Improvements in and around our 1909 house in St. Paul, MN
As someone with too many hobbies and tools and projects, it's no surprise that space is my main limiting factor around the house and shop. It's probably for the best that space limitations help to moderate my project acquisition. Still, the garage is hitting maximum density, and I'd love to have a place to keep some of the things that I don't need to keep handy, like the extra set of car tires, and seasonal things like the mower and lawn furniture.
Enter the storage shed project.
Today’s project is building new bindings for my ~20 year old Atlas snowshoes. They haven’t seen much use for a few years now, and when I got them out for an upcoming weekend trip I realized the main binding part was broken in several places. Apparently the plastic used to make the main binding piece wasn’t meant to last this long.
We have this old picnic table that was a hand-me-down from one of my neighbors. They gave it to me several years ago, and it was pretty far from new then.
I finally finished the multi-phase kitchen update started in earnest 5 years ago. Way back in phase 1, the plan was to remove the former back door and make it a permanent wall, and I even planned to do that the next year. Well, it's done now anyway.
This is where we left off with the refrigerator area of the kitchen:
When i bought my house, the worst part of the kitchen was a near-total lack of cabinets. I mean, besides the 4 doors to the kitchen and the lack of home for the refrigerator. But aside from that, cabinets.
Built in 1909, the house likely had free-standing cabinets for most of its life. By the time I bought it the only cabinets aside from the pantry were on the wall around and above the sink.
This is how much storage and counter space we had around the stove:
My house was built in 1909, and i'm absolutely sure that from about 1909 to 1930 or so it was a perfectly delightful and usable kitchen. After that it went downhill because here's the thing: it was never designed with a place to put a refrigerator.
This is a common problem with houses of that era and earlier. They had an ice box in the back hallway that stored perishables and a pantry for the dry goods, and the whole kitchen could be dedicated to utensil storage and work space. (Probably with standalone cabinetry, but that's a story for phase 2).
