I found an old copper grounding rod being used as a clothes rod in the basement.  I cleaned it up, cut it to length, drilled and tapped the ends, and mounted it under the hood over the stove. I made a jig and shaped a bunch of hooks out of 6ga copper grounding wire. Looks pretty good, if I may say so myself!
  

Here’s a couple of snaps of the finished kitchen. 

Still missing paint, tile on the backsplash, the drawer pulls, and the floor needs the final finish but it’s mostly functional.

Appliances, faucets, paper stone counters and all the other systems are in.

And the cabinets are starting to go in. I came home and squealed like girl when I saw this. 

The floors are in and the first round of stain is on. A little dark, but it will mellow.  

it’s still all torn out. But here’s some pictures from some other angles that show the opening to the dining room. You can also see the tape outline of the island in the kitchen. That took two takes with the cabinetmaker to get right, but we’re all good now!

So, the house was great, with a big problem. The kitchen was terrible. Things were in totally unusable locations. Nice finishes, but epic fail on the functionality. So, we’re redoing the kitchen. This will be our thrid kitchen project, and I think we finally know what we want!

But, at the moment, the kitchen has gone from looking like this:

To looking like this:

Whoops! I guess it’s bye-bye kitchen! I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

So, we moved. A long ways (from Minneapolis to Saint Paul). We found a 1920’s Craftsman bungalow and pounced. The house is in good shape with lots of new mechanicals, and awesome original woodwork! There’s a little that’s rough on the exterior, and it will need a roof and painting in a few years, but its pretty sweet.