Blodgett Kitchen Remodel ~ Better Late Than Never: Craftsman Cherry & Keen Appliances Replace Early American White Melamine 01May26-25Aug26

Before ~ During ~ After... We waited 'till tariffs are up and we are oldish. NP; better late than never. The new Blodgett kitchen is awesome. From early American white melamine cabinetry and 20+yr old GE Monogram appliances to our favored craftsman-styled, custom solid cherry cabinetry, special Wolf & SubZero appliances, alabaster lighting, and other accoutrements. Here are: the design, the before, the during (demo daze), and the after images.

Allure Design... It's been a long process even to begin. We evaluated a half dozen companies and in late '25 and then independently hired Allure Design directly. Amber & Lexi formed their first independent company (but with plenty of verified qualifications from prior employers) and we were a very early client. We worked hard on a design with Amber especially and were excited at the result. Their design package was excellent and a reference document for us throughout the project. Frankly Allure was pretty surprised at my level of involvement and 'help,' being male and all, especially one with a view on color. Kala & I both like craftsman/mission styling and have used it in other aspects of Blodgett; Amber understood and helped find the right aesthetic and pieces; if we said 'change' she listened, except on valences... hmmm. We chose custom solid cherry cabinetry with accented ecru backsplash pieces and a simple craft styling with plain doors with stiles. Many cabinets and foot kicks feature baseboards in matching material, some with nice furniture bases. We added dark Belvedere quartzite leather counter tops and a polished piece of same for Kala's desk. Fixtures are black onyx Frank Lloyd Wright inspired designs from Brizio on a cinder colored composite material 2 hole sink (but with black onyx drain pieces). Simple handles are the same throughout. The backsplash is porcelain stars & crosses. We extended our previous choice of alabaster lighting for two new pendants in the kitchen: a drop over the sink and a linear piece over the island. We kept the breakfast nook and topped the built-in seating with cherry accents; Amber identified keen natural & architectural fabrics for the nook and window coverings (which I forced a bit in order to be Levelor Roman shades compatible with my IoT powered blinds system). We retained the hardwood floors and wall colors. Amber coordinated upholstery with a custom house using our (her) chosen fabrics completely aligned with the craft aesthetic. Thanks Amber.

Bear Creek... We bid out our design to a number of general contractors/project managers. We not only evaluated price of course but also experience and references, as well as interviews. Ultimately Bear Ck won the job and our general, a co-owner, is Steve; we signed a fixed price agreement in Apr26 on a great and comprehensive proposal aligned well with our spec & design. He is an administrative demon and brought in a number of great sub-contractors to vet his winning proposal, then executed. Demolition, drywall, ceiling float, lighting, Planet Granite, 3 Cks cabinetry, electrical, plumbing, floor mods, finishing, painting, cleaning, charity pickup, and else were on "the juggler's speed-dial." Sure we finished later than hoped but Steve guided all the way and assured a quality end product. Plus, he had references directly from satisfied customers who are good friends of ours. It's notable that we slammed on the initial proposal and very little "extra expense" was incurred from his oversight and our initial discussions. Thanks Steve.

3 Creeks... Steve suggested 3 Creeks for custom cabinetry and we met Mike & Carlos a couple of times and approved. Their bid to Steve was new but knowledgeable and effectively priced, especially in the face of my continual ask for custom cabinetry and a perfected install. Michael came with high end references and an infectious upbeat attitude and behavior. We did have our "design & measure while you saw" moments but who hasn't? Thanks Michael.

Specialty Appliance... We also, largely independently, chose new appliances throughout the new kitchen. We went directly to Specialty in COS; Bryce is our account owner. We really only looked at top shelf and pretty quickly eliminated induction cooktops. We cook good stuff and are used to gas, so we stuck with that. We did leave a 220v hookup in the island in case any future owners want different. We kindof believe grandfathered gas might be a premium in the future. Among the top 6 brands the Wolf stood out for us ~ I forced an upgrade from cooktop to range-top. SubZero is the fridge ~ Kala forced the external ice & water dispenser. Best microwave (our designer left it out of original design) was a drawer style Samsung for us. I asked for a bread products drawer after having too many spoil or their wrappers burned on the toaster-over. Bosche was a quiet and well-ranked dishwasher. We reused our new-ish disposal and Insta-Hot dispenser but with keen matching hardware. The appliances were installed by Specialty as well. These are stock pics for now... installed looks later.

Shades Anew... I handled the shades and Steve "helped" install five new motorized and remote controlled shades. We had a few small size issues which we overcame with clever solutions. Sparky also had run 5 new low voltage runs with transformers to each of the motorized shades in the nook and in the corner to keep the shades charged always... great add and an unusual request for Steve I expect. I programmed the limits and standard position of all the shades. Now all the shades in the kitchen and family room are motorized and controlled easily by a single remote on 4 separate channels.

Blodgett Kitchen Final... Did I say it took ~4 months? We are finicky and our contractors were too so details and finish mattered. It was longish but worthwhile. I'm not gonna go through all the design & build processes, nor the material selection stuff, nor the incremental choices we made. The end product is sweet and basically just what we wanted. We even have a knee-touch to open garbage & recyclables drawer, a special spot for our wok-grate for the range, and the bread drawer for a baker greater than me. Part of my objective was to remove stuff from the counters, and we did ~ but I must say Kala did all the work to parse the utensils into their spots. Thanks Kala. Here are a few pics from the final remodeled Blodgett kitchen.

 

MA Aug26 ~ The Algo Offered Me 'Random' Downloads & I Declined 23Aug26

There have been some seminal events and obscure occurrences this month in music for me. Foremost ~ Phoebe dropped a full album for the first time in many years... she was reviewed by the WSJ and all over the net; she expressed 1st with a keen "Lost Boys" music video and followed with the LP ultimately; she plans a fall stadium tour. I won't go to stadiums ~ I have the Dillon Amp, the best place to listen to the best in America. What about the album eval, mostly for me it's her writing ~ her dad died in '23 and it's all raw here... so good. Sure there's struggles with love too and darkish images as I want her to provide. I really like the compiled catalog from her time away from solo performing ~ I probably always will. I didn't buy till she dropped it all, but then ~ absolutely. Ethereal often but there are unneeded tweaks on her voice offered (like AbbyH) for darkness/weirdness. Thank you; I've been waiting years.

Too... dropping full soon again is Wagging, the Asheville writer, grabbing life from a cool spot she respected through a nasty flood. The OG EP was a pop grabber and this is more slammer, still recorded in Asheville. Give me even more.

Spectacular Nicole Atkins rarely reveals, but is known to me for sure with stunning sultry delivery. Sheesh, I have to offer an OV, given timing.

Scary Pockets is back! Awesome...

• "Give It Up" ft Lila Ford Jul26
• "No Harm No Foul" ft Hohnen Ford Aug26

    

 

 

Welles & Ratboys Concert @ Dillon Amp ~ Great Show On A Nice Night 15Aug26

The bands were fabulous on a clear and beautiful evening in Summit. I started well as I was 5th in the queue to enter and met some fine folks while we waited. Very oddly though, once in early after grabbing a center seat in front of the sound man as typical, an older woman came and blasphemously berated me for a couple of minutes ~ she was tired of white guys seemingly. I looked to her team of a half doz who shook heads and shrugged. I moved away back a row and it didn't reoccur. 

The Ratboys appeared on time to open the show. They're an indie rock band from Chicago whom I've followed for a while. Plenty of touring live content from radio studios. They are fronted by Julia Steiner on lead vocals and flying V rhythm, with searing playing at lead from her partner, Dave Sagan. I bought tix to this show mainly to see the Ratboys. The entire band is rock solid and their set was excellent. They played a lot from the latest album, their 6th, 'Singing To An Empty Chair' ~ I especially wanted to hear their recent protest song "Burn It Down" and they played it, with some regular encouragement from me. I'm really glad I came out again to the Dillon Amp ~ sound and performance were great.

Jesse Welles was not known well to me but now I am a fan. The Ozark kid opened solo on acoustic and vocals with 5 great songs. Dylan/Prine-like social observations and protests... his voice is fine but his songwriting is next level. Then the entire Welles band came out and he continued the vein on rock & roll electric arrangements. It was very good.

I made some friends in the crowd... great show with new friends.

Nest Net Update ~ WiFi, Xfinity, And Cat5e 13Aug26

This is really an UPDATE to lame network performance musings HERE... While I was getting almost 1Gbps patched directly into the router, my WiFi experience in some parts of the Nest was not consistent. It seems time-of-day and day-of-week dependent. We know both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands are crowded, which slows down WiFi when the bands are "congested." Still, I don't know yet if it's that or Xfinity itself is congested and slowing, or even throttling me... they do have this problem and this capability. I do not use their gear and they do not control my WiFi, as they do some. I need to find a free scheme to regularly test on the wired and wireless sides to see who is slowing whom. That's not say I'm not much faster, I am. Just inconsistent on WiFi. Remote areas of the Nest now get >300Mbps and decent pings on 5GHz band and the macStudio is strong on WiFi 5GHz but varies with time ~ here's 6pm, 8pm, and 11pm. I plan to do even better.

Cat5e Wired Ethernet Build @ The Nest... So my first move was to terminate the existing Cat 6 cabling with Cat5e/RJ45 jacks and plugs to at least get wired Ethernet into the Nest study and to my macStudio. I don't know why it wasn't done prior here but at least the low voltage wiring was in place. It was painful and laborious to terminate some of the rooms' runs in jacks and add plugs to the like lines in the storage/wiring closet (if one can even call it a wiring closet). I'm gonna need to clean all that up someday but right now I want function. I have rug burns on knees and elbows, and sore hands, but it was worth it.

Network Termination Tools... I asked Kala to assemble the gear & tools and plugs & jacks into a kit that Bob could tote up aboard the BMW adventure bike (as he was inbound for Sierra Ferrell). I needed an impact punch down tool, a ratcheting plug clamper, a bunch of Cat5e jacks & plugs, and a network tester.

Terminations & Test... Since I was a once a product guy at FNET, I was thankfully presented a prototype of the NetTool, which I still use. I really only was using the wiremap function today... I placed a special dongle in the jacks I punched down, went to the "wiring closet" and inserted my new plug termination into the NetTool and it tested the wires for continuity and arrangement. Sometimes I got it right, many times I did not and had to redo (see the handful of spent RJ45 plugs).

Ethernet In The Study... This is the part where we say "it was worth it." I celebrated completion with Vail's Blur.

Blog updates are so much faster now. I just wished it'd help me hike faster and jump further.

Update 16Aug26 ~ Bump WiFi & 2.5Gb Switch... I took a look at WiFi results mid-day in remote areas of the Nest. I didn't isolate WiFi but I did do measurements and changes at the same time. I sense there's a mix of my router's hardware performance, WiFi congestion, and Xfinity variability at play and I want to sort it out. Positioned remote from the WiFi access point (AP) I ran a test with mediocre results.

I did a little WiFi dive and noticed everyone in the area is on channel 153 in 5GHz band (pretty sensible right in the middle). Still, I bumped my AP to run in 161 and ran another test with ~2X the bandwidth without loss of latency. Good update.

I also received a future-proofed 2.5Gb 5 port Ethernet switch I ordered and installed in the "wiring closet." This will give me high performance wired switched access in several rooms of the Nest. Of course I tested in the study again from the macStudio... good to the Internet but only to 100Mbps, though latency is improved, as expected. The run from garage wiring closet can't deliver above 100Mbps?! The link from the router to switch auto-negotiates to 1000BaseT (all the router can do) and delivers 1Gbps when I test directly connected to it. I forced the study link to be 2.5Gbps to the switch. But after the study run and it's patch cord (changed out - not an issue) all I get is 100Mbps. I am not splitting hairs here ~ while it is kindof a long run ~60ft, it should work at 1Gb. I guess I have to yet again review punch-downs and terminations. I expect if I ever add a server here in Summit, performance between local clients and that server needs to be 2.5Gbps. Hmmm... right now WiFi is appreciably better.

While there is still work to do I am much better off as to bandwidth but sacrificed latency. Dang it ~ it's the latency man. Though, I will surely return the new NightHawk RS700S WiFi 7 router/AP as it's been discovered to have a backdoor from the NSA. Sheesh.