Bungalow 718

Of Bullfrogs and Frost

2010-11-28T19:10:00.000-08:00

After three days and nights of frost and freeze warnings, with plants draped with pillow cases and sheets or covering dining room tables, our pond frog decided to try to high-tail it outta here when it warmed up a little and started raining on Saturday.

When I was getting ready to leave for work in the morning I found him far from the pond, which he never goes far from, and about 1/2 way to the front yard on the side of the house. He was super cold and stiff sitting there on the bricks. And for the first time EVER, he was handled by a human and I got to pick him up and bring him inside to warm up.

We plopped him down in some slightly warm water and he immediately started to loosen up. We've made a little habitat for him inside, bringing him outside in it to bask in the sunlight in the morning. It's too dark to take good photos of him in his current habitat right now, but it's got a basking rock out of the water, a multi-bulb of blue water lilies from the pond and a couple small fish.

We usually don't see him much this time of year, unless it's warm enough for him to be basking. But, with the crazy weather we've been having this fall I'm pretty sure he was tired of colds and hots back and forth and was trying to leave.

Not sure how long we'll keep him in, probably some time in the next few days. But, I do know that that's the best photo we've ever gotten of him. When living outside in the pond he's quite elusive!

Update: We let him back into the pond the next day since it was a bit warmer. He was there for a few days and was last seen by our immediate next door neighbor jumping around property. We figure he might just be up for an adventure this winter, so we don't have any plans to search him out.

Dry Creek Native Garden

2010-11-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

I had work off today, a manditory government employee furlough day, so I ran some errands and hit up the Dry Creek Native Garden. Today is one of the few days I'll have a chance since I work during the garden's open hours. It's open Thursdays-Saturdays 10:00am to 4:00pm.

Local Honey

2010-11-11T12:48:00.000-08:00

We've been slowly working away at our honey jar for over a year and finally emptied it out. We had bought the honey at our local, small produce store which sometimes sells honey collected from beehives in our neighborhood. (FYI: Dan actually worked at Estudillo Produce one summer a couple years ago.)

Scott Terry, one of our neighborhood beekeepers, jars the honey and sells some to Estudillo Produce occasionally. He wrote an SFGate article about his beekeeping (our old jar has the same label as the one pictured) and he's also mentioned in an article about the Bay-Friendly Garden Tour.

We kept forgetting to stop by Estudillo Produce to see if there's any honey jars - they aren't always there, there's never a large stock and they can sell out quickly. So, it was great luck that one of the members of the Alameda County Beekeepers Association left some personal belongings behind after their monthly meeting at my work on Tuesday and dropped off a jar in thanks when he picked them up the next morning. A very sweet perk to working at the Rotary Nature Center alongside Lake Merritt in Oakland; as if there weren't a lot of beautiful and fun perks already!

I didn't catch the beekeeper's name and I'll have to ask him if I see him again soon. But, here's a cellphone photo of our newly gifted honey jar in the backyard this morning:

Japanese Gardens

2010-10-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

With my new position at the Rotary Nature Center by Lake Merritt, Mondays are now my Sundays. I was thinking of going to the Garin/Dry Creek Native and Exotic Gardens in Hayward today, but in looking up more information it isn't open on Mondays. I'm hoping I'll get to see it at some point, since I've never been there, but my new work days may not let me.

So, since I'd never been to the Japanese Gardens in Hayward, Dan suggested we finally go and grab a slice from Pizza Express for lunch.

It was very quiet and peaceful to walk through. And a perfect day to visit after a very rainy weekend.

Still hoping I'll be able to visit the Native Garden, though. Maybe during a work field trip, since I need to be learning my natives flora in addition to my native fauna.

Friends of Sausal Creek Native Plant Sale

2010-10-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

On this rainy Bay Area day, we went out to Joaquin Miller Park to shop the Native Plant Sale put on by the Friends of Sausal Creek. We love Joaquin Miller Park and love hitting up the Native Plant Sale when we remember to. We picked up a few plants two years ago from the plant sale, but completely missed it last year. So, even though it was raining, we were pretty determined to go through the natives.

We brought our puppy Jax with (since Joey, our pit, is not a fan of rain) and he played in the rain for a bit with another dog at the sale. He was wrapped up in a towel on the way home in the car and fell asleep by the fireplace when we got home.

The natives we picked up:

Yellow-eyed/Golden-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium californicum)

Image © Las Pilitas Nursery

California Huckleberry/Evergreen Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum)

Image © King County Native Plant Guide

Scarlet Bugler (Penstemon centranthifolius)

Image © Squamatologist

California Coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica)

Image © Las Pilitas Nursery

Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana)

Image © California Flora Nursery

Red Bush Monkeyflower (Mimulus aurantiacus puniceus)

Image © Squamatologist

Bits that don't make a solo post, yet.

2010-10-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

There's a few things that I'd like to post on, but don't have much to say about just yet. So, here's a list of partials from the last couple of months, some of which will get a full post... eventually.

• Completely boarded the attic in the main house, where the POs left off and cleared out a bunch crap.

One of the previous owners put plywood in a good chunk of the attic and that's the portion we've been using over the last couple of years. They didn't board over the kitchen, which has cans popping up into the attic. We raised the floor level a step, over the canned lights, and boarded it up. It's amazing how much more space we have up there. We hadn't realized that the unboarded portion of the attic was such a huge section. Photos soon, but no befores since I didn't think of it at the time.

• We went to Echo Lake, near Lake Tahoe, this summer.

I'm slacking on posting Summer in Reverse. I need to get the photos all together. Dan and I went with his mom and sister and their dogs. Beautiful weather and beautiful little lakes.

• We started a compost bin in June.

Worms, fruits and veggies and browns. It's going great so far. There were flies, but managed to eliminate that issue. We have maggots in there, but they aren't harming so we haven't tried to clear them out. There's an awesomely rich chunk of fresh soil in there and it looks amazing.

• Finally figured out where I want to plant my pomegranate tree.

It was a birthday gift two or three years ago and has been in a large planter ever since. We took out the small turtle pond in the front yard when we replaced the windows earlier this year and now have a great spot for the pomegranate.

• Re-drew the front yard landscaping, again.

It's still a mix of fruit trees and a lot of native plants. We still need to decide what natives we want where. There's a native plant sale coming up at Joaquin Miller Park on the 24th, if we're able to go. Once I find one of the cables for the camera I'll post it.

• We picked out which city-approved tree we want planted in the sidewalk planting area.

And we know the steps we need to take to finally get that concrete broken up and removed so that we actually HAVE a sidewalk planting area. We absolutely hate that we don't have many trees at our end of the block. It looks barren and gets ridiculously hot. We think the Jacaranda suits our needs. Grows fairly fast, has a round, open canopy and has nice blue flowers. It'll be a little bit of maintenance (dropped flowers, seedpods), but honestly, there are two Jacaranda at the Dunsmuir Estate, where I worked all summer, and damn those things are gorgeous looking.

• Over the summer, I ran a small day camp at the Dunsmuir-Hellman Historic Estate.

I was brought on with ~2.5 weeks before summer and there hadn't been any promotion about it between then and the beginning of the year so the numbers were ridiculously low. The camp was stationed out of the original Milk Barn and had free reign around the estate. Wild deer, turkeys, foxes, skunks, cats and more would be around all the time. It was a blast.

• I'm being placed directly underneath the City of Oakland Naturalist and will be training underneath her.

Applied for a position in my organization (City of Oakland, Parks and Recreation) - oh... almost two years ago. They finally went through with hiring from the list of candidates this summer/fall. I'm crazy excited about this. I'll be working next to the first wildlife refuge in the US. I start on Tuesday. Partial benefits, pay bump and 30 hours a week. Finally.

• Dan and I took off a week of work and went to Chicago for our five year anniversary last week.

We both had free Southwest roundtrips from visiting while he was in college in So. California for two years. Most of my family is in Chicago, and that's where I was born, so we had free lodging wherever we went. We had so much fun. There'll definitely be a post on it once we remember all the things we did and have it all written down (we're a good chunk of the way there). Dan says it's his favorite vacation ever now. We volunteered to get bumped from our flight home if they needed space, we weren't in a hurry home, and bumped we got. Free 4.5 star hotel room, free flight the next day and we each got $400 flight vouchers. Our free trip got us more free trips!

Summer in Reverse - Garin/Dry Creek Regional Park

2010-09-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

While we didn't get a lot done around the house (a little difficult with two of us running day camps) we did go places and do things. I will hopefully remember to keep posting belated summer events and current events frequently.

The first Saturday of September, we took our dogs and went with our friend Bruce and his dogs to take a long hike up in Garin/Dry Creek Park to Jordan Pond. It ended up being a really nice three hour hike. The dogs were tiiiired afterwards. It was great! And, surprisingly, our 12-year old pitbull (Joey) recovered from the hike within an hour. We were thinking he'd be out and need pain killers for a few days. He's had a lot more energy since then, too.

We took the long way there along the creek paths, across old tiny cattle bridges. We were never sure if we went the right way to get to Jordan Pond, so when we finally got there it was like an oasis to come up on.

Jordan Pond, with the dry, golden hills surrounding it.

We started at the Whipple entrance and hiked to Jordan Pond. The next time we go without the dogs, I'd love to check out the Dry Creek Garden which looked like it had a lot of native plants to check out.

Summer in Reverse - Lake Camanche

2010-09-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

While we didn't get a lot done around the house (a little difficult with two of us running day camps) we did go places and do things. I will hopefully remember to keep posting belated summer events and current events frequently.

Lake Camanche

We headed out to Lake Camanche over the weekend. We brought the dogs and several friends and their dogs for a relaxing weekend camping by the side of the lake.

We caught a lot of seaweed and other things. No fish.

Lots of relaxing and gorgeous views.

Hundreds of dragonflies come out all at once. Tried as I might to get one to land on my hand, they were more interested in flying around and feasting.

We picked up a 1/2 bushel of apples on the way up there. We've made two delicious batches of apple chips (plain, lemoned, cinnamon and cinnamon and sugar), so far. We're thinking some apple pies are next.

Porch Work + Door Set

2010-09-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago (right at the end of summer camps and the first weekend post-running summer camps for two of us), the black-eyed susan vines were cut down off the porch. I'd been waiting for that weekend to cut them down and Trevor had the same idea since I came home on that Thursday to half of it gone and the next day it was all gone.

We cleaned off the porch and visited Home Depot to get some trim supplies. When we removed the floor-to-ceiling windows in the beginning of the year, we were so busy with things that we hadn't installed new trim at the base of the porch to replace where the old window trim met the porch floor. We installed that and scraped the window there and primed it.

I have some photots, but it doesn't look like much (over than the vines being gone. Michelle completely forgot what the porch looked like without the vines and hadn't realized how much space we were missing because of the vines.

Hopefully, we can get some time in the next couple of weeks to scrap, sand and prime some more of the house.

We also decided to change the red we were thinking for the exterior window trim. Something darker and more red than the one we were originally thinking.

Also, I picked up a Kwikset front door set from the Home Depot clearance section a couple months back for about $40 (I think?) instead of $160. Definitely looks better with a matching set on the door!

RIP Old Dog, Hello New Pup!

2010-04-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

(in front of our old house, that we owned for our first thirteen years in California)

We ended up having to put our 12 year old dog, Chandler, down a few weeks ago. He was having a lot of hip and rear leg issues and the vet believes he'd been having mild seizures for awhile. One day, he just snapped and begun tearing up couches (he's NEVER torn up anything, he had stuffed animals for years), not being able to sleep and would pace for hours in the middle of the night while on meds that reduced his pain. After trying a change of meds for a few days, with hope the old meds were what altered his behavior, he had no change. Sometime around 3am on St. Patricks Day, a few days after his initial huge seizure/freak out, my mom took him to the emergency vet to be put down.

For several weeks, Joey (our pitbull), was without his buddy of 11 years.

After many shelter visits all over the area, we brought home Jax, a 5-month old cattledog/pointer mix.

He's incredibly smart! He housetrained himself, learned the dog door in minutes, understood sit, lay down, no and drop, and could already fetch balls and frisbees.

He LOVES to hug and cuddle and he'll lick your face if he can, loves the attacking water from the hose, loves dog parks and mud puddles...

Jax interrupted from a hug and lick attack and me hiding my face from Jax's tongue:

Dan and Jax post-lick after a "Jax Attack":

And Jax and Joey relaxing on a blanket we brought outside one day for them:

He's been home for two weeks, as of tomorrow.

Bay-Friendly Natives Tour 2010

2010-04-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, we went on the free Bay-Friendly Natives Tour put on by StopWaste.Org. We started late and stopped early but ended up visiting 9 of the 40 gardens on the tour this year. There were a few awesome gardens that gave us ideas, some decent gardens that were nice and one that we really didn't see much worth in visiting, unfortunately.

I was happy to see a few gardens on the tour that were around the neighborhood of Redwood Heights, since I've worked at the neighborhood Recreation Center for 5+ years. Such as this pond:

The company they hired to install the pond does a lot of integrated biofilter ponds and created a bog filter in the upper, more shallow, portion of the pond.

We're thinking of switching over to a bog/veggie filter in our pond and expanding the pond to have a spot for the turtles that's separate from the koi/goldfish and frog section.

We've been wanting to redo the storage situation on the side of the studio for a long time. We'd love to have the bikes in a fully-enclosed shed, with maybe a long section of storage cabinets along the fence with a deep shed for the lawnmower and such.

Greenhouse FULL of succulents in a huge redwood covered yard:

The garden we visited with the most character was owned by residents who go to Burning Man and had several art pieces around the yard and tons of interesting things to look at everywhere:

Glass bug art hanging all over the garden from the Burning Man home:

Cute little gate from a home NOT on the tour:

Crappy picture, but this monkeyflower was growing strong:

Abutilon looking really full, some plants end up really sparse looking:

Love this plant, but it wasn't on the tour and I don't know the name of it:

Sunday had beautiful warm weather and we had fun visiting all the gardens. I'd definitely go again next year.

Got an Angry Neighbor Letter - Whoo!

2010-03-30T21:49:00.000-07:00

We received our first angry letter today from an unknown "neighbor" attacking the "occupants" of our house for having exposed siding on the front of the house and stating that the previous owners kept it in perfect condition (um, yeah, they didn't do anything to update it) and said that we have no pride in our house - hah.

Oh and the inside the house is a mess, too (shame!). Yup, there were a bunch of boxes of candy visible through the windows the last two weeks since 600 bags of Easter candy had to be packaged for the city wide Egg Hunt event on Saturday!

Yup, we've got a few exposed boards. We needed to replace the floor-to-ceiling windows with shorter ones and had to install new siding boards. And we're in the process of scraping, sanding and painting the whole house (so the boards didn't get painted yet). AND it's rainy season, so not much happening at the moment in Scrape-N-Paint-Town. I don't think this person even noticed why the boards were showing; fancy new windows. Yup, the house isn't being destroyed - it's being fixed!

We're kinda pissed, but I also find it a little amusing since they have no idea how much work we've but into the house (inside and out and what we're planning on doing) and they probably haven't personally put work into their own house since they don't know that rain makes it a bit hard to scrape the house and that proper painting can't happen in the rain.

Our house has had exposed siding for a few weeks (it started raining as we finished installing the windows, so no new progress) and other neighboring houses have had exposed boards for much longer as they were in the process of repairing, scraping and painting as well. Nice to know that the "neighbor" doesn't notice very much about their neighborhood.

I imagine when we finish all the exterior updates this "neighbor" will think it's because they yelled at us anonymously in a letter and will write to someone else.

We were already planning on scraping the house a bit during Spring Break next week if it was sunny out. Maybe we'll see an angry lady attempting to shame us with her beady for-shame eyes?

I'll scan the letter one of these days and post it on here. It's pretty funny how rabid they are in it. I really want to frame it. It'll be hilarious to look at when the house is finally done being painted and when our front landscaping is done at some point in the next few months.

Updated Design

2010-02-14T17:50:00.000-08:00

Design for the front yard and porch with the colors we chose to paint the house (the green here is darken than what we chose, but I'm lazy). The back of the house currently has these colors, but we were waiting to do the rest until after the new windows were put in.

Other than that, this is updated to show the new windows we put in (yay!) and I drew up a better door (so that it matches our actual door). And again, the porch columns and railing are an idea of what to replace the really crappy iron railing and columns with. Still deciding on column style, a basic square post or a boxed and bricked post, or boxed and bricked with a taped post top...

One of these days, I need to draw up a map of the garden idea and post it. It'll be easier to ID all the plants and locations with a top map. There's a lot of native plants and drought-tolerate plants along with fruit trees/vines (kiwi, avocado, orange, lemon, lime and California grapes). Although, we semi-recently added blueberries to the growing mix so the grapes might be replaced with those.

Replaced Old Windows

2010-02-14T14:55:00.000-08:00

Alright, now that we have a big update to post...

We'd been planning on replacing the two front-facing windows. The house was built with floor-to-almost-ceiling windows on the front of the house, which were a little weird as the windows they were essential just two panes (one glass, one plastic) with a small wood wedge inbetween. Not really windows, not really attractive, not really sealed well, and not really nice to look through.

So, we called in our handyman Mike Ratto to help us put in our new Jeld-Wen vinyl prairie, energy efficient, windows. We were able to purchase higher rated windows since they were eligible for the EnergyStar Federal Tax Credit of 30% of their cost. Awesome.

Yesterday, one of our neighbors recalled why the outside pane was made of plastic. Apparently, a previous owner (not the last, but the one before them) was sitting in the dining room when someone threw a brick through the glass window, nearly hit him in the head, and broke his table. It was then that he replaced the panes in the windows with glass on the inside and plastic on the outside. Totally crazy.

Living Room

Dining Room

Original Floor-to-Almost-Ceiling Window Style (Living Room)
Mmm, foggy.

Old Window Removed (Inside Dining Room)

Old Window Gone (Outside Dining Room)

New Window Box Support Frame (Dining Room)

New Window IN! (DRoom)

New Window

Boarded up and waiting to get scraped and painted (and finish the trim on the dining room).
Not able to put in new redwood boards, so the areas under the two new windows are the only non-redwood siding boards on the house.

Textured Wall

Painted wall... and dirty floor.

And now the house is waiting for us to scrape and paint the rest of it. We had a scraping and painting party last summer for the back of the house.

Post-It from the POs

2008-12-11T20:12:00.000-08:00

The Previous Owners of our home had a particular habit of leaving Post-It Notes on and inside everything possible. We kept the Post-It Note on the switch to the motion-sensor lights outside (which says something to the effect of: "Always Keep On!") but that's the only one that's stuck and stayed. It's been a few years since we've come across a new one, but this one popped up in November when a smoke and carbon monoxide detector's battery ran out. We bought the house at the end of 2004 so it lasted a couple of years:

Now, it's definitely a good idea to mark down the date and all, but the fact that everything was labeled in this house is a little weird, but funny. A weird, but not funny, thing that they did, though, was paving over the curb/sidewalk grass area. We're the only house on the block with it paved over. Not only were they obsessive about safety Post-It's on everything, they didn't want grass or flowers?

I'll update on cleaning, and me and the boy moving into and fixing up the studio at the back of the property and a photo update on the patio.

Patio Almost Complete!

2008-10-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of progress on the patio project. I was personally out of town for 5 weeks and in that time all of the "legs" of the patio were completed, a gazebo went up and several plants were in. It was a total surprise when I got back. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos to show the many stages the patio was in between the last post and the current post!

Click for more:

The only progress photo I have before many of the plantings, the compost, the grass seed planting.

Gazebo that came with screening, and although you can't see it, we put a light fixture put in the top of it. The neon fencing is protecting our newly planted grass seed. The blue-green structure in the background is the hot tub area, which was reused from a gazebo a friend was taking down.

Also, a tree in front of the hot tub area and a short bushy tree on the immediate right were free from a guy we got base rock/sand from when we were building the square part of the patio. We think the tall one is some sort of pear tree, maybe decorative, and that the short one is a fig.

The smaller greens on this side were freshly planted.

Transplanted our maple, which hasn't been happy in a container, with a prime spot. The green mosaic ball looks awesome with the red maple and the dark compost color behind it.

There's solar pathway lighting on every leg of the patio (the small brown box-like things).

It'll look awesome when there's some lush grass there!

The original brick path was much thinner and didn't go all the way up to the house, instead there was a section of lame lava rock. We expanded the brick path with a new pattern and got rid of the lava rocks completely! There was a bunch of loose sand still sitting on it.

To celebrate both the patio and the upcoming birthday of Trevor (later this month, of which we'll have a party on the patio), Michelle bought a new grill. The old grill was dying and Home Depot had this one on a very nice sale.

In other news, we had our first rain of the season two nights ago. We haven't been directly watering the grass in the front, because of the drought, so it looks pretty trashy and dead. When I'd wash my car, I'd park it on the grass so that the water gets two uses out of it, though.

We put up the rest of the lava rocks we have (which is way too many) on craigslist and we'll hopefully be rid of that stuff forever!

Backyard Patio

2008-07-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

Since we're in a drought and we haven't been watering the lawns (both front and back), we've started putting in a patio in the middle of the back lawn area. Lava rock from the side of the house as base rock, a little leftover sand from the side walkway and a lot of free sand from a guy on craigslist. I'm loving that we're getting rid of the stupid lava rocks this way, haha.

These were from four days ago, since then we've put in the square bricks, including at least one of the paths. Photos of that coming soon.

The plan is to have a strip of grass and several planting areas around the patio. It's a perfect spot to put out our barbeque pit and maybe make a method for the occasional overhang to be put in.

The guy who gave us the sand on craigslist also had two tall, potted trees that he had semi-killed (by not watering) that he gave us for free as well. He didn't remember what kind of trees they were anymore, so we'll see what happens with those.

Finished Path and Found Object

2008-06-08T16:47:00.001-07:00

A friend had a lot of sand he wanted to get rid of, so we grabbed it up to finish the bricks on the side yard.

Yeah, too lazy to move the hose, hah.

Bricks are slopped to meet up with the existing concrete path.

Front to back view.

No more stepping on red lava rocks on the side! Yay!

And, when digging around this little guy was found...

Drought

2008-06-02T01:32:00.000-07:00

So, it's looking like the 2008 East Bay drought is going to make it so that we're probably not going to be watering our lawns much, front or back this summer. The sprinklers were already having issues awhile back, so they haven't been on anyway. I'd rather they not die completely since it'd look really, really bad. I'll probably try to get them watered once a week or something.

We hate the grass as it is. It's just a bunch of crab grass and it's not all that nice, but looks decent when regularly watered. The drought could be a good excuse for letting it die, haha. Digging it up, rototilling, evening the soil level and reseeding post-drought season might just be awesome.

Not much happening project-wise. I got two kiwi vines (male, female) for my birthday and they were planted in a new planting box in the front. It's located right at the new fence line. When we get around to taking out the current railing columns and replacing them, I'm going to use the curly iron columns as supports for the kiwi vines. They'd actually work pretty perfectly for it, haha.

Exterior Updates and Color Idea

2008-05-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

I took some time on earlier this week to check out some books at Borders for bungalow color, window and other miscellaneous ideas. In one of the books (Bungalow Colors: Exterior by Robert Schweitzer) had exactly what I was looking for colorwise; a page full of color combos! I had my camera with me for this exact thing (and taking photos of other ideas in the books).

A couple weeks ago I did a sketch of the front of the house to play with color, column, door and window options (no railings on it so it'll be easier to play with). Using Seroco paint colors, as found in the book: Light Blue, Green Tint and Pea Green.

I bought a new front door for our house for my mom's (early) birthday present. I found an awesome one on craigslist for $50. i haven't taken a new photo of it yet, but here's the one from the craigslist ad we got it from:

Recently, we put in a brick path on the side yard. Soon to be covering the entire area, although with a pattern change since there's a concrete area further up to the side.

Color Idea?

2008-03-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

We went to Home Depot yesterday and chose some colors to play with and try out. But, we ended up with pretty much the same color scheme that we used on our last purchased home (a stucco Victorian/Craftman Bungalow).

Pretty similar to the colors we chose.

House Idea. Mind you, the house has wood siding and I didn't put that detail back in.

I added in a railing on the left side of the porch since we're thinking of putting in a stairway on that side.
Also of note is the door. We currently have a blank wood door and we want to find one that has window panes on the top half.
We're thinking of tapered columns and got a quote from a company for an idea of what it will be cost wise.

Window idea detail.

And now back to coming up with more logical ideas. Those colors totally work on our old house, but definitely not on this one. In the mean while, we've got these colors painted on random windows in the backyard in different combos. Need to sand that off, haha.

Side Gate & Fence

2008-03-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

Moved the gate and fence line closer to the front of the property on the small side area of the house.

So. Much. Better.

Photo taken standing about where the original fence line and gate were located.

If you look closely at the right side of the photo, there WERE some vertical bars.

Best thing ever? When we first moved into the house, we had to put up vertical rods across this ledge. The original fence line made it so that it was possible for the dogs to jump over the ledge and be free to roam the streets. NO BARS!

I took the "Beware of Dog" sign off after I took the photo, heh. The fence will get painted when we paint the house.

Sprinkler addition so that we can gross grass further back. And of course, some house sanding.

Studio, New Projects

2008-01-29T21:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a couple of months since I've done any updates on the bathroom. There's a good reason for it: we haven't worked on the bathroom in that time. Life got busy and what's left now is finishing small things around the room. We have worked on a couple of other projects around the house, as you can see below.

We've evicted a renter in the studio, had to remove ALL of his junk as he abandoned it and it's finally back to clean and in shape to have someone rent it for a couple of months. It was NOT livable at all. He had piles everywhere. It was digusting. It took about three weeks to clean it out. Two loads to the dump. A garage sale. And we still have so much of his junk left that we ordered a free dumpster from the city. Not only that, but we're owed thousands of dollars in rent that we're never going to get.

My boyfriend and I will be renting the studio near the end of summer, when he graduates from UC Irvine. Until then, it looks like we might have a renter ~~from the East Coast who needs a place to stay for a few months until his fiancé can move out here, too~~. We now have a buddy living back there, awesome! We kept some of the furniture that the evictee left, so it's partially furnished for the guy. Although, we're trying to find him a real bed (free, craigslist, of course).

New projects around the house!

We got bored and decided the bathroom in the studio had a really stupid ledge that needed to have colorful tile on it. We had a lot of mosaic tile sitting around waiting for a project. We just need to paint the walls in the bathroom now.

The hot tub area now has a wood-topped roof and is waiting to be painted once the weather is dry.

We're sanding the house so that we can start figuring out colors and start painting. So far, we know that we want green walls and a blue door. We just need to decide on which ones and then figure out what we want to do for the trims and frames.

We're thinking of adding columns to the front porch, as all we have right now is this lame iron decorative railing system that we hate. In the mock ups I did in Photoshop, the house looks AMAZING with columns. All of the other houses in the neighborhood have columns and we're thinking that at some point there might have been earthquake damage (or an insane person) and the columns were taken out and replaced with the iron railing and iron columns.

Bath Surround Installed

2007-07-23T20:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it's been awhile since I've posted. This is mainly because we weren't doing much with the bathroom that needed mentioning and because we were waiting for the bathtub surround to come in.

The surround came in before the 1st of July and we ended up putting it up and in shortly after.

I've been super busy with work and everything else, so I haven't had much time to update lately. Plus, it seems I had more time to update when we didn't have such a pretty bathroom to shower in!

I'll make this a multi-part update since I have a mix of photos and still need to take some photos of more recent little addings. Addings such as some floor moulding/trim, fixed painting, corner trim on the bathtub surround, trim along the side of the tub, all the bathtub fixtures fully in and fully functioning.

Yes, I'm totally behind on updating these things and I was requested to update! I'll get started on the next set of photos a.s.a.p.

Comparison between the Swanstone surround and the Green Tea wall color -- totally perfect together!

Swanstone

2007-06-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

So, following the Swanstone bath surround being damaged and refused on delivery, we wanted to see what would be in stock. The only colors instock for the style we want comes in either white or tahiti desert (pinkish-orange). Yeah, no. Definitely not going with what's instock. Oh, but it would have been so nice if a color we liked was instock! A shower, in our new bathroom woud have been a up to a week away!

We found sample Swanstone tiles at another dealer that we could bring home. We compared sawgrass and seafoam. Seafoam blends in way, way too much. We realized that the sawgrass was the perfect color and "texture" for the room. We had them continue with our original order.

Two-to-three, possibly four weeks until our bathtub surround is delivered, again. Until then, we are definitely going to be wanting showers. Running around in the sun all day? Sweaty! So, we'll be putting up plastic around the bathtub temporarily and putting the fixtures in.

A shower would be so nice right about now.

Toilet and Progress

2007-06-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

The toilet installation in the most recent post? Yeah. That toilet leaked. We changed parts, but nonetheless, it wanted to leak. We found a low-flow Kohler for free on craigslist and that's been working wonderful!

I'm amazed a how spacious the bathroom is feeling now. It felt so cramped before. There's several more inches of space between the toilet and the sink and more space between the bathtub and the sink. It's so nice now.

Progress in the past few days:

• Sink vanity was finally installed after some very tricky, troublesome feats of plumbing!
• More paint
• Mirror cabinet (with lights) was installed
• Fan and night light was installed in the ceiling

In the next few days, we're hoping on installing the base trim around the floor, putting the pretty shelving unit next to the sink after we find some wider outlet panel covers. The shelving that we had behind the door (which I don't think I ever had photos of) needs to go back in. We made them 2 inches shorter, as we decided we liked being able to open the door wider.

And the big thing that we're waiting on STILL is the Swanstone surround coming in. It should have been at our house a couple of days ago, but it's not yet at HomeDepot. They said it'll come in today, and I really hope so. I want to take a shower at home!

//
UPDATE @ Noon:
It was delivered to HomeDepot this morning, but was so damaged that the manager refused delivery on it. So, we can either wait 2-3 weeks for another one, or change the color to something that's instock at HomeDepot. I want something that's instock! I'm off to look at other color options.
//

We're a little nervous about the "sawgrass" color of the bathtub surround and how it'll look with everything else in the bathroom. It covers a lot of surface area in the bathroom and we've only looked at a small sample tile, not a large panel of it. So, yeah, we're a little nervous about seeing it, in person, in it's entirety.

We still need to figure out what we'd like to do for the trim around the window.

Pictures!

Fully-functioning switches!

The right side controls the main bathroom lighting, which is located on the mirror cabinet, the left side controls the ceiling fan/night light...

Ceiling fan and night light or "mood light" -- we installed 20w bulbs

The mirrored medicine cabinet that we stained to match the sink vanity and shelving. I was playing with the side mirrors (they both open inward) and didn't close them all the way before I took the photo. We want to find glass that matches the sink and put that on the top of the mirror (pretty and yet it covers/protects the electrical wires for the lighting).

The tiles and grout need to be cleaned thoroughly (the grout isn't white!). The outlet next to the window used to be the switch for the old ceiling fan. The shelving tower goes next to the sink side closest to us.

We still need to find a new mat for the floor, a small magazine rack, toilet paper holder and new garbage can.

We hated having the toilet paper on the wall next to the toilet, it was awkward to reach. We always used a free standing toilet paper holder instead. The magazine rack will most likely be between the sink and the toilet on the wall (as hidden as possible!).

Green Tea and Porcelain

2007-06-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

I'm out of town for a couple days, so I don't know all the details, but as of yesterday...

• Finished mudding the walls
• Primed and painted the walls "Green Tea" (partially painted in the photo)
• Toilet went in!

I heard the possibility of the sink/vanity going in today. so hopefully that's happening. I can't wait to see more photos of the progress, until I come back home. It's almost a fully functioning bathroom! It's definitely looking more "finished," as it's been coming together in the past week.

We will need to figure out a way to cover the walls around the bath, while we wait for the Swanstone surround to arrive. That way we can take showers again, at home! While I love soaking in the tub and washing my hair outside, it sure is nice to be able to take showers while on vacation!

I really like the process of remodeling a room. Taking out the old and replacing it. Looking for tiles, sinks and such. It's definitely fun to do! It's amazing to see the progress everyday.

A few accomplishments

2007-05-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

Only a few things were accomplished in the past few days:

• The last of the greenboards were put up (pictured)
• Moss-colored grout was smoothed in
• Fixtures in the tub itself (stopper, drain completed)
• Mudding, sanding on the walls
• Electrical work for the new fan/light

Tonight, the tile was glazed. (Mmm, smelly, noxious fumes...)
Tomorrow is more mudding, and possibly painting.

We found out that the Swanstone was sent from the manufacturer yesterday and will be 7-10 days until it arrives at HomeDepot. We were originally told it would be 7-10 days from the date of ordering, which we ordered several days ago... so, we have a ways to go to be completely set.

We picked out Behr's "Green Tea" paint for the walls. It's a calm green-blue. At this point, we know we want to have orange, red and green in the front rooms (living room and dining room). Most likely blue for the kitchen. The bedrooms, half bath and spare room/office are still undecided. Color!

Green tea will definitely fit in with the bathroom. The new bathtub is insaney comfortable. Our previous bathtub was smaller than normal. We now have 4 more inches in height and I can't remember the width, but it's significantly wider. The water in the tub is a watercolor blue, which I find very cool and relaxing.

We're still undecided what we want to do for the framing of the window.

It would be great if we can find glass identical to the sink and have that as the sill. We could to a mosaic frame. Wood frame. We really don't know yet.

We are, however, planning to create our own shelving above the toilet. Organically-shaped mosaic shelves. Our idea, so far, is that each shelf (most likely 3) will have a different shape. They'll be from the wall to the right of the window to the opposite side of the soon-to-go-in toilet; basically corner shelves.

Color Choices

2007-05-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

We needed to find a way to open up our small bathroom and keep it bright, but we didn't want all white. Almost everything was white in the original bathroom and it was very boring. It had absolutely no style. We want style.

We all really liked green-blues, some darker woody reds and white. And we noticed we liked a mix of lines and curves for the bathroom. The vanity is very square, the handles for the doors are a little curves, the sink is square, yet smooth and the faucet is rounded. Organic meets geometric.

One of the first purchases we made was for the sink vanity and shelving unit. We originally looked at square sinks by Sofia, but really fell in love with the sink we ended up buying. We really liked the green sink.

The tile we chose has some green, grey and some fallow tones. It has a textured, "frosted" detail to it. The tiles were 40% off when we bought them, so we ended up saving a lot.

(In need of washing/cleaning at this point)

Each tile has a different tone to it, and this definitely will help get rid of the plain, boring look that the small white floor tiles had before. We decided to tile the entire floor. In the original bathroom, the sink vanity did not have tile underneath. Our new sink vanity will be sitting on tile and the matching shelving/cabinet that will be next to it has legs, so we'll be able to see the tile beneath it.

For the base moulding around the floor, we picked out colors based off of the color of the tile. We went to Home Depot and played with the interactive Behr color center. We had a piece of our tile with us and had the machine take both a smooth color (one scan sample) and a textured color (three different color samples taken from rotating the tile for the scanner).

To be continued...

Progress

2007-05-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

New tub

New pipe and faucet setup for the bath/shower

New tile settling in

Wet tile, waiting to receive the gift of grout!

Insulation and boarding

The color of the greenboard is so pretty

Demolition

2007-05-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

Here's some demolition photos:

Trevor looking crazy...

The longest wall of the bathtub is where we figured most of the mold was. There wasn't as much mold as we originally thought there would be, but the wall came off in chunks like this... not good. There was a lot of mold beneath the bathtub, however. And we found out there was a huge amount of mold in the crawl space (empty space beneath the house) beneath the bathtub. That was bleached back to hell.

The area right behind his head is where we found over 50 old razor blades (as seen in the photo below). The medicine cabinet was housed there and had a little slit for the old blades to go for safe storage.

Except, there wasn't anything to store them in, so they were literally sitting inside the wall.

We made a bleach solution and sprayed all the areas that had mold anywhere near them.

Right sink hookup

Left sink hookup, soon to be only one sink

Tile still on the floor

No more tile. And you can see into the crawl space under the house!

No more toilet

Purchases

2007-05-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

Where'd the money come from?

Received $6,500 back from taxes this year! We've been needing to rid ourselves of the mold and icky bathroomness since we moved in, so it was an obvious choice. However, we aren't using ALL of that money for the bathroom. Most of it, yes, but there's definitely going to be some leftover.

Bathtub:
Kohler, Sterling ensemble
$222 @ Lowes

Bathtub faucet, drain:
$156 @ Lowes

Bathtub surround:
Swanstone, Metropolitan Collection SSTI-60-3
Color: Sawgrass
$1,086 @ HomeDepot

Tile:
American Oleun
Color: Canyon Ridge Spruce
$157 @ Bedrosian

Grout:
Color: Moss, unsanded
$12.50 @ Daltile

Sink, faucet, vanity and shelving cabinet:
Sink color: Green glass
Vanity/shelving: Deep maroonish
$720 @ Koncept Designs, via Craiglist

Toilet:
(We had a little mishap, with breaking the original while ripping out the flooring..)
~~$50 @ ReUse: San Leandro~~ Leaked, even after replacing parts
Free @ craigslist.org

Mirror, cabinet:
$184 @ Lowes

Vent light:
NuTone
$98 @ Home Depot

Bathroom Renovation: Before

2007-05-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

We've been talking for quite awhile about ripping out our current main bathroom.

We found mold behind the barely-staying-up tiles in the bathtub. The bathtub would creak when you stepped in. We had a very hideous two-sink vanity that had this unlovely gold detail and muted, beige tinge. We are not gold people, at all. The sink vanity was old and the drawer sliders didn't function or weren't even attached. This, of course, is easily fixed, but frankly, it's a very ugly vanity cabinet.

The light fixture in the bathroom? UGLY. Gold, and a mix of rust and dust. On the ceiling, there's a red heat lamp that we didn't need and a crappy ceiling fan in need of replacing (and proper venting).

So, for the past three weeks we've been collecting up items.
And last weekend we started tearing up and out everything in the bathroom.

Before photos...

Note: We had already taken off the wood framing around the mirror, before photos were taken.

When we moved in we changed the faucets, which fixed a plumbing issue with the sinks.
We found out, while ripping out the bathroom, that there was mold behind in the vanity from old plumbing issues.