In fact, he emailed the other day, wanting to replace the battery in my smoke alarm. The last time he was here he spotted the dangling, broken battery and lectured me. He was looking for a day away from his home, so I compiled a list of little nitty gritty things for him to do; thresholds, replace broken glass in window, knobs (why not, it was a task for me that I never got around to doing), kitchen shelves, a coat rack and replace battery.
I couldn't find guidelines or standards for knobs although learned from my BIL kitchen installer 2 inches down and 2 inches in for a door front. I have seen many many different options in stores and pinterest and magazines; knobs on upper cabinets, handles on base. Knobs on pantry doors; long handles sideways on drawers. So many options. No rules. I finally chose the IKEA Svep knob for all the doors and drawers. And handles for the 36" long drawers. I liked the wrought iron look of them. And although I have had the knobs since Christmas and the task was meant for me, I only started measuring this morning. I quickly turned it over to contractor. He didn't have a full range of drill bits so we took a run to Lowes for some bits and material. And, you see below, I need to take another 4hour trip to IKEA for one more package. I'm short two knobs. (I had bought the IKEA drill template and opted to go 4 holes down, which was the center of the drawer frame, not quite 2 inches)
The knobs work, I no longer need to worry about grimy finger markings on the side of the drawers and doors.
While we knocked off a few other things on the list, my task list grew:
Along with having to buy paint for the baseboards, I'll need stain for the thresholds he made for me today. Two entrances into kitchen, two thresholds. He cut and beveled the oak pieces. And I get to stain them. I'm leaning towards a black/dark gray stain, to tie into the smokey gray tile.
I have been searching for old barn wood planks to use as upper shelving above the sink. So happens my contractor has an old barn on his lot and he dug up this long piece of wood, just long enough to cut into two shelves. He thinks they are 100 years old. My job, scrub and clean the 100 year old dust and chicken poop off of them. And then gloss them up with tung oil. While he beveled the thresholds, I scrub the soon to be reclaimed wood. I scrubbed and watered until my fingers froze. These guys are really heavy and cleaning up nicely. More on the shelving to come.
And a "Necessity is the mother of invention" idea; tired of my small vestibule and pile of jackets on the butterfly chair, I decided a row of hooks on my living room wall was needed. Got the wood up today. More painting to do. UGH. Contractor pre-drilled the hook holes in the wood for me, so when I paint over it, I can still see the markings. No excuses to delay. This idea just materialized the other day, so am anxious to see how the living room evolves ...
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