We Call It The Den

There is a room in our place that we don't know what to call. So we call it the den because that's an east coast-y term and we like to infuse a little NY into our CA lives.

Although the bedroom technically isn't done yet (we still have to caulk the molding, touch up the paint job, and hang artwork), we decided to move on to this so-called den. Here's the best we have for a "before" shot (we really need to get better at taking the before shots!). This is where the hideous floor-to-ceiling mirror and brass closet doors used to be. Not only were they ugly, but they were constantly falling off their tracks, getting stuck, and causing other problems that caused profane language to come out our generally mild-mannered mouths. Plus, the incredibly inefficient use of space pained us. So, when the new floors came, the closet left.
First, we had to cover the tracks of, well, of the tracks from the old closet doors. I have watched enough home improvement shows to know that this takes really hot water, a scraper, and a ton of patience.
Meanwhile, Seth battled the 40-year-old screws. And won.
Sometimes it really amazes me that I'm going to school for policy instead of spackling.
Or spray texturing.
Moving on to the rest of the walls, I *swear* we went into this endeavor with the intent of doing a bold color. We tried 10 different colors, including dark reds and bright blues (a shred of evidence is in the top photo). But we got scared. And then proceeded to obsess over which shade of tan we liked best. We are who we are. (The award goes to Leone for picking the winning shade!)
We may pick boring colors, but you can't argue with the great results.
Our fans may be getting sick of me showcasing Seth's crown molding prowess, but I just can't help myself. The boy's got mad skills. (Thank you, Frank, for the gift certificate that got us the brad nailer!)
I'm guessing that I am the only person in my grad program who spent the last night of spring break caulking molding and touching up paint.
And, finally, the happy family on our new couch. (Admittedly, Seymour looks more surprised than happy, but trust us, he's happy.) This is our very first couch from an actual store and not off of craigslist, purchased with an inheritance gift received from the sale of Grandma Bea's house. We would be remiss if we didn't tell the world how much joy it bring us to have such a lovely -- and pragmatic -- reminder of Grandma in our home.

2010's Been Good To Us

Hard to believe that we haven't posted an update since last December. Lots has happened since then, but I guess we've been doing and enjoying at the expense of blogging.

Here are some of the highlights...

1) Slow and steady progress on the bedroom. We finally bought some end tables for the side of the bed. And then Seth and his dad, Frank, did some awesome crown molding work.

They make a good team (along with Seth's fancy new brad nailer) and are especially proud of the "corner work" they did by the closet.

It's now on me to caulk and touch-up the paint job -- soon, soon...

2) With some help from our new friend, Bristol, we painted the hallway, stairway, and upstairs doors. Little by little, we are wiping out the 1970s and bringing this place into the 21st Century. It truly is amazing the difference a fresh coat of paint makes.



















3) The mother of all home improvements: new flooring! We can't take much DIY credit for this one. We pooled all of our wedding gifts (thank you, thank you, everybody!) and, with huge grins on our faces, actually hired someone to pull up our old ratty, stained, cat-puked-upon carpet and put down beautiful bamboo flooring. Special thanks to Linnette Edwards, realtor extraordinaire, for giving us some great advice on what to get (and what not to get) and Danny Fox at the Floor Store for getting us a great price on the bamboo.


Note that the before photos don't adequately convey just how bad it was. Trust us. It was bad.

Sometimes we get a little sad seeing the old stuff go. Not this time.

Here's a side-by-side shot:

The finished product. We still like to sit around and bask in the glory of these floors. Seriously.

Moving on Up

The kitchen was done.

The living room was done.

The backyard was done.

So what was left? Or, rather, what was next? Apparently, it was time to move upstairs.

Yes, upstairs, the land of three severely neglected rooms. The land with one wall that is still unfinished (at least we put the sheetrock back up; not seen here). We did not choose to start in that room. Instead, we started with the bedroom.

One thing we've learned is that we're terrible at "before" shots. This is the best we've got:

In it you'll notice three things: 1) a 4 drawer dresser; 2) a shelf that was lower than we wanted; and 3) very light-colored and shiny walls. In order to be able to get both of our clothes to fit in this closet, we needed to raise the shelf (and the clothes bar that sat beneath it) and lower the height of the dresser. Did you know that you can cut the bottom drawer off an IKEA dresser?

You can. Step #2, raising the shelf and bar (pun intented), was fairly easy:

And voila:

Next up was the wall. First we tested colors:

After deciding on 173 (upper right), we thought that as long we were going to paint the wall, that this might be a good time to add a little sound-proofing, since we share the wall with a three-year-old who likes to wake up early and cry. We brought in our new contractor friend Roger to add a layer of QuietRock:

It was then spackled and (unfortunately) textured to match the rest of the room. And then it was time to paint. Seth painted the ceiling:

Ilana painted the walls and removed the old yucky blinds:

And Leone (Seth's mom) came in to continue her streak of being a part of every room-painting project we've done so far:

And now, with the addition of the new headboard, some new bedding, and the new wall color, we have a much more attractive bedroom:

We're currently working on our curtain options for both the closet and the window, and Seth is preparing for another turn at crown moulding.

Here is a bonus picture of Seymour, once again, not helping:

Sometimes we even take time to enjoy the place

A few shots from our mid-July joint birthday BBQ...

See? We really do know that the whole purpose of building a home we love is to share it with our smart, fun, and creative community of friends (who, by the way, have taken potluck cuisine to a whole new level).

And this is why we needed more seating room:












Thank you to Uncle Elliot and Roz for the lovely platter:















GSPP in the hizzle:












Our standard shot:

Living Room: Done?

Every week we put "framing the pass-through" on the to-do list. And every week we put it off until the next week. Well, not this time. What's more American than home improvement? Um, shopping malls. But DIY'ing one's condo is a close second. And it's a fine, fine way to spend a July 4 weekend.

We completed things from the kitchen side, but had yet to put finishing touches on the view from the living room. Sadly, though we have documented the view FROM the kitchen view well, we do not have a lot of shots of the view TO the kitchen from the other side.

This is the best we could find:

Eager to get moving, we started our project before we realized we didn't have a good before shot, so this will have to do:
The first step was to add texture. We hate texture, but texture begets more texture and there were portions of the wall that were smooth and looked out of place after we enlarged the pass-through. So we sprayed texture-in-a-bottle where needed:
Then we painted:
And finally, using Seth's new and now beloved mitre saw, we framed the whole thing in:
Ilana pulled out her killer spackling skills to complete the job. Dare we call the living room done? Nah. We still don't have art work on the walls. We'll throw it on the to-do list and maybe it'll get done by 2010.

More Yard

We put in another full weekend of work on the yard. This included two trips to Home Depot and a whole lot of manual labor.

I feel like this is becoming more of a photo blog: high on images, low on commentary. It's probably what folks are more interested in anyway, assuming anyone is interested at all (Hi Laura!).

Unrelated to the yard, another project we worked on this weekend was finalizing our bike theft deterrent system. After two thefts, we wanted to come up with something really solid. We researched the actual bike racks, but they were very pricey. So we bought a $10 fence post instead and then modified it. Here is Seth working on drilling through the post:

It was tough to find the right combination of tools (thank you again to the kind folks at the Tool Lending Library), but we finally got it working and it doesn't look half bad:

Back to the yard. It started with a little late night painting from Ilana, who "rescued" this old trellis from abadonment:

The next day, Seth stacked the stones:

This was the reason for two trips to Home Depot. These are ridiculously heavy, and moving them from the HD shelf to the cart, from the cart to the car, and the car to the yard takes a toll. Not to mention hammering some of them down so they fit on the ends. We then placed a planter box (a modified bench I built for Ilana, which itself was modified wood from an old model train layout) behind the stones and placed Ilana's painted trellis inside (with dirt, of course). Next we planted our new Star Jasmines, which Ilana then tied to the trellis.

The jasmine smells great, and helps us prove to Amanda that you don't need to buy a house just because the yard smells good. While Ilana worked on that, I hung our new cafe lights:

Here's the final product, with Ilana resting in the background:

And just for the comparison shot from earlier photos, here's the view from above:

And for the finale, here's the night shot with the cafe lights on:

Bonus Photo:

(Seymour looking at the lights)

Summer Time, Yard Time

As the East Bay summer rolls in, we decided it was finally time to do something with our yard. We have neglected it ever since we moved in, and to be honest, it wasn't much to start out with. We're pretty sure that in the seller's efforts to "stage" the place, he just poured wood chips over the existing yard and planted a few bushes that have not grown up to be pretty adults. Ilana took charge of the project and did an amazing job of creating a design and then lining up some professional help at a very affordable price. Here's what we started with:

The aerial view makes it look better than it was -- think weed garden and litter box for every stray cat in the neighborhood. The week before we started work on it, I removed the ugliest little bush tree I've ever seen from smack in the middle of it. Our new friend Tony helped us clear the rest and carted off literally a truckload of old dirt:

Then after laying down some fresh soil came the job of arranging our new stones. Tony was amazing and had a vision the whole time, somehow knowing when to flip certain stones or rotate others to make the perfect jigsaw puzzle.

That's Little Tony with the broom. He looks more helpful in the photo than he actually was. But we're pretty pleased with the final product:

Here it is from the ground level, though this shot was taken before we decided to move the table to the corner:

That's a Japanese Maple that we planted and are very excited about. And just in case you didn't think we did any of the work, here I am doing some fine-tuning:

We've also added two miniature succulent gardens and have plans for some more potted adventures.

We're really happy with the outcome and feel that we've added another room to the house with this very manageable, livable outdoor space. Special thanks to Marilyn for encouraging the project. Bring on the summer BBQs!