Thursday, December 29, 2016

Kitchen: The Before


If you see a minus symbol instead of a picture, click on it and you'll see the picture. Another blogger oddity!

Kitchen Before 2The remodel is getting really real. We’ve had our final pre-construction meeting and the schedule says demolition starts Tuesday! We continue to relocate everything from the kitchen elsewhere.
The final walk-through and closing is scheduled for Friday, February 3.
Here are some before pictures:
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We will be retiring this dishwasher Monday night. It will probably sit in the living room until our new appliances are delivered and the old ones are taken away.
Kitchen Before 3
This microwave will serve as our main source of cooking during the next 5 weeks. We’re also planning to utilize our electric fajita grill, our quesadilla press and our crock pots.
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The oak woodwork will be enameled to match the cabinets.
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This will be the home of a new floor to ceiling cabinet.
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Future home of the pantry!
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When I come home from work on Tuesday, there will be a big hole where this closet is. Kitchen Before
We’ll keep using this fridge until our new one is delivered. It will have a new home in the living room until the new one is delivered. This is proof that the second cheapest refrigerator at Sears can last more than 16 years. We have high expectations of the new one!

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Christmas 2016–5 people and 3 cats

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We had a great Christmas! It was Doug’s year to work Christmas but he was lucky enough to get Christmas Day off.

Blog extraOur festivities started early with Katharina’s arrival. The first order of business was asking her to pose with her brother and sister’s pictures.

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We had a fun day at the Raptor Center

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followed appropriately enough by an evening of Chickenfoot.

Blog 3We and everyone else in the world did the grocery shopping on December 23rd. Mom and Dad Berg arrived on the 24th in time for the glorious Packer-Viking game. We Skyped with the Grunau family and I was sure to mention the score of the game to Christoph. Blog 5Katharina brought some cookies from Boston, the Grunau family sent some cookies from Germany, Mom brought some cookies from Wisconsin and we made some here so this is a photo of cookies from 3 states and 2 countries.

Blog 7We went to late church on Christmas Eve and then went again on Christmas morning. After church, we opened presents and had dinner.

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We were happy Katharina could visit and have some time to relax during her busy semester. She assumed the “Christoph position” on several occasions.

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The cats have been taking full advantage of people being home and the fireplace being on all day. Mr. TW (no photo available) was also here for Christmas but wasn’t out and about much. He’ll be here for his long stay in a few weeks.

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The kitchen remodel start date was pushed to January 3rd since the builders are only working 3 days this week. It made sense to not tear everything out and then leave for 3 days. It has also given us time to really organize everything as we move it out of the kitchen. It’s possible we’ll be able to find everything after it’s all over!

Monday, December 19, 2016

Prepare

Plans
So it’s starting! Winter Break and the Kitchen Remodeling project…. We are working with College City Design Build and have nothing but impressed with their work, their responsiveness to emails and the whole process. We are excited to really get started.
Boxes
I started packing up what can be packed in our kitchen and closet. It seems like it would be easy to pack away all those things we only use twice a year. However, “twice a year” is now so some of it will have to wait. Since we have plenty of snow, it seemed safe to pack up the summer shoes. Since we have plenty of beer glasses, it seemed OK to pack up some of the extra ones.

The preparations took me to the local liquor store where I came home with some excellent boxes for packing and several bottles of wine. I wanted to reassure the young guy working that I wasn't wrapping presents for children in the booze boxes.

It all seems neat and organized now. We’ll see what happens when everything has to go.

Stockings
Since my trip to Milwaukee was cancelled, I’ve had a few days to get super organized for Christmas. We’ll be 7 for Christmas this year – 2 Berg-Williams, 2-3 felines, 2 Bergs and 1 Grunau (hooray hooray!!) who arrives later this week.
Now that we have a house project and a fun visitor, look forward to a more active blog with fewer cat pictures.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Snow

6 or more inches... preparation for hibernation is underway.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Bachelor of Science with a Major in Nursing

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Well, I finished it. I finished my bachelor’s degree in nursing, actually, apparently, “bachelor of science with a major in nursing”. I am now figuring out how to get my small pay raise at Fairview and my tuition reimbursement from Fairview for this semester’s expensive 6 credit class.

All done. Now, at work I am Douglas, RN, BSN.

At home I am Douglas, RN, BSN, ASN, MM, BM or spelled out: registered nurse, bachelor of science with a major in nursing, associate of science in nursing, master of music in composition and last but not least, bachelor of music in theory and composition.

The Bergs come back from Texas this afternoon meaning Tailwheel’s vacation in the city will come to an end.

Tonight I rehearse with my trombone quartet at Salem Lutheran. We are performing my hymn arrangement with their choir for Pastor Lynn Erickson’s last service before moving to Milwaukee to join her husband Bishop Paul Erickson. I’m excited to perform there.

 

Also, this Sunday my band is playing one of my arrangements with the St Pat’s choir at Advent Methodist in Eagan. We played it last Sunday at St Pat’s and now it is playing on a virtual continuous loop on Town Square Television channel 14 in Dakota County.

 

In five minutes I am meeting our new pastor intern Angela for a cup of coffee at The Caribou.

 

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Look at Sue’s reflection in the ornament! Good boy Ravel!

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Christmas Decorating

While Doug was at work on Saturday, I did some decorating.

Nigel tree

 

tree

The tree has been left standing…mostly…

outside

A view from the outside. We had some snow last week but it’s gone now.

Ravel tree

Ravel thinks the new tree skirt is his new blanket.

stairway

SomeCat destroyed several springs of fake berries overnight.

Friday, November 18, 2016

The Old: So Many Pictures

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No, I wasn’t referring to me as “the old”. We have committed to remodeling the kitchen with a design/builder. It is happening. Work may begin right after Christmas. This is a shot of me in the Wentworth Library. Sometimes I go to the library just to read or study things for my class. At home there are too many distractions.

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I’ll just start explaining our plans. This closet will be cut in half. the left half will have a regular closet-style door. This is where we’ll keep shoes and coats, etc. The right side will be walled off. This area will be turned into a pantry that opens on the other side toward the kitchen.

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We currently use this closet as a pantry, shoe closet, and a broom closet.

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On this wall there will be some almost floor to ceiling cabinet doors with roll-out pantry shelves. The new fridge, a counter depth fridge, will not stick out as far as our old Kenmore.

 

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The preliminary design plans called for the roll-out pantry shelves to face out here where the Africa paintings are. We didn’t want to have cabinets facing out on this wall disturbing the serenity of the dining room. Sue may not have been aware that I was taking photos.

 

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This peninsula counter top and cabinet will be extended out about 12 inches up to the point where it will be aligned with the wall edge behind it.

 

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The tile backsplash will extend up between and around these corner window. The little shelf of counter behind the sink will disappear. These window frames might be changed to the white enamel of the new upper cabinets.  By the way Mike Berg: we will save most of the old cabinets for your garage. You will need to claim them shortly after they are removed in early January. Bring you truck. We have to decide on a sink and faucet.

 

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The upper cabinets here will extend to the edge of the counter and then a bank of 10 inch deep cabinets will go from floor to ceiling along the rest of this wall. There may be a cabinet door placed in from of this chair to get at that space underneath easier. We are keeping the chairs but will change out the cloth probably. Same with the dining room chairs.

 

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The upper cabinets will be white and extend to the ceiling. We are maintaining our current old microwave and current new oven. The under cabinet TV is history. We’ll probably get a small counter top TV for this spot. We will add an outlet in one of the 10 inch deep cabinets to the right of the current cabinets for charging phones. There will be a door to cover up our pile of bills and stamps, etc. I think there will be some under cabinet lighting, too.

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In the deal, we will get a new garbage disposal. The lower cabinets will be a dark-ish sort of brown-ish.

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The new dishwasher will be immediately to the right of the fridge and then to the right of the dishwasher there will be a pull out cabinet for the garbage and recycling.

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To the left of the fridge, there will be a broom closet. The fridge will be moved to the right a few inches and it will be wider than this fridge. The cabinets above the fridge will be extended forward making them reachable to people who are 5 feet 7 inches tall. Sue will paint the walls a new color depending on the back splash color and what Rebecca, our designer suggests.

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This shows some of the parts of the plan with changes penciled in. Not everything on here is completely accurate. I think the closest door will swing the other way. There are definitely several spot where you will only be able to open one set of doors at a time. Now that we have paid our down payment, we will meet with Rebecca to refine the design plan and pick everything out. This weekend we will buy the fridge and the dishwasher on sale for the Black Friday.

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This is the pre-blizzard. Actually, we may only see an inch or so of snow here in the city.

Monday, November 7, 2016

Hamilton

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OK, I haven’t put up a blog entry in many months. Guilty as charged. I may have forgotten how to do it so here I am road-testing an entry, blog-testing if you will. This is a photo from the smash musical Hamilton that I have described as “the best musical that I have not yet seen” and “a must see for anyone who likes music, rhymes, dance, colonial costumes, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and/or Alexander Hamilton”. The show is on Broadway in New York and likely will be there for decades. Phantom has been on Broadway since the late 1980s and Wicked has been there for 13 years. Hamilton recently opened a second and third run of the show in London and Chicago. Sue and I have tickets for a Wednesday in April of 2017. We watched the PBS documentary on Hamilton last night and are stoked to see it live. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for about a year now.

Tomorrow is voting day at last. Get out and vote!

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Preview

We reviewed the bid for a second company for our kitchen remodel project on Friday. On Saturday, we stopped at a tile store to look at some possibilities. Here are a few backsplash ideas we liked.

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