johnder

Wow the countertops look really nice. Who did you end up getting to install them?

I have been using FD for about 2 years and overall I am very happy with it. I have been very skeptical about not having control over picking the items out and possibly be stuck with less than par ingredients. But those trepidations have passed. I order on average once every 8 days for my wife and myself, each order fluctuating between 75 and $100. I have ordered the whole range of items, vegetables, cheese, fruits, meats, fish, even whole fish and can't recall when I have been unhappy with its quality. Occasionally items will not be packed with the order, which averages out to about once ever 4th or 5th order. They will promptly credit your account with the missing item no questions asked. Of course if you desperately needed that item for a meal that day you could be screwed. The other occasional problem is although they pack things very well, it can get jostled in transit. One time I had a box of grape tomatoes that opened and a few of them got crushed by a melon. I called them and they gave me a credit for the tomatoes and even gave me a credit for items that had tomato juice over them. (which I didn't ask for, they offered) Their cheese selection is amazing, and got only better once Artisinal started offering its select cheeses. Meats and fish and really good and blow the doors off anything I can find in our neighborhood. (Park Slope) This is especially apparent when it comes to produce. Given what’s available in the local Korean market and what they offer it is really a no-brainer. They arrive ripe, healthy and definitely cheaper than the corner store. Between the orders from FD and my weekly trips to the greenmarkets, that supplies 99% of our food. If you have trepidations about ordering FD, I suggest you put them aside and try at least one order. If you don't like it, don't order again. For the most part, it will probably be cheaper than buying stuff at your local supermarket.

I just started planting a few things in my own garden this year as well. While it is still early to see any major results, my lettuce and tomatoes are both doing really well. One thing that I would suggest that I have had good success with is radishes. I bought a pack of radish seeds and basically threw a handfull of them into some loose soil and in about 5 days I had some seedlings. I thinned out the plants to keep about 4" spacing and 17 days later I had radishes. It is a great quick crop, and if you plant new seeds every 10 days, you will have a pretty constant supply of radishes to eat. We love sitting in the backyard eating them with some good butter and salt and a nice pilsner to wash it down.

Once we got all the demo done, we found that the back of the house had a bad sill plate which was water damaged and in a place or two termite eaten. So what is one to do? Jack up the back of the house and replace it of course! We used these handy jacks to take the load off the back wall enough so we could temporarily shore it up while we replaced the bad timbers. These are the jacks we used and after it was jacked and the temporary supports put in, we started removing the sheating.

Ok, ok! Sorry, I spent the entire weekend working on the house. It's hard to slack off at home when there is so much work to do. (It is much easier to slack off at my day-job) So let us pick up where we left off. As the demo continued, we started gather a huge pile of debris. We ended up throwing most of the wood debris out the window into the back yard as you can see: As far as all the tile, plaster debris we ended up just bagging it all and throwing it out. In New York City a dumpster is a very expensive proposition. It will run $800-1000 bucks for a 5 cubic yard dumpster, so in the hopes of saving money we used a clause in the NYC department of sanitation guidelines. This allows you to dispose of 6 garbage bags of construction debris as long as they are securely bundled and weight less than 60 pounds each. (We have pickup twice a week) The tile / plaster demo ended up consuming almost 110 contractor bags worth of debris. Needless to say, the garbagemen dreaded pickup at our house. The demo continued, here is a picture of where the sink used to be, when we started the demo we found some remnants of old lead supply pipe behind the sinks, which you can barely make out in the corner of this photo. Here is a picture of some more termite damage. This was in the wall that seperates the old bathroom and the dining room. The big drain pipe you see if a drain from the roof. Yes -- that is a lead downspout connecting to a cast iron pipe.

Good luck Marmish -- just remember, as you can see, once you start -- there is no going back

We have thought about making out kitchen more hospitible, but at this point we are trying to make it at the point where it is somewhat difficult to live with, as it helps with the motivation. Luckily it is just the two of us, and our somewhat anxious dog. (picture left) So far he seems to be dealing with all the commotion pretty well.

Thanks, it went through quite a few iterations to get to this stage. This was another big black hole of time, researching cabinets. We looked around for custom, semi-custom and stock cabinet options, an found things we liked and disliked about all of them. In the end, we ended up with Kraftmaid cabinets -- cherry in a style called Deveron Autum Blush. I will post pictures to them later in the series. We mainly picked them because of the range of options the offered, and price. We got a really good deal on them and even with the upgrade of full-plywood construction and full extension drawer slides it didn't kill out budget. I will post more details about the cabinets later. It will be the same height througout the kitchen, the pennisula included. The plan for that area will mostly be the area we will have the espresso machine I love, which has been sitting in a box for the past few months. Also, it is hard to tell from the stuff I posted, but the cabinet directly to the right of the fridge is a microwave base cabinet. This cabinet will contain the microwave, which is convienent because 99% of the stuff going into the microwave comes out of the fridge. Also, my wife -- the baker wanted an area she can have all her baking stuff, so this will be her area. The kitchen-aid mixer and sheetpans will be stored in this area. Oh boy -- we are still "discussing" [arguing] about this item. I really want a quartz countertop, while my wife wants possibly butcherblock. As of this date, we still don't have a decision on the countertops. ←

Well currently it doesn't exist, but the plan is to carve out a small space next to the steps you see in the plan. The steps actually head up to the 2nd floor, and down to the basement. We are going to take the slice that is near those steps and put a small 1/2 bath along with a coat closet. We have a full bath upstairs which we are using in the meantime. john {edit: typo}

So we were happily demolishing the walls and behind the first corner we opened up (the one behind the picture above) we found some evidence of --- termites. We had a pretty extensive house inspection, along with a dedicated termite inspection since the house inspector found slight termite damage in the basement. Both of them said it was damage from several years ago and although they didn't think it was serious, they couldn't tell the damage behind closed walls. Well -- behold the damage behind closed walls. This was found in the parting wall that seperated the kitchen corner from the dining room. Luckily this damage was in a place that it could be repaired and wasn't structural. No signs of live critters though, which is a good thing. We ended up treating all the replacement wood going in with borates, which termites don't like, so hopefully this will prevent the nasties from coming back. On a brighter side, right around this time, my wife found a great deal on the appliances we wanted. For the fridge we ended up getting Jenn-Air french door bottom freezer (model JFC2087H). We needed a counter depth model since we had a existing drain pipe which was behind where it was going to be installed. If we got a deeper model it would have ended up protruding too much into the aisle. For the stove, we were torn between a Viking 6 top, or the Wolf (sub-zero) 6 top. After poking and prodding both in the showroom we decided on the Wolf. Mainly because my parents have a 6 top Viking, and over the past 3 years have replaced the oven hinges twice, and the igniters twice, which concerned me. There was a noticeable difference between the door hinges as you could expect, and the Wolf design seems much sturdier and well made. I also liked the fact you can get the Wolf with the "french-top", but at this point we couldn't spend the extra $1000 for it, so we got it with the 6top, +griddle option. For the dishwasher, it was a no-brainer. We ended up ordering the Bosch SHU 66C05 We currently have this sitting at the dealer waiting for delivery. Hopefully I will see them delivered shortly -- but who knows. Anyway, more pictures later. P.S. Don't worry SWISS_CHEF, I practically lived with a mask on during that time.

So given the new plan in hand, my wife started researching appliances and I along with some friends started the demolition. As you can see from the previous pictures, the bottom 1/2 of the wall was covered in subway tile, while the upper 1/2 was old-school plaster/lathe. We started by pulling the stove out and working on the east wall, trying to determine what lies under the plaster/tile. I am not sure how many of you have had the pleasure of removing plaster/lathe before but it is the messiest work you can imagine. Dust goes everywhere. Even with a good quality respirator, we were inhaling our fair share of dust. Turns out the tile was installed over a mortar bed, on top of metal lathe. Not the most exciting thing to remove, but the razor sharp metal made it very interesting.

I need to get back to my day job, I will post more details/pics later when I have some time.

The requirements of our new kitchen were ambitious. The back of the house, contains a great backyard. Unfortunately as you can see on the plan, it is accessible from the from of the house via a pathway, or the door on the side of the house off the dining room. Which would be hard to navigate with trays of food for outside dining. That said we wanted a door to the backyard from the kitchen, as well as bigger windows to let more natural light in. We wanted a island or peninsula that the two of us could eat breakfast at, or sit and talk while the other is cooking during our nightly meals. We wanted a large ~48" 6 top stove. We wanted copious cabinets, containing mostly drawers for storage of kitchen items. We wanted it to be big, but not too big that we would loose too much of the dining room. We wanted the bathroom moved out of the kitchen area and replaced with a 1/2 bath further forward in the house. After several iterations of the house design with our architect, we came up with the final plan.

As you can see, the kitchen was really pathetic. 7'8 x 8' and the bathroom for the first floor was only reachable through the kitchen. Sad. Here are some pictures of the kitchen and bathroom. (this was during the closing walkthrough, the previous owners items were still in the kitchen)

Last fall my wife and I purchased a small house in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Given the outrageous house prices in this neighborhood, we settled on a single-family frame house that, well -- left a kitchen to be much desired. I have a fairly extensive background in construction, both from work when I was younger, as also having to do with the fact my parents totally gutted their brownstone when I was a teenager, doing all the work themselves. There is nothing like living in a construction zone for 6 years to appreciate a home renovation. That said, myself, my wife and a few very very good friendshave been gutting and renovating the kitchen for the past few months with some pretty impressive progress. We have been living without a kitchen for approximately 4 months now, surviving on a slop sink, fridge and microwave for our eating (and tons of freshdirect food). I have been taking pictures along the way -- it is quite a show. Given that work has slowed down recently (I failed to mention I have a day job, so this work is taking place after work and 3 day weekends), I thought by maybe opening up this process to everyone would give me some new found encouragement to pick up the pace. With that said, I start with a old floor plan the realtor gave us showing the first floor layout (it is a 2 story, + finished attic building)

I will be curious to know your opinion of that dishwasher. During our kitchen renovation, (which is still going on) we originally purchased the Asko 3250 and only after having paid for it, did we hear from two friends who have 3XXX series Askos and have had nothing but problems with them. Both had 2 repair calls on them in about 14 months, and one of them even though they are the type to rinse of the plates before putting them in the washer, have complained about the dishes not getting clean. While we were attracted to the eco-friendly design of it, we got cold feet and switched back to our original choice the Bosch SHU66 series.

The Testa Squab Liver Ravioli Anything he has on the menu with lambs tongue.

I have always prepared sweetbreads the same way and very happy with the results. I poach them in a light stock until just firm, letting them cool in the cooking liquid. Remove any membrane that is on it, the ones I get tend to not have many, so it is a quick trim. I then weight them down overnight in the fridge until I am ready to prepare them. I think this is a matter of taste personally. Some people light the unweighted lighter, flufflier texter, while others prefer a firmer bite. I am of the latter myself. For searing the off, I learned a trick some time ago that I still use to this day -- Wondra flour. A quick dredge in some wondra and then a sear in some melted butter will make an amazingly crisp product. If you really want a treat, try larding the sweetbreads with some bacon before searing it.

I was on a big brussels sprout binge last year, making them almost every other night until my wife threatened me with divorce if I made them again. After preparing them maybe a dozen ways the best way I found was probably not the most nutritious way, but man they tasted good. I trimmed the root end, peeled away any ugly looking leaves and split them in half lengthwise. Meantime I had a pot of salted water boiling, ~4 cups H2O for 2.5 cups halved sprouts. Once the water came to a boil I would add 2 sticks of butter a sprig of thyme, a few whole peppercorns and the sprouts and cook them for 3-4 minutes then drain. While the sprouts were blanching/poaching(?) heat up a skillet until very very hot, and right after you drain the sprouts, pour 1/2 cup good quality honey into the wickedly hot skillet. The honey will go from its vicious state to a very liquid state as the water comes out of the honey and then get very thick again. (maybe ~1 minute), once they honey has thickened again, add back the sprouts and coat with the honey. It makes for a really nice honey glazed butter poached brussels sprout. It really isn't as sweet as you might think, mostly because you get the buttery/rich/salty mouth feel from the poaching. If you find the honey mixture is somewhat too thick coating the sprouts, you can add a tablespoon or two of the poaching liquid to it.

Ny Daily News Same here. No wonder he could spend so much on decor. J

I have never used any sort of stabilizer, but in the past when I wanted a sorbet that wouldn't freeze too hard I would add a dash of vodka (maybe 1-2 tbsp) per batch I made. The alcohol, while not imparting taste did prevent some of the sorbet from freezing and making a smoother less firm consistancy.

There is also a mud truck down here on wall street, usually outside 55 wall or the vicinity. As far as the generator issue, feh... We live in nyc. We need to deal with pollution. If we wanted clean air, we would move to Montanna.

So whats happening with your renovation?

Jolie was "reviewed" in the NY Daily News today. While I dont usually think of the daily news as having qualityreviews, it is a source of information. It seems pretty close to BAM. http://www.nydailynews.com/12-03-2004/city...5p-221256c.html