and now, the floor

Finally, the wall is down and we could remove the temporary support.  The opening is so huge!  We hadn't had a chance to see it all clear without either plastic or the temporary support in place, so when we finally removed everything, we were a little surprised at how large the opening was!

Don't you love the precariously hanging fluorescent fixture?  That's gotta go soon enough.

Today, we got started on removing the floor.  We cut through the linoleum and the plywood, and then pulled it up in sections, so we exposed the subfloor.

Lots of nails to pry up and we had a chance to inspect the subfloor planks.  There  are a couple of planks we will need to replace, there is some termite damage.  In southern CA, it's extremely common to have termites, since there's nothing to kill them.  So it's not a matter of IF you have termite damage, but how much.  We have a very small amount in the kitchen, just in one corner, and it has all been treated, so it's not active.  We just need to replace the damaged wood.

 So here's the room now.  We laid down a sheet of plywood on the damaged section so the cats will leave it alone.  Next, we are going to cut the subfloor right across the center of the room, so we can move the gas and plumbing lines.  After we took this picture, we marked out where the island will be, so we know where to have the kitchen plumbing for the sink and dishwasher come up, since they'll be in the island.  The gas line will be moved to where the dishwasher currently is.  Then we'll close the floor up again, leaving the stubs up, and then we can lay the underlayment for tile.

I worked out a plan for the tile -- it will have a pattern something along these lines:

It'll have a 21" border that has a variety of black, white, and mosaic border sections.  This will run all along the walls, with a black/white checkerboard on the diagonal inside.

  I'm anxious to get that started!

sneak peek

As with every project, as soon as we think, "we're almost done, just another couple of hours...." we run into all kinds of snags and unexpected complications.  Just when we were getting the beam all ready to go up, one little thing after another kept cropping up (split joists, bowed boards, electrical confusion), and what we kind of thought would be an afternoon job consumed the whole weekend.

Dale spent entirely too long with his head and shoulders in the attic space, with some odd splicing to figure out.  We had to cut a larger opening to sort this out, but it will be handy so we can access the wiring when we put can lights in the kitchen.

While Dale was working on electrical and constructing the laminated beam, I took down most of the kitchen ceiling tiles and the furring strips.  I still have a row or so to go, because this is where our work zones overlapped.

The ceiling itself is actually in a lot better shape than we'd anticipated.  There are small cracks, but no separation between the plaster and the lath, which is what we were afraid we'd see.  These small cracks are typical of plaster ceilings, and we can patch these up just fine.  There are a few small places where the plaster is soft, over the window and another small spot in the middle.  I also removed 3 layers of wallpaper on the window wall. 

We've managed to pile up quite a large amount of construction trash.  We got rid of all the bathroom construction trash over time, rather than renting a dumpster, and we'll get rid of this the same way.

So taking the wall down gave us a pile of 2 x 4s with a ton of nails in them.....

that we added to the boxes that are filled with the plaster and tile.  The trashcans are full of ceiling tiles and wallpaper scraps....

and we finally got the beam installed and the remainder of the old wall taken down.  The house is dusty, the floors are filthy and there's pretty much a film on everything.  But.... I don't have final photos because we still have the temporary support wall in place.  Dale got called to go into work this evening, so that last little step is still there before we can get a real feel for how it is going to look with the wall gone!

almost there!

s.l.o.w. p.r.o.g.r.e.s.s

I don't know if I can even call it progress, that's how slow it's going.  Dale had to work overtime all week and weekend (he worked over 75 hours this past week!) so when he came home each night, he sort of just took a shower then dropped into a chair for a couple of hours before going to bed.  And I've had the semester start off with all kinds of issues, so since we tore the wall down, nothing has gone on there.  Well, I did take down the plastic after cleaning up the rest of the plaster removal.

The cats are loving the open wall.  They see the horizontal braces as the ideal perch to survey the house.  I keep trying to knock them off so they won't get into more trouble, but they are persistent.






Because when Dale is home I can't even bang things around since he needs his sleep, I ran out to check out a tile shop in Orange County.  I am wanting to do a black and white checkered floor in the kitchen, but I don't want it to look all country, I'd like it to be a little more elegant.  I love this picture of a tile floor:

(from my Pinterest board on house ideas)

I love the black and white checkerboard on the diagonal, and the bands of borders around the side.  But I want it to be in a richer finish, so I went out to check out some marble.    I picked up some 12 x 12 tiles of carrara and nero marble for the field, and a couple of marble mosaic borders.  I laid them out and love the way they look.  So now I have to map out the floor and plan the design.  I am hoping to hit another shop this week to look at kitchen cabinets -- we are likely going with IKEA cabinets, but I'd like to see what other options we might explore before we commit.

Kitchen Demo

Last night after I got home from my long day of teaching, I picked up a couple of plastic shelves to hold our stuff, and unloaded all the kitchen cabinets on the demo side.  It doesn't look pretty, but we'll be living like this for awhile:

Yes, a classy look.  The cats will enjoy getting into everything.

This morning, Dale's job got cancelled because of rain, so he was eager to get started.  First, we took all the drawers out and doors off, then started swinging away with a sledge hammer!

Time out to put the doors and drawers out, and our helpers inspected....

Then it was heavy duty worktime, getting all the tile and wood framing out.

I kept sweeping and cleaning as we went, I hate it when things get piled up.  After we got the cabinets out, we took off the crap tile from behind the stove.  It had this nasty creosote kind of adhesive holding a melamine panel up.  yuk!  The not-so-fabulous 70's tile was really awful, too.  We also took a few rows of the ceiling tile off -- not the whole thing yet, because that will create a mess everywhere, but that'll come off soon enough.


At this point, we decided we could go out and eat a big lunch so we could work all afternoon demolishing the wall, and also pick up some boxes to put our broken plaster in and more plastic to partition off the area so we don't have a house full of dust.  Then we got down to business.

It's VERY satisfying knocking all that ugly stuff down!  and when we could see all the way through, we realize how nice this going to be!  of course, the plastic is up so we can't really get a full feeling, but the kitchen itself is enormous now.

So this is what it looks like now.  Dale has to work again tomorrow morning, so this was a good place to stop for now.  We swept and mopped, and we can walk through a opening we made.

Tomorrow, we hope to get the ceiling cleaned up around the wall so we can see if it really is load-bearing -- we thought it was, but after checking the rafters, we may actually luck out and not have to go with a load-bearing beam after all.  Hopefully, but we want it to be structurally sound, so whatever it takes.  There is a beam across the entry, so we plan on matching that, anyway, it might just be that it's more decorative and less structural.

Well, that was a long break from blogging....

So - in the past month, instead of blogging and working on the house, I've been quite busy traveling, finishing up the end of the semester, getting ready to start the new semester, and enjoying a bunch of family time.

First, we went to Indiana to spend the holidays with Dale's family.  It snowed the day we arrived, to his great happiness, and snowed 2 more times while we were there. More happiness for Dale, less than ecstatic for me.

That's the view from my daughter's driveway after the first snow.  The picture below is during "the blizzard," which was over-rated.  8 inches, but not too horrible.  Lots of blowing snow.

While I was out visiting, my daughter Leslie and I did a bunch of work on the baby's room - we painted the walls, installed molding, did some sewing -- it was a regular craft-o-rama.

She found this picture on Pinterest (left), and we did a dragging technique on the walls with a bamboo colored glaze (right).  The colors in the picture inthe right are a little off, they're closer to the ones in the inspiration picture, but it was hard to catch a good photo at night.

We also made the curtains, the banner, and several other small projects. 

Then we flew home around new year's day, and a week later, left for a conference in Honolulu, where the weather was more to our liking - around 75-80° each day.  We went with our dear friends Herbert and Eric - Herbert and I both presented at the conference, and then spent the rest of the time doing the tourist things!

The view of Diamond Head from our room - -a cheery sight to wake up to each morning!

We hiked up a slippery, muddy slope to view Manoa Falls -- great memories, even though we were filthy by the time we got back to the car!


We also got a great view of the city from the hills.



And the view from the plane as we left --

As soon as I got back, I had a few days to do laundry and clean up before I headed up to Santa Maria to help my niece clean out my sister's house, so she can get it up for sale.  Lots of packing and sorting, but we got most of it done.  We will probably meet up again in a month to have a yard sale to get a lot of the extra stuff taken care of.  I got home late last night.

Sooooo....we're back and now the other fun begins.  We are going to work on getting our kitchen done.  First step, knock out the wall between the kitchen and the living room.  This morning, I got the furniture moved away and removed the paneling from the wall.  Here's how it looked back when we closed on the house, and now...

OK, not an improvement yet.  But we need to get this off and then start removing the plaster.  Getting the room ready for all this mess means taping it off with plastic and trying to keep the mess contained.  I figured if I got the large sheets of paneling off first, I could get the room taped off easier.

As far as plans for the room go, we're playing a bit by ear.   We want to get this wall opened up, then do our measurements and get things planned.  Doing a lot of work on old houses, you learn that you get a lot of surprises any time you check into the walls, and I don't want to have all my plans based on something that can change at the last minute.  On the other side of that wall is this:

So there's a gas line and electrical at least.  No HVAC in this house, so we don't have to worry about that at least.  But it is a load-bearing wall, so we have to put a beam across the span. 

We're not in a big rush. Again, the bathroom took months, so will this.  I have a high tolerance for living in chaos, and I have a lot of things going on at work this spring, so we're going to take this one step at a time.  We have some cabinets in mind, and some ideas for the flooring, but we'll see how things progress as we go.  I want to move the sink to this side of the room, in a center island.  But I want to try out the sizes before I commit.  So we'll build some temporary structure to check out and live with it a bit. 

But...one tiny step forward!

Finally....the hall way

I've been really busy this past month or two -- trips to Florida and Indiana and New York, and then having to get everything else all caught up after I returned, so home upgrades have had to take a back seat.  We are leaving this week for another trip as well, so this will be the last upgrade we'll be making in 2012!

Although we got the bathroom all finished way back in spring, we never quite finished the outside part of the wall where the pocket door fit.  To get the pocket door frame in, we ended up having to partly demolish the hall wall.  We also had to remove a light switch from that wall and relocate it across the hall, which actually was a great thing, since it was hard to get to the switch in the dark hall!

This is what it's been looking like for the past year:

 

obligatory cat pose

and with the pocket door closed:

 

I have to remind you that the whole house was painted this tan with creamy white trim.  They had paid professional painters to come in, so although I hated the color, it was nicely done.  But I can't take all this tan.....

So - to replace this section, we had to temporarily screw a board to the opening that matched the level of the existing hall wall on the other side of the massive hole.  Then it required 3 coats of plaster, the first brown coat over metal mesh:

 

That dried for about a week, then the next coat, the brown coat over that scratch coat:

 

 That took another week to cure (well, it probably didn't need a week in between each coat, but with the mess and all, we only worked on the weekends).  Luckily, Dale is a plasterer with over 20 years of experience, so he knows what he's doing.

Then this week, a finish plaster coat that brought it up level with the wall:

 

Then it's my turn to sand, prime and paint.  And also put in crown molding at the top and new baseboard at the bottom.  And now it looks like this:

so smooth and nice!

I painted this hall the same color as the front hall -- I really like how cheerful it is.  I added some silhouettes I had in a previous house onto the wall across from the bathroom:

But I have a large, blank wall to finish.  I had originally planned on putting this wall graphic I bought - it's a tree with birds in it -- but when I got it out to work with it, it is WAY too small.  I will probably move my Chinese checkerboards over here after the start of the new year, because we will be taking down the wall that has them on it.  So -- it will have to remain blank for a little bit!

I am so relieved to have this done!  It's been an eyesore for so long, and we have some friends coming to stay while we're out of town, and I was a little embarrassed that they'd see our unfinished wall!

So - January will begin with a trip to Hawaii (a conference, but really we're turning it into a vacation, too!), and then getting started on our biggest project, a complete kitchen remodel!

A trip to St. Petersburg, FL

I just got back from a quick jaunt to St. Petersburg, Florida for the FAEA (Florida Art Educator's Association) Annual conference, where I was one of their keynote speakers.  I also presented a workshop on creating books with a coptic binding.  I love going to art educator's conferences, art teachers are such fun! 

While I was in the area, I looked online to see what attractions I should check out.  I did visit the Dali Museum, which is where one of the evening events for the conference took place.  This is a new building that houses a large number of Dali works.  Above is the central staircase that is modeled on a DNA strand.

Another thing on the list was the Sunken Gardens, which is a historic 100 year old botanical garden over 6 acres.  The gardens were well tended and full of lush, tropical plants.

The bamboo were clacking together in the slight breeze, a charming sound.

There were so many beautiful plants.  But almost none of them had labels on them, which was a disappointment!

And little lizards were everywhere!

This was an interesting tree - I wish I knew what it was!  It had large fruits hanging, the picture on the right shows what they look like with segments missing.

I loved the dense greenery.  The garden was really well tended and I enjoyed my visit!

 After visting the Sunken Gardens, I went to a local city park so I could see some alligators (I saw a really big female with two of her little babies, and a medium sized one sunning itself), and then went to Tampa to check out some manatees.  So I did manage to squeeze in some interesting trips during my 1/2 day that was unscheduled!

one year later

These are just a few shots of my yard, comparing the pictures I took when we bought the house a year ago, and the change since then.  Lots of these are fairly recent changes, but taken as a whole, it helps me to see the progress we're making.  Step by step....

The first is the front flower box.  The mums that I bought at the dollar store burst into bloom this week - just in time for Halloween.  It's cheery to drive up to at the end of the day!  I took the iris on the far left of the 'before' picture, chopped it down into smaller bits and alternated it with the mums.  There's a climbing black eyed susan vine that I thought was done for a month ago, climbing up the post.  It was looking dry and leggy, I pushed it back down the post and it seemed to appreciate it.

This was the first section I cleared out and planted, and it's the most established.  This area gets sun all day.  Almost all of these are freebie plants I picked up from Craigslist.  A couple were moved from the front flower box (the aloes).  Everything's looking happy here.

The planting strip on the other side of the house, it gets early morning sun and then shade the rest of the day.  The plants here are filling out nicely.  I took out the evergreens (which did not look as nice as they do in this picture, above right), and the grass, and added some gravel and stepping stones since this is where the neighbor gets into their car every day -- no point in planting up to the edge.

This is the last part planted, and it's not even done yet. I have a gaping hole in the bed where I intend on putting in some steping stones.  I also want to remove the rest of the brick walkway and change the steps into something more artful and less -- well, less a straight line across the strip.  You can also see here how bad the ivy was on the tree and how it looks like a normal tree now. This winter, we'll take the remaining grass off the strip and get the rest of the plants moved so we don't have dead grass along this area.

Getting ready to hit the road again this week, off to Florida for a conference.  This is a busy month!  I'll be traveling later to spend Thanksgiving with my daughter in Chico, that will be a fun break.