The Mushroom Factor

One of the cool things about being a self-employed communications guru is getting out to see fun places and meeting interesting people. Today, cold and snowy as it was, was such a fun day.

I had a meeting with new clients and appropriately enough—them being entrepreuners for banking equipment—we met at The Coffee Vault Cafe, a great shop in an old bank building in the village of Dousman, WI. Needless to say, the venue was fitting, as well as tasty, warm and inviting.

Afterward, I had a lovely chat with cafe owner Roxanne Vincent and she shared the history of the building. It’s fascinating!

According to Roxanne, the building was built in 1908. Originally the floor was the same level of the upper story, as seen in this photo. This allowed for a full basement, which back then was a barbershop. In 1955, they lowered the floor to that of the sidewalk level and the barbershop had to move down the street.

Roxanne says the building came with many intriguing stories. For example, in 1975, the bank needed a larger building so it moved across the street. The good people of Dousman, being a community-minded bunch, gathered together and helped carry all the bank furnishings, including boxes and boxes of money, to its new location.

The building then became home to a series of businesses, including a taxidermist, a horse supply shop and an antique shop. Legend has it the antique dealer died in the store and he’s haunted the building ever since. Perhaps that’s why the building stood empty from 1983 until 2005, when Roxanne and her husband bought it.

Oh, the stories that come with an old building, eh?

Roxanne has become the curator of many village historical treasures. When she opened her shop, she said many people generously contributed bank artifacts, which she now tastefully displays on the walls.

People contributed photography as well. In the lower center photo, you can see the outside steps that led to the original floor level and a window to the barbershop below.

The story I liked the best was about a bank president (perhaps one of the men shown above). According to Roxanne, he was afraid of being robbed and whenever a mysterious stranger came to town he made the bank employees hide in the vault—the vault with a peephole in the door.

Roxanne and her husband have done a wonderful job preserving the historical features of the building while providing a fabulous venue for today’s coffee connoisseurs. It’s only one block north of the Glacial Drumlin Bike Trail so be sure to stop in if you’re driving or pedaling through the area.

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We have this 8×9′ pantry that’s been completely gutted for about three years. I’ve gotta say, it’s served us very well this way as storage for our tools while we renovated the kitchen.

But the time has come for adios storage and hola pantry. It’s very exciting, to say the least.

So today we actually sat down and calculated the plans. We’ve been brainstorming ideas forever—things like lots of cupboards, a small sink and, best of all, room for the washer and dryer, which currently are in the basement.

Brainstorming is the easy part.

The hard part is the actual putting pencil to paper, the making of detailed plans. This is especially true for us since we’re not always the best of communicators. I have so many great visions in my head but lack the technical terminology to express them.

“Can this cupboard go like this. And then jut out like that?”

Sometimes that just doesn’t cut it.

But here’s what we’ve got going so far:

We’re big on re-purposing. We saved this fir tongue-and-groove when we added on to our exterior front porch and needed to redo the ceiling. The wood takes a little cleaning but we’ve already used some of it for our sunporch ceiling and it’s stunning.

Cleaned, cut and ready to use as wainscoting in the pantry.

We have so much finished wood in the kitchen, we originally planned to paint the pantry cupboards and wainscoting for a bit of contrast. But look how pretty it is. It’s a sin to cover wood this beautiful!

Plans obviously are made for changing.

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I’ve been doing some painting lately. Just the mention of this puts my husband into eye rolls because he knows paint and me equal stress.

Stress for him, that is.

Here’s the problem: I’m a graphic designer and I work with color every day. My awareness of it is quite defined (my husband would say anal-retentive, with an emphasis on the anal).

But color on the limited environment of paper or a computer screen is an entirely different theory than color on the wall.

Color on a wall is affected by light, both natural and artificial. It’s affected by space and size. It’s also affected by colors of the ceiling, woodwork, furniture, and accessories. And then there’s the warm and cool issue. Like, did you know for beige alone, there are categorically three different shades?

Need I go on? And on, and on?

Well anyway, having all this color knowledge, yet not enough to understand paint, makes me a bit of a monster. I painted our living room one color last weekend. I repainted it another color this weekend. And I would probably repaint it still another color next weekend, except I’m tired and out of paint money.

However, with all this painting, I have come up with some helpful hints to pass along.

The first two are the products pictured above—the Cut ‘N Trim Cup and the Premium XL Tight Spots 2″ Angle Short Handle Brush. I bought the cup at Menards and the brush at Sherwin-Williams, and I spent less than $10 for both of them. (No one’s paying me to say this either.)

I cannot describe how much easier and quicker these two little items make cut-in painting around the trim. This is important, because not only do I get a little over-anal about color choice, I do about application as well (meaning I’m a very slow painter).

Lastly, and most importantly, is Maria Killam’s Colour Me Happy blog. Maria is a designer and color expert. Her blog is an absolute dream—beautiful photography, generous advice, and it’s all-around fun to read. When she offers her color expert workshop here in the Midwest, I plan to be the first to register.

Not only will I be even more colorfully defined as a graphic designer, I’ll be painting my walls only once!

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Big excitement! After more than three years (check out the “before“), we’re actually almost done with the kitchen. Done enough that I feel confident showing off some pictures.

Well, we still have to sand the floor and put down the quarter-round molding. And then there’s the pantry, which right now is completely gutted.

But, overall, the kitchen’s almost done!

Me: I was thinking we should put a few angles in our cabinetry.
Husband: No, that can’t be done.
Me: Well, what if we just do it this way…
Husband: (very deep sigh) Alright…

I confess, I sometimes take advantage of his willingness to please. Just a little.

Red is my favorite! We took our frig into an auto body shop and asked them to paint it to match our red electric can opener. The hardest part was hauling it back home without chipping the paint.

My husband’s a talented man. Anything I ask him to make or fix, he can do. He custom-crafted all the cabinetry from oak trees felled in a 1998 windstorm.

The countertops are concrete—my husband made these too. He’s got horror stories about doing this first one around the sink. But each one he did got better and easier. They’re pretty slick.

My father-in-law made the barstools. I enjoy sitting here while I watch my husband cook.

This room used to be a walk-in closet and sunporch. We combined them into a breakfast nook, which I still like to consider a sunporch.

My father-in-law made this table for us. The bistro chairs are bouncy—it’s fun eating here!

One of my many favorite features: the sunporch ceiling. This wood was taken from our front porch when we redid it years ago. It was painted white so we stripped it and put it in here. It’s stunning, not because of anything we did. It’s fir, and it’s just very pretty wood.

The beam is an old, hand-hewn from one of our barns.

This is the corner where the old sink hung on the wall. That’s the pantry door (still awaiting refinishing). The pantry will now be a real pantry, plus laundry room.

Construction site manager: Clyde. He’s such a camera hound.

Here’s a buffet with concrete countertop. The black area will be a pass-thru into the dining room. Next to it is a chimney, which previously was plastered over. Don’t you just love the contrasting textures between the brick and wood?

Yes, I know I need to do something about those dining room window treatments. I’m really having a problem with that huge triptych of a window. Suggestions?

Dovetails – the man is no sluff.

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We recently took a drive up to Kohler, WI, and toured the Kohler Design Center.

If you’re ever in the area, stop in for a few hours of browsing and dreaming. The designer rooms are so beautiful. Each time we visit, we come away with great ideas for our kitchen and bathroom projects. Best of all, it’s free.

While perusing the faucet displays, we came across the Vinnata K-690, which is the one we bought for our kitchen two years ago. The display model was in a brushed bronze finish with a list price of $842.

My husband cringed, “Is that how much we paid for ours?”

Of the many purchases we made for our kitchen, a sink faucet was something we felt warranted extra investment. Everything we read discouraged scrimping, considering how much a faucet is used on a daily basis.

But $800?

Well, actually, we didn’t spend that much. For one thing, ours is the polished chrome, which automatically runs less. Secondly, we special ordered it from Home Depot for $389 along with the Kohler soap dispenser for $42.

We love the faucet. (The soap dispenser looks really cute, functions so-so.)

When I initially pulled the faucet out of the box, I was a bit hesitant by its size. It’s a high arc and stands 16 inches tall. And because the neck of the faucet houses a pulldown sprayhead hose, it’s about 1-1/4 inches in diameter. It’s really a big, heavy faucet.

But it didn’t take long for me to really appreciate the clearance and reach of this thing.  Not only is the pulldown sprayhead totally handy, it has two spray options—solid stream or aerated low-flow.

My husband liked it because with the single-control faucet, it was easy to install. We also had the choice of putting the hot-cold handle on either the right or left side of the faucet.

So, we’ve been using this faucet now for two years. Functionally, it works super. Form, it looks really cool.

Good choice.

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