FauxPas

@liuzhou, I think lactose intolerance is not that uncommon throughout the world, but seems to be more associated to certain locations and historical factors. More to come from this study but it suggests some of the parameters: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2005/06/lactose-intolerance-linked-ancestral-struggles-climate-diseases My Scandinavian heritage probably affects my ability to continue to digest lactose. But I definitely know some adults of varying backgrounds who have gradually lost their 'taste' for dairy, but may actually be losing their ability to produce lactase. It's not just Asian, but appears Asian and African groups have more propensity with difficulty in producing the dairy enzyme.

Can't help you with the trailer repairs, but as for laundry.... have you ever read Travels with Charley: In Search of America by Steinbeck? 😃 https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-do-laundry-on-a-road-trip-like-john-steinbeck/

The flooring is a laminate and despite my initial concerns, it seems to be holding up really well. We chose the laminate countertop because of time, money and uncertainty over our future plans. I would have liked quartz but it really costs a lot more here and it would have taken longer to get installed. This is not a huge town and in-stock choices are limited and especially now there can be delays in delivery and installation. Laminate was more readily available and a quicker installation, plus much lower cost. If we knew we were going to stay in the house for quite a while longer, I likely would have gone for the quartz and an undermount sink, but we never seem to stay in one place for very long. We are already considering selling and buying something a bit different though still in the same area. However, if we don't find something we like more than this house, I'm still happy enough with what we have here for a few more years. 😀

Nice! And it must be changing all the time through the seasons, varying weather, etc.

The views are actually better than that some days! It's essentially a very small house, we always thought of treating it as a bit of a cottage or beach house, though of course we aren't right on the beach. But that's why we went with the distressed-look for the flooring. And blue-grey siding with white trim for the exterior and one of my fave Mariner's Compass quilt blocks for decoration and a comment on my love of quilting.

Have you posted photos, Jo?

Oh and some of the views we only got after raising the house! Not the best photo, but the first to hand. 😄

Anyhoo, at the end of the day, we got a much brighter kitchen with decent LED undercabinet lighting. Not deluxe but I'm a lot happier spending time here. No pantry but we have a fairly large laundry room and pantry that already has quite a lot of storage space. Mostly I wanted more drawers and cabinets to the ceiling. I have a pull-out recycling centre that is quite convenient and I think the fridge looks better framed. We opted for a plain and lower-priced cabinet front, I am not a fan of cleaning those little nooks and crannies on the others! And we still opted for a laminate countertop for several reasons. And at night: (We had to replace our old but still newish and rather pricey LG French door fridge not long before this, it died on us in April, right in the midst of the shutdown stuff, so we had very limited choices in replacement. Turns out, I'm pretty happy with this deep GE model, though!) A few pics, we still need to get some painting touch-up done and there might be a few details different between these pics and today, but again, you'll get the idea.

Meanwhile, back to our most recent kitchen updates. Nothing like some of you folks have done with your amazing kitchens, but we really wanted something brighter and more modern. I did get quotes from some of the custom kitchen people we had worked with before, but they were all crazy busy with new builds and Covid restrictions and it would have taken several months at least to get anything underway. There's a newish outfit here doing the IKEA kitchens and we decided to go that way, because we do like the product but also we only had to wait weeks instead of months to get things going. The price wasn't all that much less than some custom options because of all the varied costs for transportation and delivery and there's still quite a bit of labour to install an IKEA kitchen. Has anyone here done their own? That certainly wasn't an option for us, unfortunately. (Pretty low on the handy scale, here.) 😀 Somehow the previous kitchen upgrades involved putting in halogen under-cabinet lighting. I have no idea how that happened because it's stupidly hot and everything in your cupboards heats up and they generate heat when you don't want it, etc. And I had asked for LED. So one lovely thing about this upgrade was finally getting the LED lights I wanted. And getting rid of the big OTR microwave and replacing it with a low-profile one. That involved some re-wiring. So we had to get an electrician as well as the cabinet installers. And we wanted to make some plumbing changes along with the usual fridge/dishwasher/sink reinstall, so a plumber was needed. Because of scheduling, we had no real kitchen for almost three weeks. Our most recent tenant had moved out from the lower suite and so we had this at our disposal. Not deluxe, but quite comfortable and extremely useful for Covid distancing when workers were there and just generally for having a decent kitchen. We had always rented the suite fully furnished so already had pots, pans, dishes, cutlery etc. Not sure why I can't find a pic of this area with the furnishings but you will get the idea.

It WAS quite the renovation, but it made sense to us! I haven't gone into all the details of things we did with the lot and re-landscaping and the new siding on the house and the skylight and suntunnels, but suffice it to say that when the finished job was evaluated/appraised/approved for occupancy, we were told we effectively had a brand new house overall. Even the foundation had been re-poured, a separate electric panel added and the old one revamped, the water line coming to the house was upgraded to a wider one. We had custom cabinetry done for the upstairs bath and some in the laundry room/pantry. And more. At the time, I wasn't sure we were doing the right thing, it did seem pricey. But we got the house for an excellent price initially and it's certainly now worth more than the purchase price + what we put into it, so it feels pretty good. And given the recent rise in lumber prices, we could not currently do all that framing, etc for the same kind of price! The company we chose for doing the actual house-raising is called Nickel Brothers and they are very well known in this region. They are best known for MOVING houses, not just raising them, but of course raising is the first part of moving. Because of the ridiculously high prices for real estate in greater Vancouver, several heritage homes have been lifted and moved to new locations so that developers can build higher density in the urban region. It's a bonus for folks who can buy cheaper land in other parts of the province and get those classic houses at a very reasonable price. If you are interested, check out the web site for Nickel Bros. They even barge homes across the waterways here - many from metro Vancouver to Vancouver Island or in parts of Washington state. There are several heritage homes near the water and just south of us that arrived that way. https://www.nickelbros.com/residential/

Really sweet! That pantry! Can I store a few extra things at your place? 😆

And then we got busy with other things and another house we owned in Arizona and this kitchen got left behind again. And then last year we decided even if we didn't do anything deluxe, it was time to update those cabinets. So, hello IKEA kitchens! We live on an island and there are extra shipping charges for anything from IKEA and we decided we didn't want to try and do the job ourselves so we hired a local company who would handle all the shipping, delivery and cabinet install. The end result is that we definitely paid more for our IKEA kitchen than folks who live in larger urban areas, but I was so happy to see those oak cabinets gone. Here's the start. Must go, more tomorrow!

But like most renos, once we were underway we realized we were going to end up overbudget and somehow the upstairs renos got scaled back. We completely redid the main bath and all the flooring but the kitchen cabinets would have to stay. Still, we managed to do a few things. We replaced windows and patio door, electrical fixtures, flooring, baseboards, and appliances. We moved a section of lower cabinets to the left of the stove so that there was room for a dishwasher. We removed the baseboard heaters and installed a heatpump. And thank you to the kitchen gods, we were able to replace that hideous countertop!!!! Cheapo laminate but I was as happy as if it was the finest marble, hahaha. But we still had the old and ugly cabinets.

We couldn't get started on renos right away, as we were busy with various things but at some point we talked to a contractor and decided to raise the whole house. This made sense because the house was below the roadway and we had a miserable driveway sloping downward and we could increase our ocean views. Since we didn't really need more space for the two of us, we decided to build a separate suite below for rental or for family. So, we did a bit of raising. The lot was really transformed and the house lifted. And then this stage.

I'm going to share some kitchen photos as well and a bit of a reno story. We bought this house 7 or 8 years ago largely because it was a great location. It was within walking distance of a terrific little downtown with all kinds of services and amenities and only a few blocks to the harbour. At that time, we got some ocean glimpses, but not a lot of view, but there was some potential. One of the worst things about this house was the kitchen. The house was built in 1990 but the kitchen looked even older. Here it is in all its homely glory when we first viewed it. Vertical blinds everywhere, in a dusty brownish-purple colour. Homely lighting fixtures. Vaguely industrial flooring that was discoloured by sunlight. Too-small deck. Those putty-brownish baseboard heaters. Tiny bare baseboards. Some of the windows had lost their seal and needed to be replaced, as did the patio door. That lonely little cabinet above the stove. That odd gap between the stove and the patio door. But, and I can hear some of you quietly shrieking it, "What the H is going on with that cabinet/countertop combo?" Just so you can get a better look, here is another jarring image of that red countertop and orange oak cabinet marriage. Look away if you must, ha! More to come.....

Do you mean the new one? The Steam Refresh at 482F?

I love it there, also! It's our go-to farm for eggs and we shop their farmstand for various produce throughout the season. They grow beautiful flowers, also. And they have goats, I didn't get a photo of them unfortunately. They make goat's milk soap at the farm. I was going to try and do a little blog on local farms this past summer but with the Covid issues and all, it didn't happen. I'll still try to share some of the details on some of the other farms at some point. We have some fun ones.

This is actually one of our local farms, rather than a farmers market, but not sure where else to post. I love this farm, it's so much fun and they have lovely chickens who produce delicious eggs and lots of great produce as well as a lavender farm. They do a lavender festival in the summer and a harvest or Halloween festival in the fall. The rest of the growing season, they have an honour system farmstand with all their produce and lavender products, etc but for this, they decorate and open up the barn. This year it's open to a limited number of people at a time. For some reason the chickens were shy when we were there this time; that's not their usual style!

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but don't they advertise it as being ok in an enclosed space? Can you let us know why you feel otherwise? And I'm leaning towards trusting your opinion!

I love salmon also! And I tend to cook it the same way as this, except I marinate the fish for a short while in the sauce and may or may not baste as it cooks. My sauce is similar (I call it a teriyaki) but I don't bother with oil if I'm doing a Chinook or Sockeye salmon, as they are fairly fatty. I guess at the timing and I play around with Steam Bake and Steam Broil. I guesstimate the time based on the size and thickness of the fillet and I never write it down, which is stupid of me because I never remember what happened the time before, it seems. Sigh. 😃

Wondering how hot the Precision oven gets on the exterior (especially the top) and does the steam all vent at the lower front? Any concerns about placing it under some cabinets?

I must try this! 😃

Has anyone mentioned (originally Aussie) Tim Tams? I love the original milk chocolate ones, the caramel ones are vile, though. 😄

Can you share the link, please? I can get quite a lot locally but can probably find something else I need! 😃

Your gift baskets sound amazing! I'd stick to the purchased cheese logs, you're already making so many items.