feet so we purchased 2 boxes of new tile from Home Depot for $50 to round it all out. So $75 dollars for 214 sq. ft. of tiles comes out to about $.35 a square foot. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Be warned, this is VERY labor intensive. I spent the large part of 2 whole days working out the design scheme. As the pattern is random, it all has to be laid out dry to make sure it will fit and look the way you want it too. As we had many different tile sizes, we had to cut a lot of pieces to fill in the various sized gaps created. Caveat: try and make sure all of your tiles are the same thickness or you'll end up with some uneven places in the finished floor (we learned this the hard way).

If you have the time, you could do this even cheaper. I called around to a few tile installers asking for scraps. Most of them said that when finished with a job, they would have several buckets of tile cuts and remnants destined for the landfill. They were more than willing to have me come and haul their garbage away after them. I would imagine that it wouldn't take too long to collect enough for even a very large area. Of course, now you're dealing with even smaller fragments and would really have to create almost a mosaic. Could be very cool. I may try this in the basement bathroom and will, of course, let you know how it turns out.

Think Spring, Not Snow!

So, after a rather long hiatus due to having a baby the end of October, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Years', well, you know how it goes. My resolution is to blog more this year and since I received a new camera for Christmas I should be able to do a much better job of it.

As I sit in my nice warm cabin, heated by our amazing geothermal heat pump, with several feet of snow outside I am browsing through my Seeds of Change catalog I received in the mail today and thinking of spring! We have much to do to get our virgin land ready for cultivation. The Rocky Mountain soil needs a lot of amending to make it ideal for gardening. Particularly, it needs LOTS of organic matter. Many of our neighbors have horses and I'm hoping to beg lots of manure from them. I'm planning on getting a pig in the spring as well, provided I can get some kind of shelter in place by then. I've read that their rooting instinct makes them great at clearing land while spreading their own manure at the same time. The only problem with that is that I'm so anxious to get things growing, I don't know if I can wait another season. I want to do things properly though. Not like my strawberry patch at my last house. I put it in quickly without clearing the plot thoroughly and the grass grew back between all of my strawberry plants and eventually choked them out.

And deer. I'm pretty sure I need a deer fence out here if I actually want to keep anything growing. And I may need a windbreak too. Such a challenge this is going to be but I'm excited to take it on.

Here is a recent photo out my front door. I think it is just beautiful here!

Reuse, Recycle- My Oven!

We finally installed our double oven this weekend and I love it! We are on a super tight budget but also want to be as green and sustainable as we can--the solution? Reclaimed and second-hand items. We got this double wall oven for just $30 off of KSL (our local online classifieds) The cheapest wall oven cabinet at IKEA was in the $400 range and would still have been loaded with formaldehyde and VOCs and plastics (though IKEA is better than most US companies. (See the IKEA way) We purchased this armoire, again off of KSL, for $200 and my husband altered the interior to fit the oven and built the shelves to the side for all of my baking pans. We were told it was solid wood. Turns out it does have some particleboard in it but the beauty of getting used furniture is that it has had a chance to off gas in someone elses home! The piece next to the armoire is an antique, made at the turn of the century before Americans became chemical happy and before plastics. It is made completely of wood and metal and it has such character! With antiques, however, you do need to be on the lookout for lead paint. If you can't afford the new green products, reclaimed is the way to go. In fact, in many ways, reclaimed is even more sustainable because it does not require the manufacture of anything new and reduces the load on our landfills. More to come on our mosaic tile floor made from cheap tile remnants, open shelving as a way to reduce materials as well as off-gassing, and using natural materials (like lots of baskets!).

IKEA Stainless Tumbler!

I was so excited about those stainless cups I found, for what seemed to me a reasonable price, and then look what I stumbled upon at IKEA today? A stainless steel cup for only $1.99! Its called a SEMVIK tumbler. The trick is, it isn't located with the other dishes. Its part of the bathroom collection, so you have to look by all of the other bathroom accessories. Hope this is helpful to someone and you can get an even better deal than I did.

BPA-free Kid Cups!

So, I just ordered these cups yesterday. I've been trying to gradually get rid of as much plastic from my home as possible (If you want to know why, one of the reasons is BPA. For info on this toxin click here) but with a bunch of young kids having only glass and ceramic is exasperating at times! When we were in India several years ago all the dishes were stainless steel but I've had a hard time finding them in the states. A year or two ago I found a bunch of stainless steel bowls at the dollar store (they are actually pet bowls LOL!) and bought 12 of them but the only cups I've found were really expensive restaurant/bar shakers that weren't a good size for kids. I was so excited to find these. I ordered 12. I must confess my other motivation; in our new kitchen there is a lot of open shelving. Stainless will look a lot better than plastic! If you are looking for other stainless options for sippy cups, water bottles, etc. here are a few good links- The Safe Sippy, Soft Landing, and Klean Kanteen.

The Green Building Center

So, for anyone in Utah looking for green building ideas you've got to go to The Green Building Center in Salt Lake. I love going there just to see the quality craftsmanship of the products and the staff are quite knowledgeable and friendly. They also have a great selection of books that aren't typically available at local bookstores or libraries. So far for our house, I've bought some American Pride no VOC paint, some soy gel paint stripper (that I've not used yet as I'm pregnant and while its less toxic than the typical stuff it still says it causes reproductive harm. If anyone knows of a truly non-toxic stripping method that works PLEASE let me know! They have an infrared stripping machine. Anyone ever tried that?), some dark tung oil and citrus solvent that I've used on a cutting board and plan to use on refinishing an antique table (once I get it stripped!), as well as some OSMO Polyx-oil that we used as a finish on our reclaimed oak floor. They also sell green fiber cellulose insulation. We've used a ton of this but, I have to admit, we got ours from Home Depot. It was cheaper and they let us use the blower for free. Be sure to check out this great resource if you are in Utah. Coming soon...info on our geothermal heat pump and my adventures installing a greener kitchen from scratch.