A note on Via Corona.  Though the pace feels glacial (and our complaining is torrential), they are making progress…just not enough to share on a weekly basis.  That’s what Instagram is for and if you aren’t following you probably should (@tmhostess, #makeoverviacorona).  So, for a few weeks, we’re going to alternate regular TMH content with house updates.

This week, because we’re still waiting on permits, we all need a drink.

What’s your favorite carpool karaoke? Mine’s a tie between Michelle Obama, and Lin-Manuel Miranda (with serious honorable mentions to Chris Martin and Adele).  I’ll admit that my late night television viewing exists in its entirety of after the fact YouTube videos.  I’m lucky if I make it to 10:00 on a school night.  Golden age of television indeed.

As YouTube viewing is wont to do, TD and I spent a delightful evening  freefalling down the rabbit hole of  back editions of carpool karaoke.  This  lead to watching other James Cordon videos which lead to one in which he enjoys something called an Eastern Standard.

While TD and I make it a rule to order on the low-key end of the libations scale when out I think we are both afraid of how much fun the other one will make), we do enjoy mixing it up a bit within the privacy of our own home where no one can judge us for drinking tin can margaritas and other frothy concoctions.

A little research revealed that the Eastern Standard is made with simple syrup, cucumber juice, a little mint, fresh lime juice and either gin or vodka.

The cucumber juice is made by pulverizing cucumber in either a food processor or blender (I used the Vitamix) and straining out the pulp.

I also made a honey simple syrup because I can’t seem to leave a good thing alone.  Just so you know, those slices of bread in the background were about to be grilled.  We aren’t harboring pigeons in our rental or anything. Though, Gracie the cat did recently catch and release a dragonfly into the house.  Hilarity ensued.  Unless you were the dragonfly.

The results were refreshing though not completely novel in flavor (cucumber, lime and mint being usual suspects when it comes to cocktails).  It was kind of like a mix between a Pimm’s cup (minus the Pimm’s) and a mojito (replace the rum).

The beverage is meant to be served up.  And while we tried a round of it as instructed (in stemless wine glasses because our martini glasses are in storage…just like the rest of our lives), we decided we prefer them over the rocks, just a nidge sweeter than the original recipe with the mint not strained-out.

(dirty) Eastern Standard

adapted from California Bountiful

Ingredients

• 2 oz. vodka
• 1 1/2 tbsp. cucumber juice (see below for instructions)
• 1 1/2 tbsp. lime juice (use fresh)
• 1 tbsp. honey simple syrup (see below for instructions)
• Cucumber slice
• Mint leaves

Instructions

1. Fill cocktail shaker with ice.
2. Combine liquid ingredients.
3. Shake thoroughly.
4. Strain into glass.
5. Add cucumber slice and mint to garnish.
6. Even if you are serving over ice, do the first five–it’ll help mix the ingredients and you’ll look cool.

for cucumber juice

1. Peel and seed two or three cucumbers or six Persian cucumbers.
2. Pulse in food processor or blender until smooth
3. Set a fine-meshed strainer over a bowl.
4. Strain mixture.  Store in air-tight container in fridge for up to a week.

for simple syrup

1. In a small saucepan, stir together 1/2 C water and 1/2 C honey.
2. Bring mixture to a boil.
3. Remove from heat.
4. Allow to cool completely and store in an air tight container in the fridge.

 

November 1st has traditionally marked the first official day of Misanthropic Hostess holiday baking.

Here is what my kitchen looked like on October 31st:

The floors are in, they just finished doing the electrical and, if they can get the space appropriately sheet rocked, drywalled and plastered, the cabinets are supposed to be installed on Saturday.  Then, it’s another couple  of weeks to fabricate the counter tops.  Add another week for tile and appliance installation and best case scenario, we’re looking at the first week of December before I have an operational kitchen.  Of course, nothing in this project has proven to be best case scenario so I’m not going to hold my breath.

And so it goes my friends, that I find myself apologizing in advance for the second year in a row. Please don’t hate me because I don’t have a kitchen.  I promise to make up for it on the back end.  Assuming we’ll ever make it to the back end.

 

TD here.

On October 16, 1793 Marie Antoinette found herself on the business end of the guillotine.  You can look it up.  Just about 173 years later Via Corona’s one and only garage door was installed.  This week, some 223 years after the Queen lost her head, Marie the Garage Door slipped the mortal coil as it were.

Having turned 50 back in March, I share the sadness of similarity with the deceased.  Marie, like many our age, has seen better days.  Creakier and heavier than you’d expect and, if I may be so indelicate, it takes at least two people to get it up.

Marie was old school.  By conservative estimate she weighed in at a sturdy 7 tons.  A broken spring in April put her on the Physically Unable to Perform list, alongside Via Corona’s fireplace and Jaime Garcia.  In recent weeks she’d adopted the temperament of today’s stereotypical college sophomore.  Raised carefully and with great effort, she was entitled, petulant and demanding.   And because we never knew when a whisper, an errant breeze or the simple force of gravity would cause her to come unhinged; crashing back to Earth with guillotine force, any and all immediate surroundings were declared safe spaces.

A brief scan of the Interwebs left us with two replacement options.  Local Mom & Pop garage door shops and the faceless multi-national corporate titan known as BIG GARAGE DOOR.  Hoping to add to Torrance’s local economy, we first opted for Mom & Pop.  Unfortunately, that experience was eerily similar to this scene from Hell or High Water (which is a very enjoyable, highly recommended movie incidentally).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZG44wUm8VA

Alas Mom & Pop offered only the T-bone steak and a baked potato (read: crummy basic garage doors without windows).  Wanting a bit more variety and pizazz, we were pushed into the clammy grips of BIG GARAGE DOOR.

Unlike the Johnny One Note’s at Mom & Pop’s location, the Glory Boys over at BIG GARAGE DOOR came to the house in a sports car with multitudes of catalogs under their blue blazers .  For a price, they can make even your wildest dreams come true.  Provided you dream of garage doors.

After giving Marie the once-over they declared her a relic.  A “danger to herself and others” they sniffed.  “It’s high time we trade her in on a younger model.” they said.

After a brief fling with the first catalog available, we settled on the model you see below.  As expected, she’s younger, sleeker and sexier than her predecessor.  Constructed overseas, she understands only basic commands, but fully comprehends where her bread is buttered.  Unlike Marie, she offers no resistance, operating with the vacuous efficiency of a Stepford Wife . . . wrist, wrist, elbow, elbow, smile, turn, smile.

We’re calling her Melania.

Want more Via Corona?  Visit her home page: Via Corona

 

 

We promised pictures this week.  And so we shall deliver.

The floor guy finished laying the wood parts of the stairs.  Of course they are under cardboard (hence the blue tape) but we’ve been assured that it’s there.  We also had the banister installed.

Gracie the cat loves the stairs.  Or more appropriately, this is where she believes her plot to kill her captives and finally gain freedom will go down.  Silly cat doesn’t understand that crunchies don’t grow on trees.

Working with the iron guy was very cool and I feel unnecessarily proud of the outcome.  I didn’t actually do any of the forging but I did get to visit the workshop.

This doesn’t look like much but for those of you who have been in the house, you understand the gift that is a level sub-floor.  And yes, those two pieces of wood are keeping the boogeyman out.  The haunted house front doors have slowly deteriorated during our tenure.  They no longer close completely and the handset decided to stop working earlier this week.  Good thing we don’t have any thing to steal.

There has also been progress in the powder room.  No more exposed termite guts.

And progress in the laundry.  The room still needs baseboards and another electrical outlet before we can do the full install.  But we have a functional washer and dryer.  Game changer.

Upstairs things are a little more finished.  The floors are in.  Marble in the guest bath.  Oversized tile in the master.  Carpet in the bedrooms (whah whah).

And oil finished oak in the hallways and down the stairs (and someday soon, throughout the downstairs).  When you are living in a construction zone–where all you see is what needs to be done, changed or fixed–it’s easy to lose site of what is beautiful.  These floors are beautiful.

Our current bedtime digs aren’t bad if you ignore the unfinished electrical outlets, face-plateless switches and door frames that need to be sanded and painted (again).  This is also where future guests will lay their heads.  The bedroom features its own en suite and a one of a kind Buddy-the-Cat sleeping companion.  The bad news is that he’ll dig in your hair if you aren’t up by 5:00 AM to feed him.  The good news is that after his first morning meal, he’ll go back to bed with you, lie on your chest with his little fluffy head as close to your nose as possible and share the after vapors of his Royal Canin “aging cat” vittles.

The Ms. closet.  I spend more time here than I should.  I think it’s because this is the only completely finished, clean and organized area in the house right now.  Despite TD’s continued insistence and certain habitual tendencies that support his argument, I am not on the spectrum.  However, I openly admit that the Ms. closet is my version of the Temple Grandin’s  cow hugging machine.

If I had to guess how far along we are in this catastrophe of a project, I’d speculate about 40%.  We’ve owned the house for six months.  They’ve been working on it for five and some change.  We’ve lived in it for going on a month.  And we’re less than half way there.

Stu. Pen. Dous.

In fact, allow me to share with you the status of the rest of the house.

Bombed-out shell of a kitchen with toilet in the middle has been transformed into a  bombed-out shell of a kitchen with old dishwasher in the middle. That box and the mirrored closet door are the second part of our home security system.  Every night we block the way to the laundry room (and garage) with the door and enforce it with the box.

Decorating for Halloween to the tune of Stranger Things is in big this year.  Someone send me a string of lights and we’ll be good to go.  I suspect the upside-down world is Via Corona and it wouldn’t surprise me to find Barb hanging out in the attic.

Speaking of Stranger Things, I need to digress for a moment.

Wheeler household:

Via Corona after we pulled off the river rock:

Hmmmm.

Moving on.  Dining room.  I think the boarded up fireplace gives it that extra special abandoned house je ne sais quoi. Artwork c/o Sloane Blum.

Charming isn’t it?

TD and I are attempting to accept the reality that despite funding this little expedition, we are not (and never have been) in control.   We are well beyond the original estimate of three-to-four months of work.  And for those of you keeping track–still no freakin’ permits on the addition and deck.

I spent the last couple of weekends before we moved into Via Corona attempting to bake-through all the ingredients I had on hand.  While none of the recipes I played with were technically difficult, everything turned out.  And some were even worthy of sharing here.

Like this one.  To be honest, it took me a couple of tries.  The first was in that lovely bundt pan I used for this chocolate sauerkraut cake.  As sometimes happens with fancy pans (and pants), the goods didn’t make it out of the package in one piece.  But, the cake was delicious so I decided to make another attempt using humble loaf pans.  The briefly cooler weather in Southern California had me thinking of fall.  Which of course meant apples and cinnamon.

And some crystallized ginger.  Because remember, trying to use up my supplies.

While it didn’t seem to make much of a different in the outcome, I layered the batter and apples.

Three batter layers and two of apple layers.

All those layers baked up moist on the inside with a nice crunchy skin on the outside.

The crystallized ginger sort of melted into the cake but gave it an extra little something.

I brought a loaf in to work and it was gone by 10:00.

Next week is a smorgasbord of photo updates.  A veritable potpourri if you will.

Also.  It’s October 13, 2016.  Still. No. Permits on the addition.

Ginger Apple Bundt Cake

adapted from Amanda Denton, Bon Apetit, December 1999

Ingredients

• 3 medium Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
• 5 tablespoons plus 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil (TMH note–I like grapeseed oil)
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1 tablespoon grated orange peel
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4-1/2 C crystalized ginger (depending on your spice threshold), chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Oil and flour 12-cup Bundt pan or 2 5X8 (or 9) loaf pans.  If using loaf pans, line with parchment.
2. Mix apple pieces, 5 tablespoons sugar and ground cinnamon in medium bowl.
3. Combine 2 1/2 cups sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, orange juice, orange peel and vanilla extract in large bowl; whisk to blend.
4. Stir flour, baking powder and salt into egg mixture.
5. Stir in chopped ginger.
6. Spoon 1 1/2 cups batter into prepared Bundt pan (use 1/2 C for each loaf pan). Top with half of apple mixture. Cover with 1 1/2 cups batter (again, 1/2 C for each loaf pan). Top with remaining apples, then batter.
7. Bake cake until top is brown and tester inserted near center comes out with moist crumbs attached, about 1 hour 30 minutes for bundt, 40-60 minutes for loaves.
8. Cool cake in pan on rack 15 minutes. Run knife around sides of pan to loosen. Turn cake out onto rack. Cool at least 45 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

Freezes very well when double wrapped in plastic.

 

TD on the ones and twos.

In case you missed it (and you probably did), after the most exhausting build up in renovation history, we finally moved into Via Corona on Monday, September 26th.  More specifically, we moved into two rooms upstairs.  The downstairs still looks like sunny, downtown Aleppo.

Here are some general updates from previous posts . . .

Scene I: Three Signatures 

Our traipsing through the neighborhood in search of signatures for our expansion plans turned out to be – and I think I’m probably understating it here – a complete and utter waste of time.  In their infinite wisdom, Torrance’s five families decided our plans needed to undergo a “full review” which means approval will be granted sometime between Monday, October 3rd and whenever the hell they feel like it.  It’s now October 6th…still no permits.  I prevaricate here because there are no actual answers.  The approval process was, is and remains opaque, abstruse and much, much more depending on exactly what some of those words mean.  Thus, if there are to be eight more weeks of renovation, we should be shooing workmen out of our house just as Santa slides down our cracked and inoperable chimney.

We could whine and cry I suppose and belabor the point (I mean, more than we have to date) or we could allow Don Corleone summarize:

Scenes II & III: The Week Long All-Nighter

Just days prior to our move in date it was fair to say that Via Corona was not accepting visitors.  No flooring, no paint, no baseboards, no electricity, no running water.  At these points if you’re like me (and I know I am), the inclination is to go on a rant reminiscent of Howard Beale in Network – raging against the machine and all that.  Feel free to watch this in case you are unfamiliar. (Also, true fact – Peter Finch, an Australian, won a posthumous Oscar for Best Actor for this performance here.  The only other actor to win a posthumous Oscar was Heath Ledger for one of the Batman movies – also an Australian.).

Of course, channeling your inner-Peter Finch does no good because in the contractor-contractee relationship, power is illusory.   Complaining only makes it worse.  It’s basically the DMV covered in gypsum dust.  And to keep our Via Corona omelette spit-free, and to keep this tortured analogy moving, we must think happy thoughts and maintain a pleasant persistence.  Mustn’t we?  TL/dr: Know your role and shut your mouth . . . lest you anger the monster and end up in a cornfield in Ohio.

Scene IV: It’s Not What I Want,  It’s What I Can Give You

Thus far in our residence, we’ve met two new neighbors.  Both were nice enough, although each came with an agenda.  One wanted our workmen to stop parking near the turn off to our street.  The other wanted us to cut down some trees (which we may or may not own) so as not to obstruct their view of the Southland.  Time was, neighbors welcomed you with apple pies and invitations to block parties.  Instead we’ve gotten the smarmy rebel without a clue from Die Hard.  Suffice to say my reaction to both “neighborly visits” was similar to the befuddled look below on the face of the late, great Hans Gruber (RIP Alan Rickman).

Scene V: Dig If You Will The Pictures

Finally, it seems cruel, Dear Reader, after you’ve come this far, to not reward you with a few photos.  I warn, there isn’t much to see at this point–from a stuff to look at standpoint we’re only about a third of the way through the game (but trust us, the new plumbing and electrical are top notch even if you can’t see them).  Suffice to say we’re happy in our new home and looking forward to life in the Hollywood Riviera.  Of course, you’re all welcome, just not anytime soon unless sleeping in a cardboard box is your thing.

Guest bath (currently everyone’s bath): Just pretend there is a cool frameless shower door already installed and finished baseboards.  Squinting helps.

Floors and doors: Behold the splendor that is an eight-foot ceiling (they started at 6’8″)!  Cool new doors, hardware. LED lights and European oak floors.  Filthy attic hatch.

Al fresco dining: Haves:  fridge, grill, view.  Have Nots: kitchen, any means to prepare food other than the grill.  At this point the haves are the clear winner.

Views:  Speaking of.  This was shot off the deck on the day we moved in (quite possibly the hottest of the year).  Shannon doesn’t have a long lens so this is pretty much as the naked eye sees it.

There you have it. Us, living the dream. Or more appropriately, the cat nap.

 

This week was the big Via Corona move.  As of today we have two working toilets, one working shower, curtains up in the guest bedroom…which is currently our bedroom and a WHOLE lot of work to be done.  The only evidence I have to show for all of this is a single blurry picture of the Kitchen God’s current daytime living situation (and evidence that my Spanish is muy malo):

As such, this week’s post is about pumpkin.  Yay.

Let’s get this one out of the way, shall we?  This time of year it seems like you can’t turn a corner without running into something pumpkin flavored.  I’ve always assumed it’s more about what the pumpkin represents–crisp air–falling leaves–blah blah blah–than people truly going gaga over a gourd.

Then again, I definitely missed the squash gene.  So, what do I know?

But, as TD likes to remind me, sometimes it’s a good idea to stick to the fairways and greens and give the people what they want.  This year the Misanthropic Hostess token pumpkin recipe comes in the form of coffee cake.

With a pecan streusel.

I will admit, it smelled pretty delicious cooking.  Which brings me to the other thing I suspect about this pumpkin crazy business–that it’s the spice array that actually gets people going.  What is more lovely that cinnamon, nutmeg and maybe a little allspice and ginger if you’re really into it?  I heard somewhere but am too lazy to actually look it up, that someone  attempted to bring a lawsuit against Starbucks when they found out that pumpkin spice lattes don’t actually have pumpkin in them.

Huh? Doesn’t everyone experience that thing where around Thanksgiving they purchase a little one-ounce McCormick’s tub of pumpkin pie spice just in case only to have it join the three or four other tubs of the same spice in the drawer because they’d done the same the year before…and the year before that?

Nope? Just me?

And besides, who would put pumpkin in a latte?  That’s just weird.

I promise, this coffee cake has pumpkin in it.  Though between us chickens, you could sub-in pureed butternut squash or even yams and no one would be the wiser.

Pumpkin Coffee Cake with Brown Sugar-Pecan Streusel

Slightly adapted from Williams Sonoma who adapted it from Home Baked Comfort by Kim Laidlaw.

Ingredients

For the streusel:

• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• Pinch of kosher salt
• 6 Tbs. (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
• 1 cup chopped pecans, lightly toasted (see note below)

For the batter:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 8 Tbs. (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup sour cream

Directions:

1. Preheat an oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan or a 9-inch cake pan with 3-inch sides or 2 8X5 inch loaf pans.
2. To make the streusel, in a bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. Toss in the butter and, using 2 table knives or a pastry cutter, cut it into the dry ingredients until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Alternatively, whir the ingredients in a food processor. Stir in the pecans. Set aside.
3. To make the batter, in a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat together the butter and brown sugar on medium-high speed until well combined. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the pumpkin puree and sour cream and mix with the spatula. Stir in the flour mixture. The batter will be quite thick.
4. Spread half of the batter in the prepared pan. Sprinkle half of the streusel over the batter. Dollop the remaining batter over the streusel and spread the thick batter as best you can. Top with the remaining streusel. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool for about 15 minutes. Remove the sides from the pan and slide the cake onto the rack.

One of the purposes of this blog is to document the process for perpetuity.  You had to know it wasn’t going to be sexy marble tile and gleaming kitchen appliances all the time over here at Via Corona.  Heck, even the Jackson 5 occasionally let Tito or Randy have a solo.  So, welcome to the master closet.

There is give and take in choosing an older home over new construction.  Older homes often have more character and better bones (though the jury is out if Via Corona is anything more than Eddie Haskell with osteoporosis).  Unfortunately older homes can also mean lower ceilings, narrower hallways and a serious dearth of closet space.  I can’t for the life of me figure out how people in pictures from 50 years ago always look so put together while having teeny tiny closets.

To give credit where it’s due, Via Corona’s reach-in closets were actually quite nice in their original state.  But, there was no walk-in in the master and, in today’s market, a closet the size of a  NYC studio apartment is de rigueur.  That’s why in a decision akin to grabbing a package of peanut M&Ms off the rack at check-out, we decided to add a walk-in closet.

Luckily, the master reach-in and the reach-in in the small bedroom next door shared a wall.  As the smallest bedroom in the house, we knew that would be TD’s office.  Offices don’t really need closets and with three other bedrooms we decided to make the conversion.

We were very proud of ourselves for having done the “demo”  on the wall between the closets (we knocked down some wafer-thin plywood).  Turns out this was gateway destruction followed by the foyer ceiling, culminating in that marathon day with Via Corona’s exterior and a jack hammer.

The only thing we’re destroying now is our retirement.

The existing closet geography wouldn’t have been deep enough to include the “walk” in “walk-in” so we borrowed additional square footage from the office.  This also meant moving the door and the air vent.

As with most things Via Corona related, one thing lead to another.

But, all that trouble did help to create a modest walk-in closet about six feet wide and ten feet deep.

In an attempt to re-coup a little of the dough spent on vent moving, we decided we could install the organizational finishes ourselves.  Oh the hours I spent dreaming and scheming with graph paper and an Ikea Pax catalog.

TD will claim otherwise, but I really did have the best intentions of making this a his and hers closet.  But, when we lost some square footage to a vent that couldn’t be moved, I made my move for a mistress only master closet.

TD here . Dear Reader, please note that the upper right-hand part of the drawing above (the part that looks like an “L”) is where the vent is located.  So, unless I was planning on cramming one consistent Jim Harbaugh-inspired daily outfit into the corner, my threads were never going to see the inside of the walk-in.  I knew this pretty early on — like when we were destroying the wall between the two closets and Shannon lay down in the middle of the space and whispered “precious…precious” in a creepy voice I’d never heard her use.

Like the special place Cardinals Baseball, Rocky movies and the entire Stevie Wonder catalog occupy in my life, this closet (and the D-Day-like planning of same) makes my wife indescribably, incomprehensibly, blissfully happy.  I assume if I can’t find her it’s a safe bet she’ll be found luxuriating in her closet grinning gleefully and whirling daintily like Maria from West Side Story.

I’m totally cool with that.  Miss America can just resign and all that.

I’m told my clothes will reside down the hall in a Gronkulla or Dagstorp or some other ridiculous sounding, 51% correctly-assembled Ikea furniture.  And just like your fantasy football team, your kids and any hand of Texas Hold ‘Em poker you’ve ever played in your life I’ll pretend like I care if you want me to.

Shannon has also informed me that the “Precious” in the title of this post is in reference to a series of J.R.R. Tolkien books I’ve never read and movies I’ve never seen (as my friend Marv would say, “I have seen the book though”) and not the movie Precious based on the novel Push by Sapphire (which I’ve also never seen nor read).  So there’s that.

Shannon here. Lest anyone think I’ve kicked TD out of the closet without consequence, allow me to show you the price exacted for total closet domination:

The 98 pieces of Ikea closet fixings currently residing in our garage aren’t going to build themselves.  And TD has just informed me that he will be washing his hair in his EIGHT FOOT SHOWER for the next two weeks.  That leaves the kitchen Gods and they refuse to wear safety googles (and don’t have thumbs), so I’m not counting on them either.

It’ll just be me, my Allen wrench, and a power drill. Pretty much exactly how I like things.

Want to read more about our renovation adventures? Go here: Via Corona

Not to be confused with her super power.  We’re pretty sure that’s making money disappear.

Last week I mentioned our super secret storage weapon: the laundry room/appliance garage.  Today we’ll take a deeper dive.  Warning–this is a post about a laundry room.  This post is ridiculous.  It’s most likely as boring as it sounds.  I won’t be offended if you decide to click away and watch cat videos.

Below is the best picture I could find of the laundry room “before. ” In it I (your friendly photographer) am standing in the entrance to the garage.  Your eyes do not deceive you, the floor to this room used to be about three inches lower than the kitchen.  Apparently, like seat belts and smoke-free environments, level flooring was more of a suggestion than requirement in the 1960s.

In the original layout, the steps to the  doorway  to the garage ran across the entire width of the room (see below).  There was also no security door between the garage and main house…just a flimsy hollow-core door with a privacy lock like you’d find on a bathroom door.  Also in the original, the doorway next to the washer and dryer was the hot water heater and the one opposite was a built-in cabinet.

In the new and improved version, we moved the door leading to the garage to where the cabinet was previously.  We closed up the old entry to the garage along with the door to the hot water heater which now has garage access.  By stacking the washer and dryer, we create about 58 square feet of storage via shelving units.  No detail too small, we’ll also have pet supply storage and feeding space (Kitchen God Command Center).

Alas, there is no design board for this room.  Don’t interpret that as a signal this room isn’t important.  Considering we’ve spent every fourth Friday night since we sold our house at the laundromat, we actively fantasize about when this room will be completed and we can stop scrounging for quarters.  Like jury duty or the DMV, the laundromat is a great equalizer of humanity.  If you need one, you better have quarters and enough laundry soap…doesn’t matter who you are.  We’ve met some very interesting characters along the way.  But, I’m tired of defending my laundry against over-eager wash mistresses (and misters) and stressing about whether there will be enough dryers when the time comes (and yes, I recognize that having anxiety over laundry speaks to an issue greater than not having a laundry room…at this point the laundry is just the tip of the anxiety iceberg).

The washer and dryer we purchased are giant.  Like, could serve the entire Duggar family giant.  Like, we’re kind of embarrassed because there are only two regular members of our household giant. Okay, in reality, they’re just normal large capacity appliances but our recent time at the laundromat has us very motivated to never, ever have to go again.  This meant purchasing something that could do king-sized linens.  I can’t wait to get crazy with a set of sheets and some Oxi Clean in the privacy of my own home.

As for the storage, this is where the small kitchen appliances will live.  It will also serve as a sort of butler’s pantry housing  oversized platters some of my more exotic baking knick knacks.  Oh, and it’ll house my rather large collection of vases, vessels and candlesticks.

I told you this post was ridiculous!

Want to read more about our renovation adventures? Go here: Via Corona

Lost in the maze of room specific posts?

Want to map out where you’d like to stay when you come visit?

Potential burglar who is trying to figure out the address so you can come over and realize there is nothing but an old bathtub and demolished cabinetry to burgle?

Let us help you understand the lay of the land.

Via Corona, downstairs, at move-in:

Via Corona, upstairs at move in:

Via Corona, downstairs plans:

Via Corona upstairs plans: