Christmas Day

Matt and I had a nice, quiet Christmas Day at home this year. I was certainly not about to fly anywhere at 35 weeks pregnant, so we enjoyed the day together with our little tree and the animals. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we took Sunapee out to Fort Funston for his favorite activity.

The sunny day also highlighted the streaks on the living room windows, so Matt went to work, with an audience.

Backyard Project

Our backyard was extremely ugly and rather unpleasant, despite our downstairs neighbors' valiant efforts in gardening the border. Most of the small space was covered with concrete which had been painted ever so long ago in red and green. This paint, which I assume is lead based, has been chipping so much that the color scheme was really red, green and gray. The added bonus to this patio was it sloped nicely towards the building so all rain water funneled directly into the foundation and under the door into the garage/storage/laundry space. Charming and functional.

So we decided we could fix this for a pretty small budget. Step one: remove concrete.


Step two: build deck

Step three, landscape the rest.

I have not yet taken any photos of the finished product with the landscaping. Our neighbors, Chris and Heather, did a great job with the flower beds. I'll get some "after" pics up soon!

Master Bathroom Project

In May we began a big project to add a second bathroom to the place. We had been wondering if such a thing would be possible and had ruled it out several times. Then we had a designer come in to suggest the best way to maximize the existing bathroom when we renovated it. He ended up convincing us that we could definitely add a bathroom where the master bedroom closet sat. He drew up some plans and we were sold. Let the demo begin:

To maintain a relatively clean living room and kitchen, the contractor's first order of business was to set up a plastic wall in the hallway - this also helped cordon off the (alien) cats.
Occasionally this aided in their efforts to keep away from Sunapee.The bedroom became a plastic walled storage area while we bunked on the pull out couch in the spare bedroom.

After about 3 weeks of demo, framing, extensive plumbing and electrical work, the tile started to go in.

And the shower pan, which of course the cats felt required inspection.

We found a great tile shop in the city where they really had some great suggestions, like this waterfall effect in the shower:
Toto! The Cadillac of toilets (ok, we went for a low cost model, but it has what we wanted and we are installing the same one in the other bathoom).

With shower door (duct tape was temporary)

The cats are huge fans of the heated tile floor. Marin spends half her day there.
Now it's finished, complete with a large skylight where the old roof hatch used to be in the closet. Having two bathrooms is great... except when we returned from our East Coast vacation, we demo-ed the other one. So, I imagine it will be nice to have two new bathrooms!

Working Vacation

Just like last year, my parents are on an eleven day California vacation. They started in San Francisco Monday night and drove to SoCal Friday. Also just like last year and as well as Dad's trip in May, Matt and I put them to work. After plying Mom with a spa trip and Dad with a racquetball game, both were assigned tasks. Mom and I went to work refinishing our el cheapo Ikea dining table before painting trim (she the windows installed in March and me the front door).

The before

And the After

Post-Outing Puppy

Here lies Sunapee, in pretty much the same coma-like state for the entire night after playing at Crissy Field with Matt, Greg and Bridger.


He even went to his crate, grabbed his stuffed animal puppy and brought it to the living room so he could snuggle with it.
He napped through the indoor cookout (cold, foggy June night necessitated indoor burgers) and an hour + of Wii fun.

Kitchen Project: Layout, Design, Models

Here are some of the drawings of the plans for the kitchen.

These three are some basics which Brian created to indicate the fact that we're going to raise the ceiling in the kitchen & dining room (and add skylights). The first two are as viewed from the street side, looking through the dining room, the last is looking from the south side, where the window is.



Here is the layout of the kitchen, as seen from above, but the "dead space" has been filled:
This is the view of one end, where the window is and sink was/will be. Hooray for a new dishwasher! Hopefully I will stop breaking dishes & glassware without my efforts to handwash at warp speed.

This is my favorite view. Cabinets galore with, of course, a brand new gas range. We'll have that fancy lazy susan in the corner on the right and a tall, slender cupboard for cookie sheets & the like. We have added another set of 12" open shelves on the right.

This is the side where the range & pantry used to be. Instead we'll have a fabulous french door, bottom freezer fridge with a larger, more accessible, user-friendly pantry and area for what I'm thinking is a bar space for entertaining.
This is the breakfast bar view, looking in from the dining room. We're putting a built-in wine fridge to fill the often hard to reach corner. We'll have a raised bar for dining.

Kitchen Project: Update

I haven't posted much because the pictures don't change, despite a ton of progress. Here are the accomplishments since demo & demo clean up:

• Plumbing
• replaced/moved water & drainage lines for sink & dishwasher
• ran pipes to supply water to fridge
• ran gas line up to the ceiling and down to the range location*
  
• passed inspection!
  
• HVAC
• moved dining & living room vents to ceiling - old vent lived where the new fridge will go (pics here)
  
• removed old, unused exhaust pipes
  
• Electical
• started removing old knob & tube wiring
  
• Flooring
• Matt and neighbor Chris removed the multi-layered kitchen floor (more pics here)
  
• Matt & I started installing 1/4" plywood floor underlayment to make up the difference in base height to the old floor (oh, my aching back & knees!)
• Cabinets
  
• ordered - should be ready in about 4 weeks
  

*This might have caused furnace & hot water heater to stop? Nothing like realizing there's no hot water at 6:45am.

Knob & Tube

Not surprisingly, the electrical system of the building is a bit outdated. Hopefully we can replace all the knob & tube wiring in the dining room & kitchen. I'm pretty sure the system is not thrilled with the strain of modern day electrical demands. Some areas exhibit exhaustion, with what looks like singed wire and blackened surrounding materials, such as where the fridge lived.

Kitchen Project: Demo Clean Up

The dreaded question of clean up was quickly solved with a call to 1-800 GOT JUNK. A friendly crew arrived Sunday afternoon with two large open-top trucks. Luckily, the new dining room window opens fully (old window only opened one side), so the folks parked right beneath it and they dropped all the debris right out the window. It was rather noisy, and the only complaint I noticed was from a next-door neighbor who gave me the hairy eyeball from behind her lace curtains as I took pictures of the ordeal from the sidewalk.

An action shot of Matt tossing some dry wall.


How it all piled up together. Note a piece of the red vinyl booth. Ahh, freedom from that darned thing.

Kitchen Project: Scheduled Demo

We've reached the point of no return. Brian and Matt started tearing down walls Friday night (before I'd finished my packing up of all kitchen contents!) By Saturday evening, the kitchen and dining room were reduced to studs and two giant piles of rubble.




Enjoying a well-deserved beer on our "deck", enjoying a sunset and the sights of the N-Judah train rumbling by.


Click here for all Kitchen Project photos