Yard Work Day!

It's been absolutely beautiful this week, so we took advantage of that and worked on getting some yard work done.  Dale woke up this morning and said, "I'm cutting that tree down on the corner of the house." So that was the project for the day.  Here's a video of the tree coming down:

The neighbors have been anxious to get us to get this tree down, too - it leaves a lot of crap on their car and it's just unsightly.  This afternoon as we got ready to cut it down, she came by and said, "Oh, I remember when that tree was just a seedling - and I've wished I had just pulled it up years ago when the house was vacant!"  We do, too - but now it down and cut up.

So here's a shot of the house when we were doing the inspection, and how it looks today with the tree down:

Our neighbors are also doing some landscaping - they've removed most of their front plantings and are in the process of painting their house.  Also this week, we (rather, Dale) removed more of the ivy from the tree in the front yard.  If we hadn't filled the trash cans, he probably would have taken it all down.  Now that it's dead and dry, it's shrunk and it's a little - just a little! - easier to get down.  Here's a progress photo:

Look! You can see a limb!






After we took down the tree and cut it up and hauled it into the back where we're storing firewood, we saw an ad on Craigslist for some more free plants that were already dug up, so we hopped in the car and filled the trunk with these nifty succulents:













There's a place by the back door that the water drains into - we planted a big patch of them there, leaving space for a bougainvillea - we plan to go pick one up tomorrow to plant there.  We'd like to train it up the posts. 

These are great little plants - aloe noblis.  We have a pile of them, the rest of them are planted behind the garage in a holding zone until we decide what to do with them down the line.

I also planted a few in the strip beside the driveway - I'd weeded this area yesterday and saw some little gaps here and there.  Here are a couple of the new succulents next to my favorite striped agave.












So - even though our backyard is far from beautiful, it's come a long way!  I took some shots to compare with the photos I had taken on the day we did our inspection:

This is our lemon tree, and the one below is a view of the bottlebrush tree, which is still a hot mess, but we'll get to it eventually.  The grass is still really patchy, but wow - compared to the total lack of anything but dirt back in September, well, it feels like a lush garden of eden!  All I know is, it's a great place to sit and relax while enjoying the great California weather!

Slow and steady updates

Lots of things I like about older houses - character, charm - and some things that aren't so great.  One of the things we've been doing along the way is switching out the outlets, switches and light fixtures.  The light fixtures had to come first - they were both unattractive and one of them actually would make crackling sounds (!) when turned on - so those had to go right away.  We haven't changed them into anything interesting for the most part - just your generic light fixtures (aka "boob lights"), since we had some of those from an earlier place we rented.  But today we changed out about 5 outlets (we've been doing this periodically).  Here's an illustration of why this is pretty important:

 

This one basically disintegrated in his hands when Dale went to change this one out.  It's from our bedroom.  Lots of them have cracks and other obvious faults, so we'll feel better when we get them all changed.  We've got about 5 or 6 more to go.

We also spent the day putting together IKEA furniture parts - the wardrobe, the inner dressers, the doors.  Dale also got most of the wall demolished, so tomorrow he's hoping to frame out the space.  While he's doing that, I am going to be working on the crown molding and baseboard trim.  More pictures to come when we make some progress!

Ahhhh....done (ish)

Ok - I have another round of paint on the upper half of the walls and a towel rack to hang, but really, what I was waiting for was the shower glass to be installed.  And it has been.  And it's lovely.  The cats approve. And it was expensive...

 

I had no idea how much this would cost, but it was something we really wanted, so we didn't bother to get any kind of estimates until we were ready.  Talking in the car one afternoon, I told him I was going to get estimates the next week for glass, how much did he think it might be?  I was hoping it wouldn't be over 2K, and his guess was 800 dollars.  So I guess it was right in the middle of our two guesses.  We called several places and the dollar amount was similar.  It's something we WOULD have done if we had the skills, but this is not the time to experiment.  I went through reviews of various glass places through yelp! and I was very happy with the company we went with.  Well, I might have been even happier if it was cheaper, but what can you say?

Here's a picture that I photoshopped rather shabbily, so you can get a look at the whole shower.  We can't take better pics with my iphone camera due to the smallness of the room, but I wanted to get an idea of how it looks --

So it's basically a glass wall.  It goes up 80" from the threshold - due to the fact that Dale's tall and we didn't want to either bang his head on the top rail (which was necessary because the door could not be hinged on a wall, and we also didn't want water to bounce over the top.  So it's extra tall, and extra expensive as well.  We did ask that they add a short towel rack on the right - we have a real struggle where to hang towels in here, so that gives us one more small place for a guest towel.

I still have to hang up decorations (and the pale green needs one more coat of paint), but it's such a relief to be able to shower without a janky makeshift shower curtain, and to have a functioning sink, and, well....all of it. 

So - on to the bedroom closet.   We took a trip to IKEA this morning, and we've got the piles of boxes and instructions and little IKEA tools to wrestle with this afternoon.  And we picked out a paint color for the room.  But now I gotta go, because I'm the one who has to do a lot of the instruction deciphering!

Waiting for the glass guy to show up

Today the glass company is scheduled to install our shower glass.  They're running a little late, so while I wait, I am going to give some preview shots of the bathroom.



We used marble tiles on the bathroom floor to match the floor of the shower.  But I wanted to add a subtle pattern, so instead of laying them in a running bond, I put them in a herringbone pattern, but not at a diagonal.  We have running bond on the shower walls and floor, and the basketweave insets are nice.  Just this one little change keeps things lively.

The thing that I really think added a lot to the look of the room is the picture frame molding - it gives a feeling of texture and contrast to what is essentially a whole lotta white. 


It also gives some style to what is essentially a plain little house - our house is a mid-century California bungalow - not quite stylish enough to be mid-century modern, but certainly toned down.  Adding these little touches gives it some character that it lacks.








I added a magazine rack on the lower part of the wall below the light switch.  We have precious little wall space here, so the toilet paper is on a standup holder.  And we have to add our towel racks and accents where we can.










Considering that one of our walls contains a pocket door, we can't just hang things willy-nilly without thinking about the placement pretty carefully.






We got the metal accent pieces a variety of places - the shower shelf we got at IKEA, the towel hooks by the vanity at Target, the magazine rack we found on amazon.com.  We were looking for a soft nickel finish - not exactly brushed, but more of a soft luster.

So, the other day I sat down and did all the math, adding up the receipts that I have carefully saved, so that we'd know how much our bathroom remodel cost.  And darned if I can't find the piece of paper I put my totals on!  So although I don't have exact figures, I can give you some roundabout numbers.  I divided the receipts into 3 categories - building (lumber, drywall, plywood, cement, lights, etc), plumbing (pipe, shower liner, fixtures, etc) and tile (grout, thinset, tile, tool rental), and basically it comes to this.



Building materials - 1300.00
Plumbing - 1100.00
Tile - 900.00
Shower glass - 1723.00



For a total of around 5100.00.  For a complete remodel, we feel pretty good about it.  The shower glass was a lot more than we expected, however!  Just the same, it's the way we wanted it, so we're happy.

Ah, they're here and installing as I type this.  So after that's done, I can touch up the paint and add the last remaining details!

And - already, we've started on our next project.  We decided to do our guest bedroom, because we have some visitors coming in June.  We are going to paint, add crown molding and new baseboard, and most importantly, redo the closet.  So when I came home from work yesterday, I was glad to see that Dale's already started the demo (his favorite part!):

We got rid of the closet doors on craigslist, and he took out the rest of the interior yesterday.  This afternoon, we're off to IKEA to pick up the new workings, as well as nice blinds for the room.  We're looking forward to making a comfortable place for our guests to relax!

Vanity installed

I posted earlier about scouring Craigslist to find a dresser to convert to a sink/vanity, but we finally got it installed last week and it's SO NICE to have it working!  The picture of the completed vanity was before we adapted it for the sink, which took some interior workings.

 I'd already shortened the two top drawers to give me space for the sink plumbing, but when we got the sink set on top, we realized we'd need a little more space, so we had to open it back up and take a little more out.

 And then I had to watch as Dale cut a hole through my newly refinished top, for the sink and drain:

 

 In the meantime, I used a book of sheet music to line the interior of all the drawers - the wood was old and from my previous experience with old drawers, sometimes there are smells and stains that eke out over time.  Also, several layers of paper glued in gave stability to the drawers (I had added new nails and tightened them up already)

 

 I'd gotten a couple of old sheet music books at a garage sale for a buck or so, so I've got plenty of paper.  This will make the drawers feel clean for me.

 After I tiled the floor in the bathroom (pictures to come later this week!), Dale got to installing the sink, along with his two helpers:

The big drawers are going to be great for holding toilet paper, towels and the tons of "stuff" that end up in the bathroom.  And we each have a top drawer for our own personal things. 

You can see a peek of the floor there, covered up with an old bath mat, and some of the baseboard trim that needs to be installed.  We had the glass guys out this week to measure for our shower glass, and when that's installed next week, I'll have pictures of the (finally) finished bathroom!

Picture Frame molding

I'm on spring break this week - not that I got any break!  I spent all my time in the bathroom - taping and mudding and sanding the drywall, putting up crown molding, and priming.  The thing I really wanted to do was get all that done so I could add picture frame molding to the lower half of the walls --


 I really like the sconces I got at Home Depot.



The shower has a row of "chair rail" about 4 feet up - I carried that through to the rest of the room.  I added another rail about four inches below, and then marked off boxes down the wall.



Originally, I was just going to have one box on each wall, but the way the vanity fits, it wouldn't show up on that wall at all -- so I decided I'd put a short set of boxes and then a larger box below.

It continues around the room.  This room seems either really small (when I'm trying to use an air compressor or move a ladder) or really big (only compared to how it was when we closed on the house).  We haven't had the vanity in for about a month, so we'll have to mentally adjust when that goes back in and we have a big piece of furniture in the room!




You can see a hint of the seafoam green above the chair rail in both pictures. I just wanted to be sure I really liked it - I was afraid it would look 1950s mint, but it looks more beach-like.

I also added another rail about 2 inches below the crown molding - this will help my crown look like it's wider.  The space in between will be painted white like the crown and the trim, so it will 'read' as a wide piece of molding.




So now I am sick and tired of caulking  -- every piece of molding has caulk on both sides so when I paint it there won't be any cracks where the pieces meet the wall.  And I filled all the little nail holes.  I would love to get it painted tonight, but I'm pooped!  I'm hoping tomorrow we do the floor so that by the end of my spring break, we'll have the vanity moved back in and all we'll need is the shower glass.  I had a guy out this morning to take measurements for an estimate --  it's the most expensive part of our whole bathroom redo!

Oh - just a last little picture of what this bathroom looked like when we bought the house in October --

I love my garage

When we were looking for a house, a garage was something we just assumed we'd have - we didn't give it much consideration, but we knew we'd want one because we have a lot of tools.  This house has a really big garage - two car, and it sits back on the lot in the backyard.  We will likely never use this garage for our car, but I have to say, I LOVE my garage as a workspace!

When we bought the house - it was full of old crap - mattresses, some shabby furniture and a really cool old stove, which we were temped to keep, but realized it needed repair and in the long run, it wouldn't fit in with our plans.  We listed everything on Craigslist for free and folks came over and cleared it all out for us.  Then we moved in and just kind of stacked things all over the place.  It also had a broken spring so we couldn't use the garage door opener to get the door up.  We replaced that, and a couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon cleaning it out and arranging things so we could use the space, and now we have the best work space!

It's the perfect place to refinish furniture or build things - yes, that's my bathroom vanity still sitting there, but I'm hoping to get the bathroom FINSHED this week - I'm going to install the flooring while I'm on spring break one day this week -- we finished drywall installation today - starting tomorrow I am doing the mudding and sanding and priming and painting.  It's gonna happen, folks!

The BEST part about getting all the drywall installed in the bathroom is that now I can take out the rest of it from the living room, where it's been since October.  I cleaned the floor and moved the cool cabinet we got ($35 bargain on Craigslist) to center it where the drywall has been leaning for months.  And I got to get out my collection of Chinese checkerboards!

 


This room has so much work to do - you can't see it well, but this wall has painted paneling on it, and acoustic tiles on the ceiling, and no baseboard.  This wall above, actually, is going to be removed - the kitchen is on the other side, and we are going to open it up.  We were debating on doing it as soon as the bathroom is done in the next few weeks - can't decide if we could get it done before we have company in June.  If we are reasonable and think about our progress on the bathroom, we are probably not going to do it - but we might actually just take this wall out and make do for a bit.  I think we are going to do some furniture rearranging this week - try out some new arrangements to work around our weird fireplace situation.



So - there should be some new pictures coming this week as I finish the floor and the walls of the bathroom.  I can't wait!

Kitchen fixture

While Dale is swearing in the bathroom while installing the pocket door, I decided to hang another free Craigslist score. I'd gotten a tarnished brass fixture with 70s glass hurricanes, I removed the glass and spray painted the brass a nice satiny black (to match the table).  I picked up some 2.99 clip on shades at Tuesday morning.  I'm thinking I need to do something with the candlestick covers, I got some trim for the shades, and maybe I'll add a ruched cover for the chain -- but I want to live with this a bit first.

just for a nice comparison - here's the original fixture when we bought the place.  When you turned the fan on, it rocked like crazy!  I replaced this before we moved in, with an IKEA fixture I had, but I knew it was just temporary. 


Dale and I went out to dinner last night, and were chatting about our plans after getting the bathroom done (which is progressing s-l-o-w-l-y), originally we talked about adding onto the bedroom for a second bath as our next project, but we are really sick of the kitchen, so we might get started on that next. 

More yard work

For all the work we are putting into it, our yard looks like crap.  But it will get better eventually!  This morning we got up early - someone had listed free bamboo on Craigslist and I didn't want to miss getting some.  It was perfect for along the back wall, so we called to get an address and took off.

We went to a house that was completely overgrown with bamboo - it was everywhere!  It's certainly a caution - this stuff will invade everywhere if steps are not taken to contain it.  I wish I'd taken a photo - it was pretty spectacular.  But it was also gorgeous - this is black bamboo, and the stalks are ebony black after 2-3 years, and mixed with the light green foilage, it's gorgeous.  So we brought our shovels and got digging.  A couple of hours later, we had a big pile of bamboo and sore arms.








Then we had to dig through our root-infested yard - the avocado tree has roots that run right at the surface and about 12" deep - once you cut through those, you're fine, but it's pretty exhausting and our arms were already tired!  But we got it done, and we're really happy with how it looks.






After we sat down with cold drinks and congratulated ourselves on how nice it looked, we took a look at the smaller of the 2 avocado trees - and decided to cut that sucker down and get more light in that corner of the yard.  The main avocado tree is lovely and plenty big enough to cast a nice filtered shade over the entire yard - the second, smaller one is just unattractive and creates a jungle in that corner.  Here's what it looked like when we closed (it's kind of hard to see that dark corner) -

and what it looks like today.  We still have to dig up the stump, but turns out that weedy looking tree in the corner cleaned up kind of good!  I don't know what it is, yet, but I think I'll keep it.  (*sigh* -- the grass is completely pitiful).












Oh, and here's some company we had while we worked outside today:
 




We have lots of lizards out there!





Our bird of paradise must not have minded all the man-handling it got when we moved it - all three segments have blooms on them!  The agapanthus we got free on Craigslist a few weeks ago is also looking great.





So, we sat back down with another cold drink and talked about what we were going to do for dinner, and Dale says, "Oh, what the hell, let me get started on digging up that camellia -  and you can check out that stump" so back we went.  We only got halfway done with that last part, though - too tired, so we'll finish tomorrow!  Thank goodness for beautiful California weather --

New York

So - I went off to a conference in New York City.  I love New York (I love big cities - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles!), and besides the absolute joy of meeting up with my art educator colleagues from all over the US (and staying up til 2:30 am giggling like kids at camp!), I took advantage of going to the major museums while I was there:

 

One of my favorite artists - Charles Demuth - and one of my favorite paintings.  Going to the Met is like looking at Gardner's Art Through the Ages in person.  Every room has something my AP Art History students would have studied.  I could stay there for hours.  But...instead, we hopped on a bus and took a ridiculously long ride to visit the Cloisters - the medieval gallery at the other end of Manhattan:

I love a ton of stuff there - but to see the Unicorn Tapestries - oh, it takes my breath away.  Also - the Merode Altarpiece, which was so wonderful to see up so close --oops, up so close that I set off the alarm (twice!).  My friends totally ratted me out to the guards.

Also visited MoMA and saw a ton of spectacular artwork, including this piece by Doris Salcedo:

This is just a single part of a series of niches cut into the wall, with women's shoes inside, and animal skin stretched over and stitched to the wall. It was gorgeous, evocative, sad...just beautiful.  But my FAVORITE -- really FAVORITE thing at the MoMA was a Cindy Sherman retrospective - the entire 6th floor.  Oh, it was magnificent!  Loved it!! (couldn't take pictures there - but how silly is that - they're photographs.

Then, the Guggenheim, which had a show of John Chamberlain.  It was great, but what I LOVED were the Kandinskys!  To be up so close and look at them --makes me want to paint right now.

It's so inspiring to be around all the wonderful artwork and art friends and discussing art education issues.  I came back with a crappy cold - thanks Kris! - but ready to get caught up with my grading and to make some art!  Oh - and Dale did some last minute wiring and so I came home to a house full of extension cords and a blown breaker, LOL!  That's the kind of stuff we take in stride around here --

Bus Scroll Art project

I love my new Southern California affiliation.  It's exciting to think that we live in one of the biggest cities in the US - one of the most famous cities in the world. It's fun to watch movies that are filmed out here and realize we know where lots of places are.  And, as a big detective mystery novel reader, there are TONS of great mystery series that are based out here, and whose plots revolve around places whose names I've read for years, but now have been to.  So in the spirit of my honeymoon love for LA, I decided to create a "bus scroll" project for my Southland home.

I've seen vintage bus or subway scrolls on ebay and in decorating magazines - the signs that change to indicate where the car is going when it pulls up to the stop.  But I can't spend the money on the authentic ones I really like, and I ran across this great project on a blog called Mama With a Dash of DIY Drama.  And it's budget minded (my polite way of saying CHEAP!) and that's right down my alley.

So the first thing I did was make a list of streets and places in the LA area that bring to mind some of those mystery novel associations - as well as well-known LA streets.  I made this on a Word document, putting in a black shape and then typing text into it.  I used Roadway font and varied the font size and sometimes bold, sometimes not. I've seen others that used a variety of fonts, but I like the uniformity.  Then I saved it as a pdf file, and sent it online to the local Staples copy center.  Choosing an engineering print, I had it printed out at 24" x 36" for 2.99.  Which was my total cost for this project (yay, cheap!).

Other places have done this project mounting the print on a stretched canvas, but I scrounged around in my garage - which I spent most of Saturday cleaning - and picked up an old piece of plywood paneling that I cut to size with a utility knife, then sanded the edges. I liked the old flaked look of the paneling for the background.  I trimmed the print to the black edges, then spritzed the back of it with a spray bottle so the paper would not wrinkle as I glued it to the wood.  I watered down the glue and spread it all over the plywood with a paintbrush, then applied and smoothed down the print.  I rubbed it a bit with a very slightly damp rag, so it would adhere well and also to get it to look a bit aged.  Because the plywood was thin and there was a lot of moisture added with glue, I sprayed the back of the plywood with water so that it would not buckle. 

Now it's all dry and I love it.  I have a great cabinet in the living room that it's going to sit on top of -- we have to get some glass cut for the cabinet so I can fill it and get it all 'styled out' - more pictures later of the finished look!

Yard work Sunday!

While the rest of the country is watching the Super Bowl, we spent the day working in the yard.  Actually, today was supposed to be a drywall day, but last night I saw an ad on  Craigslist for some free agapanthus if we dug them up, so we started off with that.

And after we got those put in the ground, Dale looks at the bird of paradise that is overgrown and hanging over the path and says, "maybe we should go ahead and dig that up while we're out here..." and THAT was a major job!  We had to dig a HUGE hole around it, then divide it and replant it.  Our yard has a lot of trees --too many! -- and there are roots everywhere, which makes it even more of a challenge.

So we got that divided and transplanted, and cleaned up.  Looked around, and realized how much bigger the backyard looks now -- yes, it's still a hot mess grass and weed-wise - but we'll get that going soon, too.  We also took out two small volunteer trees - more like overgrown weeds, and that opened it up. 

So we came inside (and I had to clean the sliding glass window so we could admire how large the backyard looks), and we sat down, had a nice cool drink, and started talking about how badly the lemon tree was overgrown, and maybe we should just cut it down and get a dwarf lemon.  So Dale puts his shoes back on, and says, "I'm going to go out and trim a few branches right now."  So back out we go!

After digging, sawing and raking all afternoon, we're beat!  But the yard does look lots better.  Oh, if only I could afford to get a pool put in before summer!  Dream on!

Bathroom vanity

The bathroom is moving s-l-o-w-l-y (I snicker to think how quickly we thought it would go), but I am making progress in between all the other duties of life and work.  One of the things I knew I wanted in the bathroom was a furniture style vanity - but I am way to cheap to spend 800-1000 dollars on one.  So I kept an eye out on craigslist for a good piece of furniture - I wanted something with a curved front and a little bit of vintage charm.  And it had to be between 40 and 48" wide - which was the hardest part.  I found a ton of stuff in the 55-65" range.  So when this little dresser came up I jumped on it.

Sixty bucks, that's my kind of price! It did have problems - a long split across the top, and the handles had been changed and there were holes where the old handles were.

    

 The left side had some deep cat scratches at the back end, and there used to be a mirror attached, so the top had a 3/4" gap at the back where the mirror had been attached.  But no problem that I couldn't fix!

And you can see in the pictures above, the top was stained and pretty nasty. 

So the first thing I did was unscrew the top and glue and clamp the split.  And then we pried the back off the whole thing - which we would need to do for access to the back for plumbing.  And when we did that, it solved the gap issue.  I sanded the cabinet and filled the scratches, then gave it a nice coat of satin black paint.

I also refinished the top - sanded and stained it back to the original color.

Now I needed to modify the top three drawers to allow for the plumbing.  The middle drawer needed to be shortened to allow for the water hookups and the drain going out, and the two top drawers need to make room for the drain from the sink.

The middle drawer was easy enough, just took 4" off the back and set some new stops so the drawer doesn't go in too far.  The top two drawers took a little more thought and planning.  I needed to bring them in a little but not right to the front, and I didn't want to weaken the drawers by removing the front dovetails, so I started 5" back from the front, and cut a rectangle out, reusing the old pieces I cut out.   I did take a picture of the back side of the entire piece, but it was getting pretty dark out and it wasn't the greatest picture.

I filled the holes in the two large drawers, and then painted a celtic interweave design on the drawer fronts.

I lightly sanded the stenciling then gave the entire piece 3 coats of spar varnish, which is used on boats.  Since this is going to go into a room full of moisture, I wanted to protect the wood.  The top got an additional 5 coats of varnish.  I also used steel wool on the pulls to bring out a little of the brass - although I liked the old patina so I didn't polish much.

We still have to mount the sink to the top and add the faucet, but for now, the main part of the cabinet is done, and I'm happy with it.  The oak finish was so pretty didn't want to cover it all up (originally I was going to paint the entire bottom along with the drawers), so we decided to use a fairly dense stencil.  I had a hard time picking one out - I was leaning towards some florals but Dale wanted something a little less "girlie."  I think the final choice is perfect for us.  I think it's going to look stupendous against the white walls and marble floor, warming up what could be a pretty cold room!