Patio lights

When we first moved out here in 2010, we went for a walk along the canals in Venice, and we came upon this house that had all these vintage pendant lamps hanging from a huge tree, over their patio.

 

The lamps they had were all amber glass, which was beautiful, but not my favorite color of glass.  Anyway, we started picking up random 70s pendant lamps for a few bucks here and there, thinking I'd put them in a tree in our yard.  We were thinking of putting them in the avocado tree, but I decided I'd really like them closer to the house.  So this week I put them up, and this afternoon we finished running the electric.

We have 6 lights, all wired so they are all on one plug.  The wires are tacked up on the back side of the pergola, and will be painted in the spring when we paint the pergola top.  We installed electrical boxes along the back joist, and then ran the electric along the back of the house.  We also added an outlet down low for any kind of power we might need, then the outlet for the hanging lights is up high, where it will eventually be hidden a little by the bougainvillea.

With 6 lights, we can get plenty of light for sitting out and reading or talking.  Along with the light on the garage, we have the backyard pretty well lit for now.  I woudln't mind picking up a few more pendants if I see something that looks fun!

And now we're working on the pantry...

We spent this week getting a big old hole cut in the side of the house so we could build a bump-out for our pantry.  We used a grinder to cut the stucco, then knocked all of that out, and then built a block foundation --

and then framed it out --



Ok, that foundation isn't the prettiest thing ever, but it is strong and does the trick.  Besides, it'll be covered with stucco soon enough!

Then we slid the pantry cabinet box in place and leveled and secured it.   The cats of course, were interested:









 They will always take advantage of a new place to view the world.

 This morning, I test fit the microwave and got the hinges put on so I could be sure things will all fit correctly. When we did the narrow cabinet next to the refrigerator, we changed the drawers several times because we didn't pay attention to the hinges.  So we're trying to learn from our errors.

I've decided to put the microwave in this cabinet, so we will need to install an outlet, which we are going to do before getting the stucco done.  We are also going to take advantage of all this wiring work and put in an exterior outlet as well, since we've already run the wiring.









I did the "crawl under the house" duties this morning before I went to work --





I figured it was my turn. Dale's done it often enough.

So tomorrow we'd like to finish the wiring and get the exterior framing complete.  After that, I can get the draws built and in, and maybe we can empty the rest of these boxes.  We have plenty of storage once this gets done.

We also picked up some more drywall, now that this is in, we can finish dry-walling the beam and supports (we wanted to be sure everything fit first).  Also, I am going to take out the pocket door so we can frame that part of the wall in on the table side.  I've got plans to rework the entry since we'll have enough space to put a bench as well as the bookshelf we've got in that area.  Always something to do!

Cabinets are going in

We were working hard to get our kitchen in workable order before our company came on October 9 -- Lindsay came down on Friday, and Leslie and Clint and Parker were due to arrive on Saturday morning.  We didn't get done as quickly as we had hoped, but we did manage to get the fridge and the cabinets across the back wall.

We did manage to get the outlet behind the stove put in the ONE PLACE that it would conflict with the electrical panel, so we do need to move the outlet and then the stove can fit fully in place.

In this shot above we hadn't added the molding and the trim at the top and bottom of the cabinets, but I got most of that done today.  Tomorrow, I'll take more pictures.

I had to cut down some base molding and stain it to match the cabinets, and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out so far.

One thing we had to do was modify some of the cabinets that we are building the island from.  We had to adapt the sink base to fit our stone sink.  We had to cut down the front so the sink could rest on the edge, and add additional support since the sink weighs close to 400 pounds!

On the living room side of the island, we will have two 12" wide cabinets on either side of a seating area.  The cabinets were 24" deep, but that was deeper than they had to be, so I cut 6" off the back side and cut the interior shelves down as well.  That way, the island doesn't extend TOO far into the living room.

The picture above shows the plumbing and electrical that are going into the sink cabinet before we placed the cabinet over them -- still arranging all the details -- and the one on the right shows the shortened 12" cabinet.

We were hoping to have our sink installed tonight, but when Dale went to install the garbage disposal into the sink, we realized that the flange was too short (since the sink is very thick).  So we have to order an extended flange from a plumbing supply store, so that will have to wait until Monday.  In the meantime, we'll get the rest of the cabinet boxes installed and do some trimwork.  Tonight, I put two applications of sealer on the sink, and I'd like to put one or two more applications on tomorrow.

Hopefully, tomorrow we get the cabinets all installed, and the trim stained.  Since we can't get the sink fully installed until Monday, we are hoping to catch up with a lot of the other details, like the electrical, installing the dishwasher, etc.  Still so much to do, but it's coming along well!

Kitchen remodel resumes...

Time to get back to business!  We psyched ourselves up to get this remodel back on track, and yesterday morning, we packed up the remaining things left in our half-destroyed kitchen and ripped the rest of the cabinets and sink out.

It's kind of looked this like since April:

 Except that the stove was also over there along the wall.  But, yea, no progress.  I did lace in the floor boards with some new ones back in May, but they are all covered up with plastic right now.  Here's how it looks this morning:

Temporary kitchen in the living room.  No sink anymore.  That's committment!

 

Our cooking station!  

Here is how it looked after we got everything cleared out and ready for demo stage II:

Goodbye sink and dishes (all packed in boxes).  

Goodbye upper cabinets (hello full trash bins)--

 

Goodbye sink and countertop.  hello plumbing and electrical that needs changing out....

And now, a nice clean canvas.  So, today we hope to get the plumbing and wiring all finished up, then we can drywall over the gaping hole.  Hello blocked door to the studio:

We do have a few interesting things we've been up to --
recessed lights installed (mostly, gotta fix the gap as we patch up the ceiling):

 and we picked up a greenhouse window to replace the window over what used to be the sink.  We got it free on CL - it was mounted flush on the outside of a house in Santa Monica, and I like the way it was mounted, so rather than enlarge the opening to fit the new window, we will just remove the existing window, enlarge a little, then trim it out.  I think it'll be nice!  I don't have a picture of that right now, it's sitting on it's side in the garage, covered with plumeria starts.

We have visitors coming out in October, and we'd love to have our kitchen functioning by then!  Once we get this last remaining bit of plumbing/wiring done, we should be able to motor through a bunch of it rather quickly!  By removing our last bit of functioning kitchen, we hope to make this all a little more urgent.  Doing dishes in the shower is NOT going to be fun!

Almost done with the utility moving

Because we're GENIUSES, obviously, we have decided to move every single appliance in the kitchen, which has meant that a lot of the work we're doing up to this point is happening in the crawlspace.  This week, we got the gas and electric moved, finished up the final plumbing, and should be ready any day to finish taking out the last of the cabinets and then actually begin putting things in.  Meanwhile, we're living like this:

Stove and dishwasher in the living room, delightful! 

There were several issues that complicated things - multiple changes made over the years, all of them kind of haphazardly done (adding a 220 for a stove at some point, even though there is a gas hookup, the completely crazy plumbing changes done to throw a random dishwasher in the mix, multiple cable hookups over time -I think every major cable company has done an install here, including a dish on the top of the house, none of which are functioning except the FIOS line).  Each trip under the house means a game of "can you see where this wire goes?" so we can pull it out and simplify the underworld landscape.

The great news is, we've decided 90% on our kitchen cabinet layout - just in time for the big IKEA sale.  And better news is, they don't require any purchase of appliances this year, just a straight "if you buy $4500 worth of kitchen cabinets, you get 20% off", which fits into our scheme perfectly.  So we'll also be ordering those soon, before the sale runs out!

Oh, and you can see the gap under the door above - we did get a visitor the other night, we discovered him while putting things away:

I think he was just as surprised as we were.  We caught him under a bucket and set him back outside.  And we've covered the gap with a rolled towel when we're not working in there!