Victorian Life

A Pipe Dream into the final frontier

2012-01-06T16:32:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, but after only a few days rest and some inspiring trips and visits, I begin to think I can do anything. And if it looks easy? Fagettaboutit, it doesn't interest me.

So the final frontier, for me, is dealing with major plumbing stuff. Our old house has a mixture of copper, galvanized and even cast iron pipes attached to each other over the decades as new innovations came into being. I felt I needed to complete the partial copper piping of the house as the green, corrosion was starting to show in some parts. So after watching how to solder and repipe old houses on Youtube, I jumped right in. Wow! First of all, you can't just do a little repiping, stop and have lunch, talk to somebody and then get back to work, you have to go all the way or it means no water in the house in the evening. Soldering does take some skill and after battling with some poorly done soldering on my part, I finally got the hang of it and got into the habit of inspecting every inch of a new soldered joint before turning on any water. It took a few days, and it was pretty stressful and my hands cramped up pretty badly at times but I can say with great satisfaction that the hot water line is all new copper without any leaks. This project made the difficult brick patio job seem like a leisurely walk through a daisy covered meadow.

Thanks to Heather and Andrea's parents for providing the HD gift cards which nearly covered all the materials needed for this project.

The New Year and new DIY inspirations: Ikea

2012-01-06T16:27:00.001-08:00

I don't care for Ikea products since they mostly seem bland and cheap looking. However, I've been developing a better sense of looking at something and rethinking what I could do with it.

We had one small but tall computer desk leftover from our apartment days and I was currently using another larger Ikea desk in my office that was too big. Rather than try and search for the perfect computer desk, I bought a set of L wrenches at HD( Thanks again Heather!) which then allowed me to take apart and assemble a brand new desk that really suited how I use the computer and peripherals. In addition, I think it looks pretty good and seems more steampunkish and fits the small office quite well.

Recharging the DIY batteries and leveling up Part 2

2012-01-06T16:25:00.000-08:00

During the holidays we then went with my sister to visit the Stanford Cantor Museum which is free to the public and has many excellent works including several works by Rodin. On display also were plaster models used by sculptors to help flesh out some of their ideas. To me, it looked like they used drywall spackle to create these models. Since I am now a drywall spackle DIY pro, I can appreciate the tactile approach to artmaking and I fiddled with idea of making a small sculpture of my own out of drywall powder and water. And I am also more amazed and how real sculptor artists are able to create such beautiful pieces of art. Here I am trying to kick down Rodin's 'Gates of Hell'. We then went around antique shops and took pics of things that seemed interesting to us.

Recharging the DIY batteries and leveling up again.

2012-01-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

The holidays don't usually mean it's time to put away the spackle and hammer. Indeed, the unusually pleasant winter weather and having Andrea home means we could do a few more things. I was able to do more to improve the kitchen and we spent some time together discussing what we should do to our house in 2012.

This is also a fun time to visit my creative sister, her husband, and Molly their guard dog. I really enjoy visiting my sister because her home is an inspiration to both me and Andrea. She once studied painting and has always brought an amazing sense of style and taste to anything she does. She currently is in the antiquing business and we love to go around with her this time of year to fish for good finds and to get home decor ideas. Whenever Andrea and I watch any type of home decor show, we are amazed at how bad their overall taste in things are. They also seem cold and not at all appealing. However, my sister seems to innately understand the fine line between art/color/style and placement when home decorating. It's inspiring to us to see what she has done to her home of 20 years and she's give us permission to post a view pics for your pleasure.

DIY Santa

2011-12-21T16:21:00.001-08:00

A few days ago, we received a mysterious gift card for Home Depot. The card was unsigned and we can't quite figure out who would have sent this to us. We imagine it must be someone who follows our blog so we are posting a great big "Thank You" to you DIY-Santa.

Just in time too! I was just about to head out to HD to pick up a few things for the new kitchen iteration and this helps come in handy. We also scored some very nice cafe curtains at an estate sale and needed some hardware for it.

So thank from from both us. This kind of gift means a lot to both of us as we slug through fixing up this old house.

Happy Holidays and hope to return the favor some day!

And to everyone else, stay safe and inspired in 2012. Surprises always abound!

UPDATE: Andrea tells me the gift card came from her friend Heather living in Portland, OR. Thanks for the nice gift Heather and Happy New Year!

2011-12-16T14:17:00.000-08:00

SUPPORT OUR VICTORIAN LIFE EFFORTS

Season's Greetings

2011-12-04T10:56:00.001-08:00

George scraped, repaired, and painted the plaster walls in the Entry Way this week. We decided to hang my cute window as a 'Bienvenue' piece there on the picture rail and changed the design. I envisioned ivy dangling around the frame with flowers along the bottom, and then we came up with using seasonal embellishments. I picked up everything at Michael's and just tied the pieces on with wire and tape.

Le Salon de Sylvia

2011-11-17T10:47:00.000-08:00

I've developed a pattern that involves spending time on the computer working on a film or 3D build and then stepping away from it and focusing on some part of the home. The past few weeks had been a good time to work hard on the parlor walls and wood. I decided to jump in and rehab that long parlor wall. After scraping off the old paint, I fixed the cracked plaster areas, gave it a nice skim coat and then we painted it to match the original colors. Then I reworked the wood moulding trim. It all took about 10 days with no great surprises. The window wood was a combination of redwood with some painted pine inserts which I replaced with redwood trim leftover from another repair job.

It finally feels like the furniture my sister gave us now fits well in the parlor. It looks and all feels warmer and the different play of day and night lights seems to change the room in elegant ways.

We've decided to name this parlor after "Sylvia" because nearly everything in there was a gift from her! lol.
We've reached the two-year mark on rehabbing this old Victorian. I think the progress has been pretty good and the house has been kind to us. I hope she likes the results. How about you?

The Parlor after 2 Years and the DIY Social

2011-10-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

As Andrea and I approach two years in our old house, we pause to focus on one part of the house that has evolved the most, the parlor.

This once completely painted and carpeted area is about 50% completed but you can see in this photo the direction we are going. Nearly everything you see was gathered up from either Urban Ore, Craigslist or was a wedding gift to us. Our efforts involved cleaning and sanding the original oak floor and rehabbing the original plaster walls. Sure, the house is still cold and we need to put in some new gutters but I think its good to have at least one area you can look at to help say to yourself, "This looks pretty good. I guess the hardwork and dust is worth it after all!"

We've also been part of a growing DIY social group in our area. Everyone in the group is dealing with houses with much character but with many issues as well. Many in the group have been DIYing for years and they have lots of great stories to share on almost every aspect of home building and maintenance. For us, as newbies, it's a bit scary to hear some of the potential costs of things ie. lateral line, foundation replacements etc. But when they tell their stories, they mostly laugh about it now and impart to us some great, hard experiences that we take to heart. We are now working on ways to use the Internet better to share our resources. However, the actual meeting of the group (at our secret location) is always the best way to talk and really hear what others are saying about something. Even though I haven't touched our old windows yet, I dread the thought of it but know I can make it happen because some of the others have gone through it or will go through it soon. So I know we are not going to be alone as we stumble into that dark alley I call "Old Window Restoration". lol

The group is based near the W. Oakland/Emeryville border so if you want to join the discussion and get some great tips, visit

http://www.meetup.com/Fixer-Upper-DIY-Homeowners-Salon-Social-Club/

Quick picture post, hike!

2011-09-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

We have been enjoying our new patio (gift from my parents) set on our new patio.

Thought I'd post a picture of the biggest sunflower to date! This stalk has about seven flower buds on it and two have blossomed so far.

The Art of Craigslist

2011-09-22T15:01:00.001-07:00

Followers of this blog know that we rely heavily on Craigslist to find items we need to fix up our old house. One of the pleasantly surprising aspects of going this route is meeting interesting artists working/living in Oakland and Emeryville.

Yesterday, I saw this post:
-------------------
"Today only, Swarm Gallery is giving away free soil and other landscaping materials straight from the American river valley. Call it karma, call it a lucky day, call it whatever you want- just come down Wednesday (that's today) from 12 to 5pm, 2nd and Clay in Jack London Square. You must bring a way to move and transport the materials. This is going down as a first come-first serve program so come early to get a prime cut. In picking up this organic matter, you will be part of the deinstallation of artist Colin Christy's month long art-eco-experiment "Wild and Scenic".

On the menu

1.5 yards of rich American River soil - perfect for native plants
1 yard of Decomposed Granite/DG -paving mix
5-6 bails worth of loose hay (chickens anyone?)
2 bails of hay
small bags of sand, rocks, gravel
3 25 foot hay waddles
an assortment rare native plant species from gold country
-----------------------------

This gallery is about 2 miles from us so I drove over to see if there was anything we could use for the garden. I met the artist, Colin Christy, and we talked about his installation. It was an exhibition that recreated how the river banks looked around the time of the Gold Rush. Andrea and I have been fascinated by this era and I quickly learned about how the artist lived in the gold country for a few months, studying the environment. He brought it over to Oakland and was now making the material available to whomever came by. I selected about 4 native plants and several banks of premium river soil. I took it home and tried to recreate a bit of the gold country riverbed in a shady area of the backyard. I placed some rocks in the center and hope to add gold paint flecks for effect. I also grabbed about 2 big bags of hay for mulching in our veggie garden. All for the cost of 5 lemons from our tree.

But that isn't what this post is about. It's more about the giving nature of artists. Being one myself, it's imperative for me to give of myself to others through my artwork or through my life experiences as someone who as operated in the art world for over 15 years. In talking with Colin, I was reminded of the talks I had with dozens of artists from my time at the NPA, SomArts and other art experiences. I was also reminded of the artist who gave Andrea and me their brand new kitchen cabinets at the beginning of the year and the few other artists I've met while hunting down for Craigslist treasures to furnish our house. The thing that strikes me most about the artists who I meet this way, is there sense of sharing something for the betterment of community. You can tell that money isn't their driving force bur rather a sense of giving of themselves in the belief that what they do is "good karma". More importantly, when these artists talk about their work, they are excited, alert and passionate about sharing their ideas or spirit with the strangers who answer their ads. Turn on the TV or walk into a big store and one gets the feeling that life is all about "making money" or scamming people. What passes for art in our culture is really just celebrity garbage and pop gibberish geared towards obtaining some sort of unrealistic wealth and celebrity.

It just feels "real" to talk to an artist. Real, like churning the soil and planting seeds or cutting wood and it reminds me that their are more genuine people trying to do somethiing creative and positive than their are trying to screw up things for people.

Anyway, if you meet an artist, via Craigslist, take the time to ask them about their work and what they do. You may find some common ground or learn something new. And, if you are able, give something back to them to show that you enjoy sharing as well.

Wainscot Wall Update

2011-09-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

After painstakingly (it's ALL painstaking!), removing as much of the paint from the original redwood wainscot and moulding, I filled in any cracks and breaks with a different kind of wood plaster and performed some really light sanding to the entire area.

Then one light coat of mahogany stain and about 4 coats of tung oil, which matches the work done to other wood parts of the house. The dark stain goes along way and looks pretty nice plus has the added benefit of hiding repair jobs in the wood.

So now the once drabby white wall has a nice dark wood bottom and we think some kind of vintage, velvet wall paper would work on the upper part. But what colors? What type of style? This is where you could help us finish this wall by throwing your ideas our way. Also, if you just so HAPPEN to have some left over vintage wallpaper, we would LOVE to take it off your hands and give it a new home here. :)

This last image is a photoshopped imagining of how the wall COULD look very, very Victorianish.

Bird Bath and Beyond

2011-09-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

George found a bird bath at Urban Ore (for a buck) that needed a little repair. He used leftover tile grout on the dish part to repair the cracks and give it a cement look. Then on the base, he put a little white exterior paint, and some copper faux glaze, and rubbed a little dirt on it for an aged effect. It's a perfect size for this space and I think it gives a Romanesque feel to the area. I found a ceramic bird at Michael's (for $1.50) and set it in the bird bath to try and attract the real birdies to it.

To the right of the bird bath is our first sunflowers.

Then he got busy in the house again and started removing paint off the door frame and wainscoting in the living room. That wall was entirely white. Now it has a contrast with the beautiful uncovered century old redwood.

one zucchini...two zucchini...

2011-08-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

Today I harvested two zucchini's and made zucchini loaf bread with it. It's rewarding to be able to harvest something you grew and cook with it.

We also went to a talk at Lake Merritt today on 'Planning your Winter Garden'. The Master Gardeners' host a free talk every month. Then, this afternoon I planted spinach seeds and more lettuce seeds to try and get them going. I find seeds can be more challenging than starter plants but we'll see. It's the time to grow the 'greens'.

And now for a little garden update:
We have our second ripened-red tomato on the way and about a dozen smaller green & yellow tomatoes on the way. The basil & oregano still look nice and green since giving them a shot of nitrogen fertilizer.

We are about to harvest our first sweet pumpkin which looks like a big round green squash. I will probably slice it in half and bake it. I'm curious as to what it tastes like. (Turns out it taste pretty much like baked squash). There are two or three more zucchini's currently growing.

In the other raised box, 3 lettuces have sprouted and a couple tiny shoots came up of the marjoram and a nasturtium appeared out of the blue. This box is where I planted more lettuce & spinach seeds today since not many germinated the first time. Unfortunately the mint was not doing well in the container on the deck so we moved it to the ground between the new brick patio and the lemon tree. We'll see if it comes back.

The lemons are beautiful. The bougainvillea has taken a slight turn for the worse and we're not sure what happened. The Japanese honeysuckle is growing nicely along the fence behind George's new brick patio. The snapdragons have spread out and taken off. It's a nice feast of pinks and reds.

We notice more activity as the 'beneficials' buzz around the yard. Butterflies frenetically bounce around the different plants, bees do their thing and hummingbirds zip by and kiss the flowers.

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Homemade Cafe

2011-08-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

Andrea's folks came up for a visit this past weekend and it was a chance to try out the HOMEMADE CAFE on Sacramento St. Andrea and I usually pass by it on the way to Urban Ore and often thought it looked like a nice play to eat breakfast some time.

There is no parking there so we had to park around the corner. On the way, we passed a yard sale. Most of the past yard sales we've been to have been very uninteresting with mostly clothes and kid stuff for sale. However, I noticed a nice big terra cotta planter and scooped it up for $3. The seller was explaining that she had lots of things for sale but I didn't want my in-laws to wait for me to go eat breakfast. As I walked away, the seller said, "Oh, and I have some very nice vintage bricks in the backyard for sale too." A gong went off in my head and I said I'll be back to check that out.

Turns out the Homemade Cafe is about a 30 minute wait so I scampered back to the yard sale and purchased a treasure trove of vintage bricks for $20, most were in full length pieces.

As you know from my previous posting, I thought about flagstone for the patio but these bricks looked very charming and she said she got them from an old train station that was demolished in Oakland.

The day after Andrea's folks left I picked up the bricks and began to layer the new patio with them. Along the way, I discover some interesting details about the bricks.

The one marked IONE is a firebrick from the Ione Fire company. It's one of their earliest fire bricks. This brick was made using the extruded stiff-mud process, wire-cut, and repressed. Our brick was probably made from 1907 to 1908 as a test brick hence the "Pat. Applied For" stamp.

A few other bricks have the word CARNEGIE stamped on it. Andrea asked if that had anything to do with Carnegie Hall and, as it turns out, it does!

When steel magnate Andrew Carnegie began donating part of his fortunes to new libraries across the country, a new brick plant was being erected in Corral Hollow Canyon, about 10 miles southeast of Tracy, in San Joaquin County, California.

Two guys named Treadwell, decided to make bricks from a pocket of coal and clay later called the "Tesla Formation" of Eocene Age (50 million years old).

On August 18, 1903, the Carnegie Brick and Pottery Company was founded with the name that honored the great industrialist and philanthropist who was greatly admired by the Treadwells.

The rest of the bricks are a mish-mash of bricks found on our property coupled with this new trove. There are different shades of red, orange, yellow and white scattered about to give it more character.

I know I mentioned we might put ground cover in between the bricks but further research told me that sand would be the best (and cheapest) way to fill around the bricks.

This project took about 4 days, a lot of leveling and patting down soil, 3 pieces of landscape lumber to frame and $20 in vintage bricks and $3 in sand.

My hands hurt though. lol

What do you think?

spider plant...spider plant

2011-08-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

George hung our new spider plant from a ceiling hook on the 'new' wall corner.

We put the palm tree back in it's original corner (the other side of the same wall).

We yanked weeds from the cement cracks again and then filled the cracks with sand. For the time being, it looks the cleanest I have ever seen it and I think the backyard looks bigger. And...the snap dragons are doing amazing and the first early girl tomato is turning red!

Getting Tricked into Doing an Entire Wall

2011-08-10T12:26:00.001-07:00

When I feel I've been on the computer too long I get up and look around for something to "fix" in the house. These days I try to stay focused on something that can be done in a few hours or maybe half a day.

As I waited to hear back about something I decide I would just heatgun-off some paint from the parlor molding in a small corner of the room. I figured it would take only a few hours but during the process, I noticed that the painted wall was soft and seemed "detached" from the plaster underneath it. I had read items about old wallpaper unglueing itself so I lifted it a bit with a scraper and pretty much the entire 'skin' of the wall peeled off like an onion, revealing this yellow, slightly cracked plaster.

The area looked stable with no big cracks or chunks so I thought it might be equally as easy for one of the larger walls in the room. Boy was I wrong, about two feet of it came off easily and the rest was very much stuck to the plaster.

So What to do now? A quick search on the Internet and within a few minutes, I picked up DIY tips on how to remove old, painted-over wallpaper using warm water, an iron and a scraper.

I started on Friday and finished scraping off everything by early Sunday. I filled in the cracks with new plaster, sanded it down and then we headed over to HD for paint. Andrea really liked the way the old plaster colors looked so we tried to match that with two quarts of different colors and glaze. Andrea did the great work of sponging on the different colors and I followed along with a rag to dab off paint here and there.

So now the old, plaster parlor wall gets a bit of structural repair and new coats of mildew resistant paint with a satin sheen to replace the dull, bland wall.

It took about 3 days and cost just two quarts of new paint and leftover spackle.

Patio for the Secret Garden

2011-07-31T17:56:00.001-07:00

Andrea and I have finally found an area in the backyard that seems the most private. It also isn't an area to grow anything well and sits partially underneath the sweet smelling lemon tree. For the past few months, we've placed our cheapo white plastic patio chairs in this area and found we could survey the entire yard from here. So we decided that we would make a patio. We are toying with the idea of using old bricks from fireplaces in the area or perhaps a flagstone with ground cover. I read that this is a good way to keep weeds down and sort of fits the style of the house and yard.

The first pic is the current area that has been leveled followed by the vision of our new patio. Anybody know where we could get free flagstone?

2nd veggie box

2011-07-24T18:28:00.000-07:00

Today we planted seeds in the 2nd veggie box.

'maters & bumbles

2011-07-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

I know, it's all about the backyard these days.

What a difference -April

June

July

The yellows in the hanging basket on the deck are doing well.

George put a little trellis sort of short fence to contain the nasturtium. The ladybird cosmos in the flower planter are blooming like crazy!

Look what I found in the flower today - looks like a bumble napping to me.

We now have 4 'maters growing as I found a new teeny one this morning.

It looks like we are getting our first successful zucchini. It's a learning process as the blossoms only open in the morning and helping them along by manually pollinating them is a little tricky. The 'male' and 'female' blossoms have not been open at the same time until yesterday.

Watching the Garden Grow

2011-07-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

I love all the veggies and flowers we've planted in our backyard.

Our recently acquired mint (thanks again Claire) seems to be doing well in the container I planted it in. I put some leaves in our lemon water and the mint really adds a nice flavor.

Our first baby tomatoes are getting bigger.

Basil & Oregano are doing okay. I read the key is full sun and well-drained soil. The oregano is 'flowering' and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do...

The Ladybird Cosmos we planted from seeds have done exceptionally well and the flower buds have started blooming.

The red pansy's we put in the shaded planter box are thriving as well. Who knew?

Last but not least, the expanded nasturtium chair corner.

Decked Out

2011-06-25T18:38:00.001-07:00

Since framing and building a new awning on the deck, George painted part of the backyard cement with leftover paint from the steps and now it looks like a patio.

Today at Urban Ore we bought a piece of lattice fence for 8 bucks and George finished the vision he had for the deck by installing a lattice sort of wall to enclose the area little.

George also built a little shelf which I call my 'herb-deck' where I put some mint plants our friend Claire from the DIY salon gave us.

We are also growing an Early Girl Tomato plant, basil, and Italian Oregano.

We are also planting more flowers in the front & back. Geranium, Fuchsia, and Snapdragon. Love all the color. The Santa Rosa Plum tree is bearing fruit.

The zucchini have started blossoming too. Every week the backyard just gets better. Next we are building big veggie planter raised beds.

All Hands on Deck

2011-06-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

George is nearly finished with his deck project. He removed what was there, created a new frame and put a clear panel on the top. It's better water-proofing and now we can set up a little area to grow herbs.
Since we moved the bougainvillea I've never seem it so bright and happy! The blooms are so full. Love.

Slowly but surely it's coming along. We, ahem George, will build a big planter box to cover the cracked cement so we can transplant the zucchini that is getting pretty big and needs more room, and we will try adding a few other veggies. My lettuce did great for a couple of rounds and then it bolted and the crop was over. We found a perfect little spot for lunch, happy hour, or just a little break that offers privacy behind the lemon tree.

The nasturtium is still going strong and George added a lattice on the side which it has gladly started covering.

When a Fixer starts to feel like a House

2011-06-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

Well, we are officially at 1.5 years into our old home renovation. It's time to take stock of what we've done and see if we stuck to our principles of making a creative, utilitarian life in our old Vic.

The parlor and living area has evolved. We still keep the parlor a fairly flexible space that can function as an exercise room or dining room for a big party. We finally were glad to find a good place for that awesome mirror my sister gave us as well as the old Barbary Coast chest which conceals weights, a media device and other items and seems to fit well with the wood floor and rugs.

The middle room, traditionally the dining room, is most comfortable to us as a living room/tv area. The $300 gas fireplace from HD has done a great job keeping us warm during the cold weeks. We still use our futon as a couch but hope to replace that someday. The white bookshelf is a wild, frankensteinian creation. Originally it was a black bookcase I kept from my college years that has been painted and now wears the crown that was transported from the first kitchen redo. Again, the beautiful Vic chair is from my sister and seems perfect next to the window.

Turning 180 degrees we face the kitchen and bathroom entry way. We furnished the kitchen with beautiful white cabinets that we got for free from an artist over this past xmas. Removing the old cabinets over the sink allowed more natural light to enter the area and creates a more open feeling when doing sink stuff. We replaced the old light with an LCD track system that lets us focus light on various kitchen stations. Throwing a rug we had over the old linoleum hides its ugliness and seems to add a bit of "elegance to the kitchen. That word "elegance" would not be a word I would have thought to think to apply to this kitchen before now.

Watching my wife over this period I noticed how much time she spends at the kitchen sink. Whether it's washing veggies, doing dishes etc., she seems to always be around there. I realized that I too spend time there so we "splurged" a bit here, meaning we spent a lot of time thinking about what we have to do to make this station visually appeal as well as more useful. Click on the pic to see highlights of what we did.

The neat thing about this kitchen (I think) is that we were able to add more cabinetry and do a little re-arranging without disrupting the original structural footprint, electrical or plumbing. We pretty much made everything work within the existing elements.

Nothing new to the master bedroom effort other than removing part of the ugly built in closet and replacing it with this awesome 9ft tall IKEA wardrobe closet that I got for free, in great condition, from a Cal grad. It also happens to be the same color as the bed frame. Really scored on that. Ultimately the bedroom remains the least energy efficient room since there is no insulation top, bottom or sides. We'll probably need to hire a pro to make a roofing frame to make the entire ceiling 9 ft tall and allow for insulation and lighting. But for now, we are looking for a nice piece of art to hang over the bed. Don't you think?

So where do we go from here? Well, we have another 1.5 years to work on this before determining what we will do with this house. We are focusing a bit more on the exterior and yards now and of course there are tons of big things that still need to be done like replacing all the windows and repaving the front area and adding some kind of fencing.

How are we doing so far? We operate in a bit of bubble and would love to know what objective, knowledgeable people think.

Thanks for looking.

Leveling Up

2011-06-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

We took a recent trip up to Placerville to visit a couple of retired teacher-friends of ours. Allain, a math teacher, has been fixing up their homes for years now and it's amazing to see how fast, efficient and knowledgeable he is about building and construction.

During this trip I helped cut deadwood on the 20 acre property, drive a tractor and do a few other things. When I came back home, I was inspired to finish a # of projects and even built my first light in the office out of left over parts. Suddenly I was seeing things a bit differently and wasn't taking nearly as long to remove/build things in the house. We still always put safety first but I'm feeling things are becoming more "instinctual" then overly thought-out.

A recent trip to HD found me spend 2 hours looking for a particular item (which they did not have) and I left the store feeling I could just create it myself at home.

I like this new-found attitude and it's allowing me to do more with less.

I have a slew of outdoor projects to jump into but the darn rain is holding me back. Very unusual to have so much rain now but once I have a few clear days, I'll create a new deck arbor and other things and will post pictures soon.

b b and b: backyard bugs and bathroom

2011-05-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

After much more weeding, we made another new planter, added a few plants, and put down lots of wood-chip-mulch. George reused the old corrugated metal siding from the shed to make a planter for a future tree. We also moved the bougainvillea (ladder photo below) and the cute pink petals are coming back. It definitely seems happier in that spot. We also started growing a couple of zucchini plants in the blue box above.

p.s. if anyone has effective tips on getting rid of vinegar/fruit flies I'd love to know. Even though I add lots of paper to our worm factory, we seem to get those pesky tiny flies.
There are also some regular flies that hover under our deck. We've cleaned the area w/bleach and they still hover. (of all the bugs, ants & flies bug the most)

On a different note, George did a little finishing work on the front part of the bathroom. He used some leftover tile around the vanity and added a few decorative touches that I love. George finally found the perfect spot to display the beautiful blue antique hanging candle holder from Sylvia.

Save the Libraries!

2011-05-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

FYI, my friend Peggy shared the info about the library cuts on FB and we support the Oakland Tool Library. It's a great community resource. There are proposed budget cuts to libraries and this one is a bad scenario:

(below - posted from the Oakland Public Library Frequently Asked Questions Mayor's Proposed Budget)

What are some of the impacts to library services under Scenario A?
The following 13 branch libraries are scheduled to close: Asian, Brookfield, Chavez, Eastmont,
Elmhurst, Golden Gate, Lakeview, Martin Luther King, Melrose, Montclair, Piedmont Avenue, Temescal, West Oakland
The Tool Lending Library and the African-American Museum and Library at Oakland
(AAMLO) will close
Second Start Adult Literacy will close
Limited funding for new books, DVDs or other materials purchased
Reduction of service hours for the Oakland History Room
Discontinuation of electronic services like downloadable books and databases

more here:
http://oaklandlocal.com/article/oakland-budget-major-topic-conversation-mayors-town-hall-meeting

Spring Yardwork

2011-05-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

Nasturtium from March to May!

Newest planter area

We moved the Bougainvillea again to a sunnier spot and gave it a bamboo ladder to climb. And the Santa Rosa Plum tree is bearing fruit for the first time.

We added this wire mesh stuff for the Japanese Honeysuckle to climb as well.

Updates

2011-04-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

Hello... here's a peek at what we've been up to.

George built a little brick flower box and we planted a small variety of flowers:
Vintage Mix, Red Marigolds, Pansy.

The nasturtium is growing like crazy.

We also just planted a Japanese Honeysuckle along the side fence.

We got a great cabinet shelf unit for my 'art room/dining room' at Urban Ore last weekend. It's perfect and I love it.

We came up with a space saving dish rack on a rail, George add this new-old shelf, and changed the kitchen light:

Operation: Market-Garden

2011-04-01T08:20:00.001-07:00

One of the reasons I wanted to buy a very old house was the fantasy that I would come across treasure. Finding hidden Comstock lode silver or Barbary Coast gold pieces would be nice but actually finding historical items in unexpected places is just as rewarding.

Case in point, I had to fix an area in the basement that was damaged by long term neglect. As I was removing what looked like old paper, I saw that a piece of it had some color. Upon closer inspection (and a quick search on the web) I learned that what I found was an original 7th Armored Division patch from WWII.

The 7th Armored crashed the Omaha and Utah beaches,liberated cities in France and held positions along the Seine river and also fought at the Battle of the Bulge. You can see the interesting history here

The unit was known as the "Lucky 7" and was one of the most highly decorated units of the war. I imagine that a previous owner of our house was part of the unit, survived the war and, for some reason, attached his patch to a post in the basement.

I have this neat patch in my office and plan to create a small display for it with a note about the 7th Armored Division. Thanks for your war service, sir, wherever you are.

Lettuce harvesting

2011-03-22T16:37:00.000-07:00

After watching a couple of videos I decided to harvest some lettuce this morning. If you cut the leaves leaving about an inch to inch-and-a-half from the base it should start growing again. Other than a 30-45 day guideline and just watching them grow, I'm not sure how big they are supposed to get but figured they looked ready. I'm happy to report that our first organic-home-grown-lettuce salad was delicious and I only dressed it with some olive oil and splash of balsamic vinaigrette!

Hey, I'm a beginner :-) but I also learned that you want to cut the leaves before they 'bolt'. If the plant gets stressed generally due to temperature, drought, overcrowding, etc., it starts to seed and flower = bolt. It also causes the lettuce to taste bitter. I read that if your lettuce plants bolt, it's probably best to heap them into your compost pile and start again.

That must be what happened to my basil last year! It grew tall and flowered and did not produce the lush basil leaves I was expecting. On that note, we caught a segment on the Katie Brown Workshop program and watched her & her pal build a tiered herb garden that we may give a try. They used a wooden stair risers and screwed in wooden window boxes. Here is a link to her instruction page:
http://www.katiebrown.com/kbep1.cfm?cat=GROW&episodeid=6&seasonID=5

How does your garden grow?

2011-03-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was nice and we did some garden work on Saturday. I pulled weeds and George started working on the shed which will eventually be a green house.

There was a small plant growing and the leaves looked like there might be some sort of root vegetable underneath. George dug it up and solved the mystery. It was a white daikon radish in the shape of a carrot! We tried a tiny piece and it had a spicy peppery taste.

The Santa Rosa Plum Tree we planted in Dec. 09, just flowered.

The nasturtium is still taking off like crazy!

And last but not least, the lettuce plants seem to be doing exceptionally well! Look at how much they have grown!

Now everything is getting a good watering with this stormy weekend. We've also been following the NHK news on Japan, especially George. It's hard to fathom such devastation and along with the sadness we feel towards the challenges survivors are facing, we are also reminded and making some emergency preparations of our own.

Lettuce & Ladybugs & Love

2011-02-14T15:27:00.000-08:00

George prepared a container garden box by drilling some holes for air & drainage in his old storage tub. This past weekend we took a little trip to the East Bay Nursery and purchased a couple of lettuce starter plants so I can start growing a salad :) It's a variety of red leaf and romaine. We'll see how it does especially since the rain is back this week.

We are still figuring out how to approach composting and are leaning towards vermiculture.

While at the nursery, George noticed a 'Ladybug House' in a kit you can buy. Then we saw it cost something like $37 and we put it back. After a little Google research, he was able to build a cute little Ladybug House from extra wood scraps we had, and I painted it our aqua blue color. It has a 'Shabby Chic' worn look to it.

Apparently you just put a little sponge soaked in sugar water to attract them and then it becomes a little safe haven for them to feast on aphids and last year our plum trees had a lot of aphids! We are just starting to see blossoms now. Well see how it goes and report back.

On another note, all the daffodils have bloomed and we decided to move the bougainvillea to a sunnier spot on the deck. George is building a wood planter box for that. A picture will follow.
So now the nasturtium can take over that whole space, and it will!

and.... Happy Valentine's Day......
It's nice to work on things together w/someone you love.

Kitchen Updated for Pennies

2011-01-30T11:17:00.000-08:00

George built a windowsill, stained & put up window trim, and did lots of finishing touches. So we managed to finish a kitchen renovation by the end of January. With the exception of track lighting and the floor which will happen later.

The window trim is reclaimed wood from the original kitchen base cabinets. Using glaze, we only needed 1.5 sample cans of aqua blue paint for the entire wall. The base cabinets courtesy of a free giveaway on Craigslist. The artwork and stool courtesy of Urban Ore. The artwork is an impression by Monet of just outside his Giverny home, which we visited a few months ago.
We only had to shell out cash for a new counter, copper-faux backsplace and acrylic sink which came out to around $350. The best thing is we didn't need to change the "footprint" of the kitchen or move walls, electrical or plumbing. We basically just worked everything in around the existing main elements in a kitchen that hadn't been updated since perhaps the 60's. Lemons from our tree in the basket shelf.

As if that wasn't enough, he also wallpapered the entire front entry closet, including the ceiling, by himself. The butterfly wallpaper was found at Urban Ore for $2 for both rolls.

Hard at work

2011-01-23T11:06:00.000-08:00

George has been busy this week, re-framing & installing our new double-pane kitchen window. He also insulated the wall. No more leaks and drafts.

Yesterday he replaced the counter, cabinets & sink! He will have to share more from his perspective of doing all the hard work. I just painted the wall and assisted a little. There is more finishing to do, but it is a tremendous improvement. I love the deeper sink already.

I did some weeding yesterday and cleared the Eiffel Tower area. Now it's just the bougainvillea, nasturtium and the new daffodil bulbs Marleen gave us, are sprouting.
The other daffodils are blooming as well, and the lemon tree is full of lemons that I need to out and pick now. Then I get to start digging up weeds on that side. Toodles.

6 Month Anniversary: Shanghai Surprise

2011-01-16T20:52:00.001-08:00

Andrea and I celebrated our 6 months wedding anniversary by getting creative with the Barbary Coast steamer truck my sister gave us a few months ago.

My sister found this trunk at a hotel in San Francisco that used to house Barbary Coast denizens. This trunk was left there by the original owner who most likely was Shanghai'd and could not retrieve it. What's interesting about this trunk are the two Civil War era images on front which depict important events in Union history.

First I removed as much of the rust from it as I could and then sanded the wood slats and stained them with the same stain I used on the parlor floor. I then sprayed a protective coat around the entire chest to give it a bit of a shine.

For the interior, Andrea took some canvas and began doing the collage artwork she does so well. We blended in many different elements into it and will place a nice piece of glass over the top of it so it can serve as a coffee table!

What do you think?

Thanks Sylvia and Bill for this unique gift. We love it.

Winter Solitude

2011-01-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

I made a little art collage on a piece of wood George gave me. I painted it white (and a bit of blue) and added some images & a haiku and a little oil pastel. This is the first time I've used an old piece of wood for a canvas.

Now back to your regular scheduled programming.

Just a few more

2011-01-09T10:18:00.000-08:00

Just a few more pictures of the new & improved functional parts of the kitchen. I lined them with my fave natural fiber shelf liner. Not a bad start to week one of new year.

New Year with New Kitchen Cabinets

2011-01-05T21:08:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year and since George's Christmas Miracle story, our New Year is starting off with a new & improved kitchen, how exciting!

George is mounting the upper cabinets this week and I can't believe what a difference it is making. It's starting to look like a real, functional, and inviting kitchen!

First this corner cabinet went up yesterday.

Then I assisted him on mounting the 2nd cabinet last night.

Tonight when I got home, he had installed the small upper cabinet and the range-vent/light-hood.

Tomorrow this one goes up!

Jack Davis Gave Me a New Kitchen for Xmas

2010-12-24T20:15:00.000-08:00

A true story 12/24/10

The day before Christmas eve, I was checking out Craigslist searching for a nice (hopefully Victorian) style make-up vanity for my new wife Andrea. They have a "Free" section and only a few times before was I able to score something worthwhile like a nice desk or maybe a plant or two. I've been doing this for the past year in the hopes of picking up some needed items for the 110 year old Victorian fixer-upper we bought last year. Brand new "anything" is expensive so we often visit salvage yards and garage sales hoping to find useful items in good condition. Rarely, does one EVER find anything in good-great condition.

One of the major renovations needed in our house was a new kitchen. The current one had not been updated since 1940! (See Last Post Below). Everything was old wood that made the drawers sticky and the doors were falling off. 'Ghastly' is pretty much how I would describe it yet it can costs thousands of dollars to renovate a kitchen and we just don't have that kind of dough. We're artists, of course. And being good ones is even worse).

So while I was looking for something else at the time, I came across a posting, in the free section, that advertised giving away kitchen base and upper cabinets. It included a pic of the kitchen and I noticed that the ad was up at least a few hours. Now I knew from past experiences that these things come up very rarely and are usually gone within an hour or so. Typically a contractor, or similar sort of person with a truck, swoops on these and picks them up to add to some house they are going to flip. The posting was in West Oakland, a few blocks from where we live, so I sent a quick email hoping that they might still be available. To my horror, my email was bounced back with the "this post is no longer available" almost immediately. "Some one already scooped it up", I thought. I took a long look at the pics of the nice, white cabinets in the ad and sighed a little. But then it dawned on me, "I've seen this kitchen before!" I was sure it was from a Victorian I saw with my realtor last year. It was one of the nicer Victorians I had seen with newly updated everything, including kitchen. We had made an offer on it over asking price as did about 12 other people and was disappointed we didn't get it. Now I'm really not that impulsive a person but I decided to jump in the car, drive to where I remember the house to be and see if I was correct in my assumption and if there was a slight chance of getting this 1year old kitchen cabinet set.

I drove on a bright sunny day to the house on Willow St., where I thought the post pic was located, pulled up to the curb, got out and saw a young man casually working on something on his top steps. I went up to the top gate and said, "I'm here about the Craigslist cabinets?" He blinked his bespectacled eyes, "Really? I just got off the phone with you." I told him that I wasn't that person, introduced myself, and told him how I had actually made a bid on this house a year ago and recognized the photo from Craigslist and if he wouldn't mind bartering for them since I am a digital artist and would be glad to design something for him, if it wasn't too late.

His face crinkled a bit, "Well, I just got off the phone with someone who is going to pick them up.....but....you're here now so...go ahead and take them." "OMG", I thought and he took me into the garage to show me these great cabinets. He said that it wasn't there style and that I was doing him a favor by taking them off his hands. Now some of you reading this might think, "It's too good to be true. There must be something wrong with the cabinets." But I KNEW they were only a year old and I checked them out and they looked great!!

This young man's name (I’m guessing 28) was Colin Babcock, a young artist living in the old Vic, that resembles our own, with his girlfriend and co-business partner Stephanie (Shipcock Fabrications: Custom Wood and Metal Designs). Colin was a tall, thin guy in pretty good shape with shoulder length, scraggly light brown hair tied back in a pony tail and a matching beard that stopped at his sternum. He wore the clothes of a person who worked with his hands a lot with confidence and a deep but non-menacing deep voice. I knew almost immediately that this was a nice but fairly no-nonsense person so I was quick to load my little beater car with as much cabinetry as I could. When I returned later to pick up more and expecting to make at least 3 more trips total to haul it all, Colin offered to take it all in his truck and drop it off at my house. I was extremely grateful and started to talk to him about what he does. I learned that he works, among other things, crafting sets for the Berkeley Repertory theater and helped create a “rocket ship”(http://www.raygungothicrocket.com) that recently launched from ‘Burning Man’, the annual, gargantuan arts extravaganza that takes place in the desert. I told him how ‘Burning Man’ began at SomArts where I used to work as the media artist-in-residence. It was then that it began to slowly dawn on me that I was looking at a young Jack Davis. Same height, same hair and beard I recognized from the early, youthful pics of Jack I used in the documentary about the legendary ED of SomArts. I stood in awe as Colin lifted these big cabinets on his truck, strapped them down and tied knots easily. The cabinets stuck out all over the trucks’ back, top and sides and held down by a few red straps and I knew this was a person who knew how to truck heavy things around with ease. Remind you of somebody?

After following me to the house and gently unloading the rest of the cabinets, he handed me his cards and I took him to the backyard and gave him some fresh lemons. He responded with telling me about how to make a great lemon liquor with them. I promised him that we will have him and Stephanie over for dinner once the cabinets are installed. I am looking forward to that.

I smiled and waved as he drove off and basked in this spiritual moment of receiving a much needed gift to our house from a person who seemed identical to one of the truly great people I ever met in the arts world. When I look at our gradually changing kitchen, I marvel at the circumstances of the day and the person I just met and how it reminded me of the giving nature, kindness and intelligence of Jack Davis. Jack helped me make the decision to become an artist, and I’ve been appreciative of that ever since. So now I will befriend this young artist and share what I know and give where I can as he and Stephanie grow as artists themselves. It’s my way of honoring Jack and I can’t think of anything else that could honor him best.

Merry Xmas Colin, Stephanie, Jack, Judy, Adam, David, Martina, Sylvia, Deborah and Alain and to you reading this.

-george aguilar

Raining aqua

2010-12-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

We finished painting the wall behind the stove in the faux glaze aqua.

George added trim and some finishing touches on the ironing board/spice shelf too.

He put up more copper backsplash behind the sink. We think it looks pretty good and needed to buy 3 sheets or squares or whatever you call it. So far so good. This week it was back to structural work fixing a water issue in the attic.

Blue

2010-12-11T17:04:00.000-08:00

George did some repair work on this small wall and used some extra paint we had. Originally I wanted to do the bathroom in aqua and copper (which did not work) so you can imagine my surprise when I saw this. I LOVE this wall. It prompted us to start painting the whole kitchen. I also love the glaze painting which is what we did.

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

A little art goes a long way

2010-11-28T14:25:00.000-08:00

While out thrift shopping we found some nice paintings/prints of some places we've been. (Thanks Sylvia!) It's so nice to sit down and gaze at art.

Living Room - Framed art of Venice

Monet Prints ~ Gare St. Lazare and Madame Monet in her Garden.

These are smaller but seemed nice for the Victorian Parlor to hang on the picture rails.

The kitchen is where the fun is

2010-11-07T18:40:00.000-08:00

We are back from Europe and over our jet lag. George is working on a nice long travel blog post.
We saw some charming places from the French countryside to quaint towns along the Rhine.
After enjoying good food, drink, and conversations in the kitchens of our friends in France & Germany, George is already making some much needed improvements to our kitchen. It's already more functional. He cut the ends off the main only counter we had, cleaned them up & moved them to other walls, and we added a new laminate counter top.

Having visited Monet's Maison & Jardin, we happened to find a nice Monet print at Urban Ore that we hung above the refrigerator, and a nice wooden stool for a seat by the counter.

We are still looking into flooring, sinks, and various kitchen components. Each little improvement transforms the kitchen into something more functional and a little more towards the distressed style we like.

From George - While in Europe, I noticed how different Europeans approach their kitchens and baths and will try to incorporate that into our space. One important aspect I learned is that Europeans add a lot of charm to their kitchens and baths even though those spaces are pretty small. The furniture, use of height in the space and warmth are very compelling.

Our consultant for le petit jardin

2010-09-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

My cousin's wife Marleen is my gardening/urban farming hero. During their visit this weekend, she told us what we have in our backyard and gave us a few valuable tips which included that newbies like us start with a little test planting area. Like paint on a wall, you can always change it. So with a few Home Depot gift cards, we started on this little plot on the side of the shed and planted two mum plants and a small bougainvillea including our new "Bengtson Bougainvillea".

I even managed to finish chopping down the Deadly Nightshade' weeds (before crazy George eats them) in a corner of the garden (now we can see how bad that fence looks too, Oy!) where tomatoes will go one day....

You got to start somewhere... right?

"More Saving More Doing More Love"

2010-09-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

We weren't quite sure how our alternative wedding registry approach would go over with friends and family (or for us that matter) but it has worked out better than we hoped.

We received many Home Depot (HD) gift cards as well as one from Target. Of that, the HD approach to gift cards was the easiest to deal with. The cards sent to us were ready to use and every penny used went towards the house. The Target online gift approach can only be used at the online store and you had to go on the website pics to see what you want. Here are a few items and house updates since our wedding 2 months ago:

This fan and corner palm tree was from Home Depot courtesy of Chuck Levine. It now hangs in the parlor and looks really, really good. We also picked up needed supplies like gloves, masks and painting supplies. Thanks Chuck & Melanie!

Thanks also to Harriet Rubin in Las Vegas & Heather Pepperdine in Portland for two more HD gift cards! These will most likely be used towards replacing/updating our electrical panel and some wiring. We really appreciate your generosity.

Cousin Mindy's Target gift card went towards a new, high-powered indoor/outdoor HD antenna as well as 6 solar-powered Victorian style lanterns. Thanks Mindy!

The rest of our gift cards went towards a variety of materials that enabled us to finish the hardwood floor in the parlor, plants for the garden, Romex wires, etc.
Wow, as I sit here and write this, Andrea just opened the mail and we received yet, another HD gift card from our friends David and Marilyn Bengtson of Minnesota!

We LOVE all of the wonderful gifts we've received from family and friends for our wedding. Everything seems to fit right in to our old house but the HD cards make us giddy and ecstatic. It's probably really hard for you to imagine that both Andrea and I get "giddy and excited" about getting a HD gift card.....but we do! Not only do we need to go to HD at least once a week, we don't need to use any honeymoon funds to pay for things like buckets, rags, wood and fly traps. Plus working on this home together allows us to learn more about each other, this old house and ourselves. There is a poem in there somewhere and I'm sure it will come to me when I am able to sit back and make another cinepoem/film.

I think if anybody we know is working on fixing up a house of any type, we know that giving a HD gift card is a great gift that truly keeps on giving.

Much love,

from the Aguilars

Shine Like It Does

2010-08-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

After several hard and difficult weeks dedicated to the parlor floor, we are close to the "finish" line (pun intended).

When we moved in, we peeked under the carpet and discovered a pretty ugly mess covered in paint, dark varnish and who knows what else. The original floor probably had not seen the light of day since the turn of the 20th Century.

Although you could see impressions of past furniture placement, various strange cut lines and several small gouges, this old oak floor has it's own stories to tell. It is highly likely it was timbered from an oak tree in Oakland in the days when it had oak trees. It's very sturdy and we were happy to find no warping or broken slats.

This project was very hard on the knees and wrists so I had to take breaks in between working on the floor but now I've applied the final 4th coat of Tung Oil on the floor and will give it a few days before laying anything on the new floor.

It's not a perfect looking floor and still contains many small nicks and nacks in the floor but I decided to pretty much sand off only a thin top layer of the wood....just enough to take off the gunk on top and retain much of the past embedded on to it by long ago residents.

The final result totally changes the vibe of the room and contains a look and glow that I have not seen in most new flooring. It's enchanting to say the least. What do you think?

Nonstop

2010-08-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

The renovated Entryway is looking nice :) We even got antique picture rail hooks. Now George has moved into the Parlor to finish the hardwood floor.

Yep, he did a final prep of sanding and a final cleaning with alcohol, it dries fast. Today he stained the floor with "Classic Oak" and applied the first layer of Tung Oil. It's great for shine and reinvigorates while preserving the wood.

The Razor's Edge on Skull Island

2010-08-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things about working on an old home is how one thing leads you to something unexpected and how a little patience, and a razor, can go along way in bringing back to life some old door and floor molding.

We knew there was some water damage behind a closet wall adjacent to our entryway and tried to figure out the best way to deal with it when the walls are all made of plaster and the roof is, well, really, really high up (don't care for heights). So I decide to take down one of the entryway walls to see how bad the damage is and replace any wood rot. What I found was a long neglected leak issue that allowed rainwater to run down to the subfloor and into the basement. Andrea wondered aloud if we could somehow open up part of the entryway so that the 2nd bedroom closet could also become accessible from the entryway. It was also a very dark entryway and we hoped that the light from the little window in the closet would shed more light and perhaps open the space up a bit more functionally. But first I had to replace a piece of rotted subfloor. I almost always keep any wood I remove from the house in the basement and it turned out that the floor boards in the master bedroom that were painted white were actually pieces of old subfloor! So I removed the paint and was able to replace the rotted piece with an almost exact fitting piece of solid flooring.

After fixing the wood damaged pieces we now had a fresh new entry way wall with a new opening. This led me to heat gun the paint off the original floorboards,
Victorian hanging rail and door trim that led into the parlor. This is a painstakingly long process that involved slowly peeling away 3-5 layers of old paint inch by inch. I prefer the heatgun method over scraping paint and using chemicals since the heatgun method pretty much keeps all the paint intact without chips flying all over the place and less fumes. But it's kind of like pulling gum out of your hair if the gum covers your entire body and you happen to be King Kong. Andrea and I wondered how we could make the entryway seem more like it was in the old days so a quick trip to Urban Ore turned up a brand new double roll of wallpaper (geometric tulips) from York, Inc., the oldest wallpaper company in the U.S. She also found a nice floral border for a grand total of $3.50.

We spent one evening putting up the wallpaper after studying videos from a master wallpaper installer on Youtube. We didn't know if the paper would hold since it was discontinued in 1971 but everything went on smoothly, straight and now looks pretty good after a few weeks! Also from Urban Ore, we picked up some nice looking distressed trim for the new closet doorway and wood threshold for about $2.
Wood threshold at HD alone is $20!

After sanding the new newly exposed wood down and filling the decades of gaps and scratches with wood filler, I applied one coat of mission oak stain and about 4 coats of Tung Oil. Yes, I did get on my hands and knees with a razor and pick and plug out the little bits of white paint hiding in the grooves. A single razor is a good thing to have around but again it is very easy to spend an entire day just picking up pieces of paint on a floorboard. So now I just finished applying a light, classic oak stain to the oak floor in the entryway. Now this bland entryway seems the most authentic Victorian part of the whole house with all original wood stained to virtually the original colors with vintage wallpaper. I found some metal Victorian wall hangers for artworks on Ebay for $4.00 and the nice looking cloth medallions for about $10. Sylvia sent us home with very nice pieces of art that will soon decorate this redone entryway that will hopefully transport people the moment they step into the home.

I'm a bit tired now, hands hurt, knees hurt but I'm feeling pretty good about the results. How about you?

P.S. This entryway was brought to you courtesy of Andrea's friends Heather and Tricie who contributed HD gift cards (for our wedding) that went towards purchasing wood filler, stain, masks and other materials.

Photo Update

2010-08-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

There is a lot to share but my update will include photos of some new furniture items. George is busy working hard on the Entry Way Renovation. A nice long story about that is forthcoming!

Here is a photo of our little love/wedding alter shelf.

I applied a decorative window film to the closet window.

We found this treasure at Urban Ore recently. It's a dresser with carved wood handles and we are using it in the kitchen where the ole ironing board was.

We also found this unique wrought iron Eiffel Tower for the backyard.

We received some amazing antique furniture pieces from the generous Beckerley's for our wedding! These are a few of the items - this Victorian Chair - rope curtain tie - oval wood table - corner shelf - full length mirror - spice rack that we are currently trying in the bathroom.

Plum yummy

2010-07-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

We have been harvesting an abundance of plums from our plum trees. I made a couple of plum cobblers that came out pretty good.

George just made his first experimental batch of plum jam which is on my peanut butter sandwich today; and it's quite good!

We've also discovered that we have blackberries which will be put to good use.

George and Andrea were married, July 16, 2010

2010-07-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

Darling vintage wedding cake toppers from my new Sister-in-Law.

George is trying out our weed-eater (wedding gift from my parents).

Kitchen Fongzjway

2010-06-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

As you know from our previous post, I've started to work a bit on the kitchen. Andrea and I find ourselves spending a lot of time together in there (there's always food to prepare or dishes to wash). In the beginning, I dreamt big ideas for a total kitchen makeover once we hit the lottery. Well, the lottery may or may not happen but I just finally had to do something about it because it was just irritating to look around and see ugliness, clumsiness and craziness at ever turn.

Something had to be done NOW. But with only a few bucks to work with, I had to come up with ideas based on what already had been done over the past 6 months and possibly throw in one new challenge.

I thought I'd start with the set of cabinets on the wall that seemed to scream, "tear me down now." Demolition and tearing down anything ALWAYS equals $$, I've learned, so I thought I'd take a look at how sound the cabinets were and if they could be salvaged. Turns out they are made of all wood and very, very sturdy. Why not strip the old layers of paint? Why is one cabinet jutting into the hallway defying the word "Feng Shui" with extreme prejudice? What is the sink doing directly under a cabinet and not next to the window?? This is usually how my train of thought goes when I start a project but I have to stay focused and take it one step at a time. I decided that the previous owners of the house practiced "Fongzjway", a nonsensical word that doesn't even exist on Google. (click on images to enlarge)

After stripping the paint and gently cutting around the weird cabinet, I repaired the new cabinet openings and removed the doors to get a more open feeling. I tried to understand why people put doors on cabinets anyway, except maybe to keep dishes from falling in the event of an earthquake. Well these doors were not going to help in that department anyway. So we'll try the 'open cabinet' look until we find the exact size cabinet doors.

We had plenty of sample paints leftover from our bathroom redo and we both really like the whole glazing/marble/distressed approach to painting for a Victorian. So I re-glazed the cabinets and added a new crown. I installed individually, unique handle pulls from Urban Ore for about .20 cents a piece. There was that dang tilebord stuff used as a backsplash that you would hardly notice so I glazed it with red wine paint leftover from my office painting. Add in a few other decorative touches and thus begins a slow process of transforming the ugly kitchen into something a bit more interesting. The whole job took about a week and less than $100.

One Man, One Buck, One House

2010-06-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

I suppose if I were to be the star of my own home renovation reality show it would be called "One Man,One Buck,One House' that captures my approach to fixing up this Victorian.

It's been over 6 months now and I've learned quite a bit and feel more realistic each day about what we are doing. I feel pretty confident that I can do practically anything in the house without creating further problems and keep it well under budget. In addition, the grand plans I had for the house have now changed to reflect our present and short-term future needs.

This being our first home together, it's realistic to assume that we may not live in it for longer than 5 years. Although, we are loving the area and house with each passing day, neither one of us feels that this will be the last place we will live. So, why put in a ton of new remodeling when we won't enjoy it forever and the next owner may just tear everything out anyway? We also know that unexpected costs, such as a backed up drain under the house, will crop up now and then and we just can't be in the position of being tapped-out remodeling something and then forced to deal with an emergency.

(This Old Kitchen)
All this means is that I need to stretch our dollar even further and think harder about the changes and fixes we do in the house. Now, I'm going to work on a set of the kitchen cabinets which traditionally tend to be very expensive to replace. I had grand plans for the kitchen remodel (including tearing down the cabinets) but now we would both be happy to have a French-style looking kitchen without changing the layout radically and by surgically removing things, cleaning them up and reusing them in some fashion. Mostly I'll be refacing these cabinets and adding new doors and basically making it look good all without pulling down the cabinets.

So this "Schmuck and One Buck" approach is primarily how we will approach our projects which leaves much of the original work and leaving it up to some luck to get hold of good, strong materials to replace worn out dated items. Wish us luck!

Clunky Cabinet phase 1

2010-06-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

This clunky cabinet is getting a makeover. George sawed off part of it to make a microwave shelf. This is phase 1. With the cleared counter space, we set up a little wine station. (Now the wine rack is no longer on the top of the refrigerator.)

Phase 2 which is in progress now, consists of sawing off even more of the 'strange shape 1940's kitchen cabinet'. It will be more flush with the rest of the cabinets and no longer an obstacle to bang into.

I think phase 3 might be scraping off all the paint and resurfacing all the cabinets. We'll see.

Ironing Board in the Kitchen Trick Solved!

2010-06-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

Remember George's post from January 1? The old 'Ironing Board in the Kitchen Trick'

One night last week we were cooking dinner together and he needed to get in the spice cabinet above my 'work space'.

We had recently put the ironing board down to use as pseudo counter space. As we realized the spice rack should be in a more convenient location, an "A-HA moment" occurred and we figured out where it should go!

George built new shelves (re-using old wood of course) in the ironing board wall cabinet space. Love it! I think it still preserves the charm, yet in a more utilitarian way for us.

p.s. Thanks for the great suggestions Kansas Kate! It does make a good work space.

Update on Paul Geissler Print

2010-06-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

Treasures come in many forms.

In the previous post I mention buying an etching for $10 at a Berkeley yard sale. An appraiser found it to be an original engraving by the artist Paul Geissler in 1920.

After a few more days of research I learned that it is an etching of the Odeonsplatz in Munich, Germany. All the more astonishing since when I first looked upon the etching a voice in my head said, "that looks like Germany", even though I had never been to Germany nor knew anything about the Odeonsplatz. (View 360 panorama)

On the right is the Roman Catholic Theatine Church St. Cajetan (Theatinerkirche St. Kajetan) in Munich built from 1663 to 1690. It was founded by Elector Ferdinand Maria and his wife, Henriette Adelaide of Savoy, as a gesture of thanks for the birth of the long-awaited heir to the Bavarian crown, Prince Max Emanuel, in 1662.

The church was built in Italian high-baroque style after San Andrea del Valle in Rome and designed by the Italian architect Agostino Barelli. Inside are tombs of a few Bavarian Kings and Queens and a couple of Holy Roman Emperors.

St Cajetan was born at Vicenza, then part of the Republic of Venice. Cajetan's parents were Gaspar, Count of Thiene, and Maria Porto. He is the patron saint of
gamblers; job seekers and unemployed people. If there ever was a saint to pray to during the 'Great Recession', it's St. Cajetan.

To the left is the famous Feldherrnhalle (Field Marshal's hall) monument adorned with 2 lions and was designed in 1841 to honour the Bayern generals. One curious fact – on these steps (only 3 years after this etching was made) Hitler clashed with the police and was then sent to prison where he wrote Mein Kampf – (My Fight).

Munich and all of Germany at that time was experiencing a very difficult time due to the harsh penalties imposed by the Treaty of Versailles following the end of WWI. Hitler lived in Munich the same time this etching was made and could have been possibly yelling it up within earshot at one of the nearby beer halls. This all had me look a little bit harder at the artist Geissler.

Paul Geissler was born in 1881 and died in 1965. According to the web "he was one of the foremost german etchers. His plates, chiefly of the architectural beauties of old Europe, have been highly praised by many of the most discriminating critics and collectors. Yet his work appeals as strongly to the public as it does to connoisseurs."

Searching online I find that Geissler was later considered, by a few, a "Third-Reich artist". Although he apparently did not create any overt Nazi imagery, he did etch Hitler's birthplace and school in 1943 and his work was included in Hitler's EXPOSITIONS OF
THE GREAT GERMAN ART 1937-1944 MUNICH. "In 1937 the Nazis inaugurated the House of German Art and organized the first exposition of Great German Art." These exhibitions were Hitler's way of telling the German people what art he thought was appropriate for them. From the web: "Adolf Hitler was a genuine patron of the arts, with a love for painting and architecture, but only a patron of those arts of which he approved. Having been a painter in his youth, Hitler considered himself the supreme critic of what was, and was not, proper art. Modern "degenerate" art was definitely out. To promote "proper" art Hitler had the Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art) built in Munich, to be the scene of special yearly exhibits." Geissler's fine detail sketchings of architectural German buildings apparently fit that mode. It is very possible that Hitler and Geissler, at least, knew each other.

So now this etching has a history to it albeit a bit murky and possibly unsettling if the artist was indeed a nazi sympathizer. Some time ago I worked on a documentary on W. Furtwangler, the head conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic during WWII and sometimes referred to as "Hitler's Composer". But I learned that Furtwangler was very indifferent to the political climate and disliked Hitler and was mostly obsessed with the music. I suppose many artists can be so enthralled with creating beauty that they turn a blind eye to the ugly realities around them. I would like to think this is the case with our Geissler. As to how this exquisite etching wound up in a yard sale in Berkeley? Your guess is as good as mine.

Andrea and I are planning to visit the site when we are in Germany later this year and I can't help but feel that I am connected to this place for some reason but don't know why. I'll chalk it up to Victorian paranormal residue sprinkled on my brain from living in this old house.

Be on the look out for your own 'transporting' treasures. It may lead you on a fascinating, historical journey.

Any other thoughts on Geissler and his life and work would be very welcome.

-g

From the Comstock Lode to Urban Ore

2010-05-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

It has been an inspiring fun week. Andrea was really taken with the bridge lamp we saw at the Virginia City B&B and learned a few tricks on how to cobble one together.

Distressed window art we made -

So we usually go to URBAN ORE, one of the best salvage places in the Bay Area where you can find many Victorian materials for cheap. We found a bridge lamp in great shape for $30 and replaced the light for $10 at HD. The light fixture was about $1 from Urban Ore and viola! We had our own bridge lamp in the span of an afternoon. We also found a litho of Montmarte for $2 that worked out great for our parisian window artwork.

Professional German Etching on red wall -

Luck can be defined in a few different ways. I like to think of it as being intuned with your intuition and a happy-go-lucky-attitude. So a few days ago, on our way to the vitamin store, we stopped at our first yard sale of the year and picked up this beautiful etching. A professional appraiser my sister knows gave us invaluable information on this original etching by the artist Prof. Paul Geissler and pegged its value at between $200-$500. Well, now we know how the discoverers of the Comstock Lode feel! It now adorns my newly painted red,red wine wall in the office.

Bridge Lamp -

What is a bridge lamp? It's an original cast iron bridge or floor lamp from the early 1900s near the end of the Victorian time period. It is very ornate in design with floral & leaf patternry arm, twisted pole and footed base with shells, floral patternry and other decorative pattern detail. Typically used by bridge players in the Victorian era. Add a period glass shade or tassel-fringed fabric shade it will be a stunning addition to any decor!

(post written by George)

Inspiration from Virginia City

2010-05-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

On our Nevada road trip we stayed one night in Virginia City at The "B" Street Bed & Breakfast.

It's a completely restored Victorian house built in 1875 by Henry Piper. The owners'/hosts Chris & Carolyn are as charming as the house. We felt welcome, comfortable, and inspired. The 12' ceiling, furnishings, and details indeed transport you to the Victorian era in the Old West.

Carolyn is your generous source for history; and Chris kindly shared some experiences and tips about the renovation process with us.

A formal breakfast is served and the food is wonderful. You're in for a treat with Carolyn's award-winning baked goodies!

Partial view of the Parlor

Breakfast setting

Part of the backyard terraced garden

For more info, photos, and reservations: Visit The "B" Street B&B website here:

http://www.bstreethouse.com/

Painting the wall red

2010-05-22T17:21:00.000-07:00

George painted an accent wall in his office. "Red Red Wine" is the color. Yes, just like the song from UB40.

Random

2010-05-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

Sharing a few random photos. Here is the man in action. Working on the tiling/grout.

This is our Sweet Italian Basil plants we bought from the urban farm plant sale last month. They are doing pretty good so far. I've used a few leaves here and there in pasta dishes and they are full of favor. Last weekend we did a bunch of yard work = pulling weeds and George put down mulch on one side

A final touch to the bathroom vanity. I love this faucet. And here I am standing in the best room in the house with my new haircut.

Bathing like the Romans (except with soap)

2010-05-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

Finally. After several weeks of thought, preparation and hardwork, our Victorian bathroom has been fully renovated. Last night, I took my first bath since the redo and started thinking about my perceptions of what a bathroom was originally designed for. From Wikipedia: "Although it was not with hygiene in mind, the first records for the use of baths date back as far as 3000 B.C. At this time water had a strong religious value, being seen as a purifying element for both body and soul, and so it was not uncommon for people to be required to cleanse themselves before entering a sacred area."

As I laid back in the tub to admire the work Andrea and I performed, I could feel myself relax more and look around and enjoy this warm, cozy bathroom that was once the worst place in the whole house. (See earlier posts)

As a first time homeowner buying a "fixer-upper", the bathroom is the most logical room to tackle first because you get to deal with all aspects of a house ie. plumbing, electrical, walls, drainage, windows, floors etc. Bathrooms are typically very small so you can work on all these things without feeling like its a huge and expensive job.

Our plans from the start included updating everything and fixing the numerous water-damaged areas around the tub, bringing out the original elements of the house and creating a Tuscan/Venetian feeling that Andrea and I both enjoy. Having been to Italy together and exploring the Roman ruins, I often thought the Romans (and Greeks for that matter) had the best perspective of what a "bathroom" should do for a person. From Wikipedia: "The earliest surviving bathtub dates back to 1700 B.C, and hails from the Palace of Knossos in Crete.[2] What is remarkable about this tub is not only the similarity with the baths of today, but also the way in which the plumbing works surrounding it differ so little from modern models. Both the Greeks and the Romans recognized the value of bathing as an important part of their lifestyles. Writers such as Homer had their heroes bathe in warm water so as to regain their strength; it is perhaps notable that the mother of Achilles bathed him in order to gain his invincibility. Palaces have been uncovered throughout Greece with areas that are dedicated to bathing, spaces with ceramic bathtubs, as well as sophisticated drainage systems. "

I certainly felt like I was regaining my strength following a warm bath in the new bathroom complete with burning candles, wine and even rose petals from our garden. As we continue to work hard on the house, we can now look forward to those occasional hot baths to help ease the muscles on our unforgiving bodies and feel like we have improved things and resuscitated parts of the bathroom that were covered for decades.

Being a technology-guy, I added this motion sensor light switch.

I am particularly pleased about how the original redwood wainscot and siding worked out. I spent weeks gently peeling off layers and layers of old paint to find wood that was pretty dry and not too bad a shape. After adding a coat of material that rebinds the wood fibers, the wood was stained and sealed.

Andrea had a picture of a a bathroom she liked and we painted the walls in the 'glaze' style, something neither of us ever did before. It's basically combining 3 different paints to create a marble look on the walls. She made great choices and the room now glows like a Tuscan field filled with sunflowers. The paint came from Home Depot (HD) at a total cost of $50.

We recycled the existing window which seemed fine and wasn't broken and secured it to a new window frame. Since we saved money on purchasing a new window, Andrea splurged on stain-glassing material that lets in light but covers the unremarkable wall and pipe you see outside.

We added two built in shelving areas. One above the new 30" cherry vanity ($135) and a shower/bath cabinet that makes use of the empty space right behind the bathtub. We kept all the original old-growth redwood siding that was actually at one time the exterior end of the house. At one point, this Victorian was only 700sqft and the rear walls were THREE of the bathroom walls. The grain on this wood is so tight I really had never seen anything like it before. If you go to any lumber place, most redwood is a few decades old. This redwood is thousands of years old and I'm happy guests will be able to see it when they walk in.

The floor and bath tile all came from HD with the exception of the hand-painted butterfly tiles we found at the Alameda flea market (see earlier post) These Italian tiles make for good trim at the top of the bath and help connect the golden walls with the stone bath tiles. I think we probably spent around $350 on all the tiling, adhesive, grout, backerboard etc. Doing the tiling ourselves is a long, messy process but it saved us tons of $$$$.

We only had to shell out $300 for a plumber to come in and move the vanity plumbing to the other side. The new toilet and vanity cost under $300 and I installed them myself. I can probably talk intelligently about the differences in types of beeswax toilet rings with anybody and I no longer giggle when I say the term "P trap".

The biggest cost saving was using the Oakland Tool Library for all our tool needs including wet saw, tile cutter, grout, drywall tools, plumbing tools, separators, heatguns and much much more. It's nice knowing that the bathroom is done and that we don't have to store new tools somewhere to gather dust. I can't recommend using the tool library enough. The staff are friendly, knowledgeable and competent and the tools are all in good shape and ready to use. They have every tool you would need and they lend it out to you for free for enough days to get the jobs done.

Andrea and I are now adding some finishing touches like a wall holder for a candle, towel bar and other items. Another great resource was Urban Ore. We found this very nice, brand new medicine cabinet for $20. The only accident of this entire project was me cracking the mirror which now needs to be replaced or dealt with in a creative way. Any ideas?

We bought the shower fixtures on Ebay for around $25 and added a new tub drain and switch for a grand total of $45

Speaking of recycling. Remember the earlier post about the 1940's tile-bord that surrounded the old bathroom? Well some of them are now shelves in the new built-in towel cabinet. :)

Now its a short, short little break before the next project; resurrecting the old growth oak floors in the parlor.

Viola!

2010-05-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

The shower is finished! Here are some photos and George will do a more detailed post soon.

Decorative row

Italian hand-painted tiles

a little pink

2010-05-08T16:59:00.000-07:00

George is in the throes of tiling the shower and boy is he doing such a great job!! In the meantime, I got this cute metal wall sconce sort of thing and put silk flowers in it. Doesn't it just pop against the yellow wall?

We also finally found a vanity mirror that works pretty well in that space. The roses in the green pot on the sink are from our backyard.

Relevant Market News

2010-04-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day and some good news for Oakland :) George heard this on the radio and I found the article on the SF Gate:

Six out of the top 10 ZIP codes in the United States where homes sold above the asking price in the first quarter of 2010 were in the Bay Area, and four of them were in Emeryville and Oakland's moderately priced areas, according to a report released Wednesday.

The second "hottest" ZIP, as defined by ZipRealty, a national real estate brokerage, was 94608, which includes neighborhoods in Emeryville and part of North Oakland. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/22/BUG31D27CS.DTL#ixzz0lroMZyCY

Cuttin' it up

2010-04-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

After finally arriving at a vision of the bathroom, we could now install a floor and paint the walls. Previous posts showed the original redwood wainscot hidden for decades behind old gypsum and tile-bord and we were able to clean it up and re-stain the wood. First we added a wood preservative compound to help rebind the wood fibers and then applied stain and sealer. Here are a few sneak pics of our bathroom remodel which is truly taking on a "less is more" approach. We mostly remove the junk previous owners had installed and revealed the original walls of the house. The old, ugly vinyl floor now freshly updated and this once dreary bathroom is now the happiest, brightest place in the house!

Time for a Visit

2010-04-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

Finally my sister Sylvia and brother-in-law Bill came for a short visit to see our house and they brought very interesting gifts. One of my favorite is this dinner gong.
During the 19th century, it was customary to have an aperitif in the drawing room before dinner. Ladies and gentlemen always wore formal dress for dinner, even if it was just an ordinary affair of five courses (soup, fish, meat, sweet and savoury courses). When the dinner gong was sounded, the ladies and gentlemen would rise and file into the dining room in a previously-arranged pattern of precedence. Each gentleman took the arm of the lady who would sit on his right, the host and honoured female guest entering first, the hostess and highest ranking gentleman last.

How the times have changed! What's fascinating to me about some antiques is how they have become obsolete yet retain a certain aesthetic that add interest in modern times. We think we have found useful ways of using these gifts that seem to fit the house well and yet don't add a feeling of clutter. Here is a Victorian hat stand, an ornate plate holder (holding the dish Andrea), and the very pretty, strange table is now a makeup vanity in the bedroom.

Thanks for wonderful gifts Bill and Sylvia and we'll see you soon!

ganda

Hello Dolly!

2010-04-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Being an artist and filmmaker, it's easy for me to envision something in my head. I always thought everyone had that ability to think creatively and see a 'picture' in their head of something they want to make. Time and experience has shown that this is not true for most folks which is why one would find all sorts of catastrophic art, designs and builds simply because people couldn't see their final creations. Add to that the difficulty in communicating to others what you 'see' and you get a picture...a picture of problems.

Fortunately, creativity is in my family DNA. Picturing something is easy for us but many times it is better and smarter to actually build a model of what you want to create because you could overlook something in the final design. I use the HGTV Home and Garden Design program that lets you easily build a 3D model of any home, build and move walls, paint, add plumbing...anything that you could do to a real house without actually doing it just yet. In this demo clip, you can see the way I use this program and other programs like Photoshop to help me figure out exactly what I want to do to the house.

Now my sister Sylvia takes an old-school approach by using a Victorian Doll House to mix and match wallpaper, area rugs and furniture.

Whatever your approach to renovating or designing your home, it's a great relief to work out your idea in either of these ways as they will eliminate problems later and you can share them with others to get vital feedback. We actually liked my sister's very Victorian take on the parlor and will use it as a guide as we continue to remodel.

Progress

2010-04-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

We are making progress on the bathroom. George did an amazing job building the frame to extend the bathroom. These are a few of the latest touches we've made:

Ceiling light in the new part:

A built-in shelf/cabinet

A stained-glass look on the window

I'm happy to report that we did most of the bathroom painting (w/faux glaze & sponge painting). After a number of paint samples, we decided on this color scheme:
Whisper Yellow, Apple Crisp, & Mojave Sunset. (talk about transformation! Frankly, I love the way the Tuscan Yellow/Van Gogh Sunflower/Haystack color brings out the beautiful wood George restored.)

p.s. The Santa Rosa Plum Tree we planted it Winter is donning green leaves a couple flower buds :) And... George discovered a little rose bush which has just started budding!

Decorative Faux Sponge Painting

2010-04-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm trying to come up with the right color scheme for 'sponge painting' the bathroom walls. George has them all prepped, spackled, and will finish the sanding soon. So far I know I should use a satin finish paint.

I'm trying get a nice combination with aqua & copper and experimented on a small board, but my first attempt of sample colors didn't produce the desired effect. It could simply be a shade adjustment, I'm not sure yet (at least you can buy small sample size cans for $3 so it's not a total waste).

We want the wall colors to enhance the beautiful wood-wainscoting and all the old-growth redwood trim that George has so diligently restored. Any color experts out there? Perhaps you might share some tips or suggestions.

I've been googling images for color ideas..... and found this helpful informational video for exactly what I'm planning to do:

A reminder from Ikea

2010-03-20T16:08:00.001-07:00

This is a public Note To Self' for Andrea after purchasing a 'vanity dressing table' from Ikea. It was a decent piece of furniture but I learned that the color black/brown really means black which just didn't work in our room, and a few screws were missing from the package so I decided to take the whole, heavy item back the next day.

"Remember this video of George in the Ikea return room next time you even think about purchasing something from there, Andrea. It's just not worth it."
I'm sure lots of people have good experiences at Ikea but I usually do not.

However, at 10:30 in the morning the was no line for frozen yogurt so we finally tried a $1.00 cone of vanilla nonfat frozen yogurt and it was good, even though George still does not look happy.

Interestingly enough, this return lead us to stopping at the Granite Expo on the way home where we found a perfect vanity & sink top for the bathroom! It's a beautiful rich 'mocha oak' color and was a very good price. More to follow on that.

Alameda Flea Market

2010-03-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we made a visit to the monthly Alameda Flea Market.

Love the Parisian painted sign window - we are making one for our bathroom cabinet!

A seat like this would look nice in the 'parlor' and we liked this beautiful hanging oil lamp. Cie la vie. We only bought some Italian hand-painted small butterfly tiles (btw...tiles were hard to come by) and left with some good ideas. It's probably best to either know what you are looking for or have a lot of money.

The Girl Scouts were there and I think I had a uniform just like that back in the 70's.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

2010-02-24T19:39:00.000-08:00

We started our renovation of the guest bathroom in the middle of the house. It's a small bathroom so we thought we'd take off some of the sheetrock to see what is behind it, hoping we will find something original that we can use and create space.

Well, the first thing we discover behind the sheet rock are exterior redwood slats! Several times painted and once was actually on the outside at some point which leads me to believe that our kitchen was once just a deck or porch. The paint has that quintessential victorian coloring and is comprised of solid, old-growth redwood. I had to run down to the tool library to find some way of pulling out the nails without fracturing the board and the good people there gave me some 'parting' tools that allowed me to take out the nails on the board.

After taking off the bord, I see the back of what appears to be wainscot. After removing sheetrock on the other side, I find something called "Tyle-bord" nailed to the original wainscotting. All I found on the internet about that are a few ads dating back to 1948-49.
"About Tyle-Bord products. Tyle-Bord Company Incorporated manufactured building materials, the company was based out of Seattle. Frank Hobbs was President of the company, John G. Mitchell was Vice-President, and George R. Torrence was Secretary-Treasurer. View of model kitchen with Tyle-Bord ceiling and walls.

After carefully removing the bord, it was on to the wainscot and the slow process of pulling out the nails that held it to redwood studs. After a while, I successfully pulled out about eight 4' high wainscot pieces. They unsnap like a puzzle which is cool. There is about 3 layers of paint on it and this means more paint removal.

It's interesting to think about how styles change of the years and how much the house is layered with a sort of history of 'modernizing' and 'updating'. Now, it's cool to bring these houses back to the original and I'm happy that the previous owners were good enough (or lazy enough) to have covered some of the original house that protected it over the years.

In my research, it is interesting to learn that drywall had been considered a pretty cheap wall to have. Many people still don't like it for a variety of reasons and even though it was invented in the early 1900's, drywall didn't become popular until well into the 1950s.

It's a Bonanza!

2010-02-24T19:30:00.000-08:00

My brother-in-law Bill tells me that we definitely have oak floors and most likely old-growth redwood heart for wood siding. My sister Sylvia remarked that the oak in the floors were around since ancient Egypt and that Oakland once had the most oak trees anywhere in the United States. Now, sadly enough, there is one oak tree left in Oakland and is called "Old man" and lives somewhere near Merritt college.

A few nights ago, I caught an episode of Bonanza and the episode started out with the Cartwrights cutting down a huge tree on the Ponderosa, Nevada. All the sons remarked how this one tree will build many homes and some ships. Pa reminded them that the tree was very old and there "long before Jesus was born". He then said, "What we take from the earth, we put back.", and then proceeded to plant a brand new young tree in its place to "grow for a hundred years or more". I never remembered Bonanza being so 'green-friendly' and it just seemed so poetic the way actor Lorne Greene said it. I'm glad we are cleaning the floor up and will soon make it available for everyone to see and walk upon. I have a new appreciation for the floor
and house and will do the best I can to repurpose any of the old wood so it will continue to be a part of the house.

No Wood Expert

2010-02-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

When you live in a home made of wood, it is good to know what types of wood you are dealing with. To me, wood is...well..."wood". I know a redwood when I see one as well as a pine but almost always in their original, natural state. I know what a 2x4 is having had it come crashing down on my head now and then.

As I begin to either scrape off paint or remove things I've discovered very different types of wood in the house and I am having a hard time figuring them out. Here is a sample of the parlor hardwood floor after scraping off the varnish; a sample of the wood from a window trim that had at least 3 coats of different paint on it and a sample of wood siding found in the middle of the currently renovating bathroom that was covered with a piece of door casing. Please chime in if you can tell me what type they are so I am more the wiser. I promise I will no longer think of wood as just "wood". :)

Tile Practice

2010-02-15T17:44:00.000-08:00

After a free tiling lesson at Home Depot a week or so ago, George did some practice tile work on the kitchen counter. Let me just say, it's the best part of the original kitchen now. He even designed a decorative square of that cool blue glass tile.

a new tree

2010-02-07T14:18:00.000-08:00

This morning we bought and planted a Santa Rosa Plum Tree. We'll see how that goes
& grows...

and then there were daffodils!

2010-02-07T14:11:00.001-08:00

About two weeks during a break in all the winter rain we've been getting, George said, "Come outside, you have to see what I found!" I'm thinking, hmm, what did he find? Good or bad? So I went out back and these bunches of blooming daffodils appeared seemingly out of nowhere! Isn't that a nice surprise :)

Expanding the bathroom by adding a pocket door.

2010-02-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

The only bathroom currently in the home is ridiculously small and needs to be re-tiled and cleaned up as I notice a small leak where the old tile meets the tub. From the basement, I could see that there was once a tremendous water issue that ruined the floor and boards beneath and were replaced with new wood and cheap floor. The patch job was pretty lame so I'm going to have to replace it so it looks and feels better.

The majority of this work needs to wait until dryer weather but in the meantime I will put in a frame for a 'pocket door' that will make the bath bigger and harken back to the past since, historically, pocket doors were a common design element in houses. The pair of doors that slid right out of sight into pockets in the wall was a common feature of elegant homes in the 1890's. Over time, pocket doors fell out of favor, probably because they were hard to open and close, noisy, and often came off the track.

Now pocket door kits are much better and easier to install so I will begin this project pretty soon. Here is my artist rendition of before and after.

Hardwood Floor in the parlor slowly comes alive

2010-02-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

So after 10 days of chemically removing the varnish and gunk on the parlor floor, this is what we have.
The next step involves sanding the floor and choosing a wood stain that appeals to us. Fortunately, the floor only has a few minor dings and scratches that can apparently be fixed with little wood patches. Andrea and I also just signed up with the 'Tool Library' a few blocks from here so we can check out (for free) all the equipment we need to sand the floor. After that, we tackle the baseboards and window trim all covered in at least 4 layers of different paint.

Discovering a Floor

2010-01-28T10:41:00.000-08:00

When we first toured the house, the floors were completely covered with brand new carpet. Our realtor said that there was probably just subfloor beneath it. On a whim, I pulled back a portion and saw a pretty grimy, darkstained mess but something told me I should sand a little bit and see what is actually there. I discovered that indeed there is nice mahogany wood flooring through much of the house. In what shape? It's over 100 years old and all sorts of things could happen including warping, breaks etc.

A brief History of Hardwood Flooring
By Stacey Kosha

"Hardwood floors were originally introduced in medieval times as a type of flooring used for multi-story buildings and usually consisted of two-foot wide planks of elm or oak. Later, wealthy Europeans began using fine wood flooring. Parquet wood flooring became very popular, but its price prohibited most of the middle class from its purchase. Since North America had more available timber, hardwood floors were offered at a much fairer price. Unsanded, unfinished pine planks were common (technically considered softwood).

In the late nineteenth century, hardwood flooring went into mass production. However, due to lack of knowledge about proper installation and lack of proper sealers and finishes available, it was perceived to have a lack of longevity. Carpet quickly overtook hardwood flooring in the market and was commonly installed over hardwood.

Today, hardwood flooring is far from lacking in popularity and is considered one of the most elegant and sought after types of flooring available."

Andrea and I talked about it and we thought we would first try and see if we can bring out the original floor in the parlor before deciding on anything else. So I put up a bunch of plastic sheeting to separate the parlor from the rest of the house and picked up $7 jug of "environmentally-friendly" varnish/paint remover, a pull scraper and some gloves and got to work. Because the remover isn't super harsh, it takes more time for the chemical to do its work but a little pre-sanding with 80grit paper before hand helps speed it up. Then pull scraping gently reveals a little bit of the original floor including the various scratches where, I assume, furniture and such existed. It actually looks beautiful when you strip the gunk and going after beauty is enough for me to continue on despite sore knees, wrists and hands.

I'm looking forward to my sister and brother-in-law visiting to see this as they are both antique experts.

Preservation Park

2010-01-16T20:03:00.000-08:00

Victorian Inspiration

From their website: http://preservationpark.com/about/

Occupying two blocks in the heart of downtown Oakland, Preservation Park is a Victorian neighborhood, a unique collection of historic residences transformed into the City’s most innovative workplace and event center.

History

In its 125-year history, Preservation Park has experienced life cycle changes common to many urban areas. The community started out in the 1870’s as an upscale residential neighborhood made up of elaborate Victorian homes. By the 1970’s, however, many of the large homes had been subdivided into rooming houses and the neighborhood had deteriorated into what planners at the time considered “redevelopment” material. All but five of the structures on the two-block site were demolished. The construction of a new freeway adjacent to Preservation Park also threatened to destroy a significant percentage of the neighborhood’s historic Victorian homes. To preserve these historic assets, the City of Oakland created a public/private partnership to relocate the endangered buildings and to renovate the regrouped residential structures for a new life as a business neighborhood.

Tuscan Wall

2010-01-11T09:49:00.000-08:00

Saturday I used acrylic paints and started painting the "Tuscan Wall" - I've never done this before so I took my usual approach to painting - pick colors I like and wing it.I was most surprised by the hint of a sunflower that presented itself at the end.

Then on Sunday George asked me to paint the other wall... so sure enough, I did. Lo and behold, a red sunflower appeared this time. That's what I love most about creating art whether painting, collage, or writing. The surprise of what shows up!

The finished wall (with the TV in the way)

More Building and Painting

2010-01-09T19:45:00.000-08:00

This is the brick work George put under & around the gas stove heater.

This is the bookshelf George built (he can do anything!) and I painted the trim again.
At this moment, the table you see below is being stained a darker cherry wood color.

Painting

2010-01-01T16:50:00.000-08:00

I love the work George did on the pantry. Isn't that impressive? It's so much better, nicer, and functional. Today I painted the little leaves on the top trim.

Yesterday I also did a canvas painting. This is a little fuzzy but the quote says: "We are the hurdles we leap to be ourselves." ~Michael McClure

The old "Ironing Board in the Kitchen' Trick

2010-01-01T09:22:00.001-08:00

So we have this quaint, wooden ironing board in the middle of our kitchen. Neither of us Iron and in reality, technology makes it possible to buy wrinkle free clothing!

Nonetheless we both like the look of the old ironing board and we are trying to figure out what to do with it. We need to take it out to make room for kitchen cabinets but where do we put it so it doesn't get in the way yet would be fun to show people?

Your suggestions would be welcome.

According to the Internet, "wood ironing boards in the kitchen were a common place in England." And the ironing board was patented in 1858. I've started reading VALLEY OF THE MOON by Jack London, which is set in W. Oakland around 1900's, and it starts out by painting a grim picture of young and old women sweating it out in an ironing factory where they iron clothes for 10+ hours a day for slave wages. No ventilation, no breaks, just endless ironing drudgery in W. Oakland so the upper class can walk around wrinkle-free. I wonder if I can make a movie about it?

Remaking the Pantry

2010-01-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

So Andrea really likes the pantry thing. The problem is that the shelves were warped, crooked and very inefficient. I decide to remake the pantry for her for the New Year and had only a few days to do it.

Taking out the shelves was no problem as they were not nailed to anything. The pieces of wood holding them up were screwed into the wall pretty badly and they pulled out by hand. If anything heavy were to be put on them, they would have easily fallen.

Now I wanted to install a new shelving system that DID NOT bolt to the surrounding walls but were tight against the walls so that they could not fall over yet could be disassembled and pulled out in the future if necessary.

The process went smoothly until I noticed that there is about a 2" difference between the length between the walls measured at the bottom and top. Not to mention that the floor slopes to the right. Eventually, I was able to put up level, tight shelving in a room that is crooked and sloping. I reused all the screws I pulled out of the old pieces and framed the new shelves with left over wood from a previous renovation and repainted it using left over paint from the previous owner.

We finished it together around 8pm New Year's eve. :)

Furniture

2009-12-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

We didn't really decorate for Christmas so we made this Christmas Bowl which looks cute & festive sitting on a Victorian tray on top of our nice little vent-free gas stove.

George put 2 new nice pieces of furniture together :) A kitchen cart & a bookshelf.

(p.s. Now he is rebuilding/reconfiguring the pantry!)

2009-12-16T18:28:00.001-08:00

Let there be heat

2009-12-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to share that we have a new heat source (click photo for Home Depot product info)! This little ditty replaced our old eyesore wall furnace. George got to demo the frame wall and cut out some carpet (he did an impressive job too.) You never know what you'll find in a wall, like an old cutter, dice, or a 29 cent postage stamp.

Corbin lockset with porcelain door knobs. Pat 1870

2009-12-04T14:33:00.000-08:00

I just pulled out of the old shed that's in the backyard. Here is a little info on it:

Original Antique Rim (Box) Locks After 1865

By the mid 1860's the basic rim lock was being made as it would remain for the next century. Companies continued to work on improving the working of the lock mechanisms mainly by removing as many unnecessary parts as possible. The rim lock remained the backbone of the lock industry and is still the hardiest lock ever made.

A little more history about these locks and how to add antique locks to your Victorian.

Tuesday Tidbits

2009-12-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

(Image from Google Search - Country Living)
A few random tidbits I've noticed after 3 weeks in the Victorian:

In the morning you can see & hear helicopters hovering over the freeway for the traffic reports.

There is a dog, let's call him 'Old Yeller', that often barks during the hours 1 - 3 a.m.

The ceiling is high enough in the front room to jump rope.

Overall, it's quieter than I thought it would be living on a busier street.

The side deck by our kitchen gets the morning sun and is a great spot for a cup of joe.

A little find from 1898

2009-11-30T10:25:00.000-08:00

Santa's first film appearance is the same year as our house, who knew?

Santa Claus and the Children (UK 1898). The Very first appearance of Santa on film.

East Bay parks soon to be full of produce - Inside Bay Area

2009-11-30T07:27:00.000-08:00

East Bay parks soon to be full of produce - Inside Bay Area

Connecting with your inner builder

2009-11-22T17:51:00.000-08:00

We've been in the house barely a week and already had installed new bulbs throughout the house, put in several deadbolts, installed motion sensor lights, security cameras, new blinds, pulled out the weeds in the back, yanked out the old phone lines, changed the shower head, put up drapes and finally put in the Weider workout system in the front of the house. We ordered 3 new double-paned windows and will have Jorge, our contractor, come by in a few days to repair the water damaged corner of the house and install these nice windows.

The house has been very cold because it has no insulation and all the doors and windows have gaps and seem crooked. I suppose a house that has been hanging around the Bay Area for 100 years would have experienced quite a lot of earth movement hence the crookedness of everything. I will need to go and replace all the door and window frames eventually. I started to replace some of the old light switches and found that a few do not have any boxes behind them and are essentially wires surrounded by old wood. Need to deal asap with that.

I found a couple of very nice, long shutters at Urban Ore and cut them to fit as our new french doors. They are different in that they do not contain any glass but you can move the shutters to let in light from the one room to the next. We could go with glass french doors but I learned the home insurer will ding us for them.

A fun fact about the house was to learn that Amelia Earhardt, Sergie Eisenstein, Federico Garcia Lorca were born when this house was built and the US went to war with Spain. Street cars regularly ran down the front of our house and the very first car was sold that same year.

Our contractor has all sorts of ideas to open up the house to make it seem bigger but I really want to keep the quaintness of the original even as I try to understand what that was. I only just discovered that our current entertainment room was once the original kitchen. I hope to have an accurate timeline of when things were added and I will do that by examining the wood studs to determine the changes.

About the "Ghosttown" District for Halloween

2009-10-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

Our house is located at the intersection of Emeryville, W. Oakland, N. Oakland. Known as Ghost Town (sometimes spelled Ghosttown) it is the informal name of the Foster Hoover Historic District neighborhood in West Oakland, Oakland, California.

The name probably originated from the two casket companies operating side by side on Filbert Street between 30th and 32nd Streets. One of these companies, "American Burial Casket Co" (sign intact) is located at 3102 Filbert Street. The second company was located at 3104 Filbert Street. Other explanations for the name may have originated in the times when eminent domain forced hundreds of families out of their homes and the town looked like a ghost town. It stretches from 31st Street to 35th Street in the area immediately southwest of the Macarthur Maze. This neighborhood has active citizen crime patrols, including one group of seniors who walk the neighborhood weekly to get physical exercise and report blight. Jerry Brown, formerly governor of California and Mayor of Oakland stated: "Instead of an omnibus crime bill, you have to deal with shootings in Ghostown in West Oakland and sideshows in East Oakland."[6] Brown made attempts to turn around the blighted West Oakland neighborhood after 60 Minutes featured it in a television profile.[4]

The term "Ghost riding" has been attributed to this Oakland neighborhood. According to the Contra Costa Times and The Washington Post, local rapper Mistah F.A.B. popularized the term with his song "Ghost Ride It" and speculated that its origins are in Ghosttown.

The area has changed remarkably since this wikipedia entry and more regular outlets and fewer liquor stores means the area is becoming a 'ghost' of its former self. lol

chalkboard paint

2009-10-22T15:46:00.001-07:00

I will add my perspective here which may appeal to the Type A sort of person. I can be creative & insightful which is usually after I get through zipping around like a hummingbird. That's another story.

I love the idea of painting a chalkboard wall, and we did! It's only like 12 bucks for a small can at Home Depot. You're supposed to let it dry for 3 days. I'll report back once I test it out.

A project wall = FOCUS (lists work for me).

In the beginning...

2009-10-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

How did we get here? During the height of the "Great Recession", we talked about the possibility of buying a very inexpensive home somewhere in the U.S. We heard about artists buying homes in Detroit for 7k and for a little bit more you could pick something up in Florida. The key issue was finding work in a new state and lenders at the time were not too keen on lending to a couple of drifters.

So we thought that looking in the very hot, ugly and unappealing cities of Pittsburg, Concord and San Leandro might be our best bet given our meager price range (under 200k). Andrea found our agent Patricia and I worked on getting a private lender and figuring out how to use Zillow and Redfin to aid in our home search.

Weeks dragged into months and we made around 10 offers that would lose out to lower all-cash offers. The clock was ticking down to take advantage of the first-time home buyers credit and we suddenly had to change to our new agent (Colin Hill). Things started to look bleak until we landed this 1600 sq ft Victorian on the border of Emeryville, Nor. Oakland and W. Oakland. Not very pretty on the outside and it's along a noisy main street but the price and the terms were exactly what we wanted.

Things we learned: Zillow isn't very good at keeping track of homes that go off the market but it does have a very good way of helping you find and review a good lender. That's how we found Chris Garza with Vanguard. The man gets back to us on our questions super fast and we received a great loan package and terms. He can close escrow in like 15-20 days! I highly recommend him.

Redfin was a great tool to check out houses online and deciding whether or not we should take a look at a property. Listings are updated very quickly and the easy interface makes it easy to know where the property is and the condition. I would often scour Redfin for new listings and then forward them to our agent who followed up with phone calls and previewed the homes in advance. In a few cases, we made a "blind offer", meaning we did an offer via e-mail and e-signatures on a property that we saw only online. If our offer was accepted, then we would go check it out and decide if we truly liked it or not. In the case of our new home, I saw the new listing of it on Redfin, shot an email to Colin who visited the home later that day and said it had all the things we were looking for. He went back to the office and sent us an offer sheet which was signed and sent that evening. A few days later, we heard it was accepted.