Big Summer Project Has Begun

A few weeks ago, I had the thought that perhaps I should paint the exterior of The Dump before the next rainy season as there are some areas where the paint has failed and bare wood is exposed. I wondered how long it would take me to do this by myself as asking mom to help would be far different than asking for her help on an interior painting project.

Imagine my surprise when she pulled into the driveway mere days after I'd had that crazy notion and the first thing she said was, "We should paint your house this summer." I wasted no time on taking her up on that offer! We pulled paint chips that very day and narrowed it down to what I thought was a good color. Samples proved otherwise, so the color selection process continued.

Since I have a series of 3-day weekends coming up (Memorial Day, 4th of July, and a bunch of random Fridays we now have off as a token remuneration of our recent pay cut), I decided to get moving. Here are some progress pics from this past weekend:

Saturday - Scraping (not much since I have lead paint under there), patching and attempted gutter removal. Discovered the gutters will not come off AFTER we had demolished the downspouts int he removal process (oops!). No photos of this since it looked even uglier than before. Color was still uncertain at this time.

Sunday - Everything is primed and ready to go. Color rapidly selected and paint purchased (since the paint store would be closed on Monday). You know it was bad when a passing neighbor is totally impressed by the primer coat:
Monday - Eaves, rafter tails, fascia board and gutters painted white (with the "help" of my new power painter. Very messy, but good for getting into all the nooks and crannies of the eaves. I could not have done it without the help of a crew consisting of Mom, Uncle Tom and my beau, AT--thanks everyone!), window and garage door trim painted green so I could get the padlock back on the garage door:
Tuesday night (wanted to snap a pic before I ran out of daylight) - Yellow done on front wall so that I could unmask the front door:
Wednesday morning - All cleaned up, unmasked and looking perky in the morning light:
Obviously, there is still a lot left to do, and this is only the first side of the house! However, it's a massive change and I think it will go a long way in boosting The Dump's curb appeal.

Once again, I'm reminded of the transformative power of paint. I heart you, paint!

Yard work

So, it's been a while since I last posted, and I've been really busy in that time.

I painted and laid a new vinyl tile floor in the laundry room but I don't seem to have any real photos of that. I know I took some with my phone, but they aren't blog quality, so you'll just have to wait.

The weekends of the past month have been focused on the yard (aside from the weekend I lost to a business trip). Namely, I was keen to get my veggie bed going so that I will have some chance of having something edible before the season ends. I spent a weekend pulling weeds and working the soil and then planted the following weekend.

I went a bit crazy at the garden center:
6 types of tomatoes
a 6-pack of corn
a 6-pack of basil
Parsley
1 Cucumber
1 Zucchini
1 Crooked neck squash
1 sugar snap pea
1 watermelon
a 6-pack of lettuce

I'm pleased to say that I made it all fit:


Also a few weeks ago, I discovered buds on scraggly rose that I had pruned in January 2008, but had largely ignored since then. This weekend I got a pretty trellis and tied it up to the end of the front porch:

Cute, non?

And to round out this yard-loving post, my CA wildflowers are late to bloom, and not as well synchronized as I had hoped, but pretty nonetheless (I had wanted an explosion of blue lupine and orange poppies together, but the lupine is almost finished and the poppies are just beginning to open):

It Pays to Have a Friend Who is an Artist

I know with absolute certainty the shade of green I want to paint the kitchen in the final remodeled version with white cabinets, dark hardwood floors and my lovely "Cashmere White" granite I picked last February. Alas, with the economy as it is, that is off the books until some time in the uncertain diststant future. The kitchen desperately needed a paint job to be less dumpy and more tolerable until the remodel finally happens.

Picking a color has not been an easy task. The reason for this is that there is a complex set of variables to influence this decision. In one corner, I have the new white cabinets with honey colored beech butcherblock counterop. In the other corner, I have the dingy old cabinets with a cheap blue formica counterop. Underfoot is a hideous yellow/brown/olive linoleum tile that I plan to replace with a pretty stone-like linoleum tile when I can afford it (see previos post about recent pay cut coupled with some emergency expenses). The adjoining living room is a muted yellow that sometimes looks olive.

Back in October, I found what I thought was a pretty blue for the living room. It was way too cold for that room since it gets very little light. I slapped up some swatches in the kitchen, and while it blended with the formica quite nicely, I was certain it would be positively FROSTY in there if I did the whole room.

I'd pull a few paint chips on every trip to the hardware store, and amassed quite a stack of them. I have been staring at those chips for the kitchen for at least 3 months with nothing really standing out as the obvious choice. All the greens I picked seemed to clash with the blue, all the tan/taupe/brown/beige looked sickly next to the butcherblock, and nothing was going to make the hideous lino look any better.

This weekend I finally had two full days to commit to the project and got started with priming ceiling and walls, then painted the ceiling, all without having a clue what color to pick. I had somewhat resigned myself to the fact that it likely needed to be blue, and was leaning toward a really pretty, saturated, bold blue that was not dark (basically, as warm a a BLUE can be, which is not very)

Then I called my friend Billy (the artist) and asked him for a consult. I brought with me my stack of paint chips, a sample chip of the formica that I picked up at Home Depot, the chip of my living room color, the four contenders of replacement floor tile, and pried up a loose tile of the current linoleum (we used the hardwood floor at his house to approximate the butcherblock).

Billy, Kat and I looked at color combos for probably an hour. Amazingly, Billy was able to find not one good choice, but THREE amazing choices. All green, all lovely next to the blue, existing lino, and future lino (helps to have that decision made now too!). We identified them as "bright and perky," "tranquil and safe" and "potentially dark and moody."

I dashed home and taped them all to the wall that is visible from the living room. I looked at them for 10 seconds and made up my mind. The "bright and perky" choice (appropriately named "Gleeful Green") seemed like it might be TOO perky for my little space, so I chose the "tranquil and safe."

Not only did Billy give me the cheery green kitchen I had been hoping for, but he also paired each green with a suitable blue that I can use on the wall behind the formica counter to tie it all together and add some interest. Amazing!

After all that description, here are a few pictures of it after the first coat:



OK, time to go start the second coat!

Sometimes I even impress myself

As I have mentioned several times, The Dump suffers from a lack of gutters on two sides. This leads to a lot of water hitting the ground and sitting there right next to the foundation. This means it makes its way into the crawlspace, which has been the source of much stress and frustration. It REALLY stressed me out last year, and this year I was trying to tell myself I was prepared for the inevitable cycle of rain and pumping.

Back in late summer, I thought to install gutters before the rains started, but didn't because it seemed very likely I'd do my foundation work (including a super powerful system to remove water from the property) and a new roof. Alas, the economy tanked way more than expected and I decided I needed to keep that cash in my pocket.

After the doozie of a storm we had last weekend and the out-of-control stress I felt this week with all the pumping it required, I decided I needed to get some gutters up before the next storm rolled in. So, I downloaded some how-to info from ThisOldHouse.com, went shopping for supplies Friday night and skipped my run Saturday morning to get an early start on what I suspected would be a long project.

I have to admit, I consider most of my home improvement projects thus far to be pretty entry level and was a bit concerned about my ability to execute on this one. But execute I most certainly did. Because I was racing against mother nature, and my doubt about taking on a project of this magnitude, I opted for the slightly more expensive vinyl gutter system that snaps together with rubber gaskets at the joins instead of cementing with metal or plastic adhesive. So easy!

I got about 40' of gutters hung without too much cussing and without falling off the ladder. I ran out of gas and did not finish the task (have a 12' and a 7' section left), but am really pleased with what I accomplished.

Sure enough, it started to rain while we were out to dinner and I could not wait to get home to see how they were holding up. Instead of a waterfall off the roof, I heard water gushing down the downspout and out the end of the 12' diverter tube that takes it away fromt he foundation. Yippee!!!!!

It rained most of the night and a good chunk of today and my crawlspace is NOT full of water as I was expecting it to be. Maybe we didn't have enough rain to create saturated conditions (though he soil was still saturated from the last storm, even with 4 dry days in between) , but maybe the gutters are a big chunk of the solution to my water problem. Not bad for $150 in supplies and 6 hours of work.

And because I am THAT much of a geek, here's a photo:
On tap for next weekend: painting the kitchen.

Rainy day progress

As I type this, Redwood City is approaching 2" of rain in a 24 hour period. I'm not joking when I say it has been raining ALL day. I know our nearly-empty reservoirs desperately need it, and for that I am grateful for it to be raining.

Alas, also as I type this, I have a pump running because my crawlspace is once again full of water. This is partly (mostly) due to The Dump's lack of adequate drainage, and also partly because Redwood City is relatively low, so when there is a lot of water in a short period, it isn't able to drain away very quickly. I am MUCH less stressed about this than I was last winter. It helps that my neighbor's crawl space is full too (yep, I stuck my head in there to satisfy my curiosity!) and he has sufficient gutters.

Truth be told, I was really hoping to hold out on the pumping because my rain barrels are scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Since we're perilously close to a drought, I wanted to be a good citizen and attempt to collect as much rainwater as possible for the rest of the rainy season to use in my garden when the inevitable water rationing starts (or at least be a good citizen even if there is no rationing) and pumping the crawlspace into a barrel seemed like a good way to start.

In any event, I've been indoors all day and spent most of that day scraping the 50-some odd years of wax buildup from the hall floor. This has been ongoing for about 6 months, but it's a mind-numbingly boring task, slow on visible progress, and hard on the hands, so it's always at the bottom of the to-do list. I'd tackled the hardware on the kitchen cabinets last night, so there was nothing else that seemed like a reasonable one-day project, and the wet weather meant painting was out since it would take ages to dry, so a-scraping I went.

I wish I could say a full day of work led to a miraculous transformation, but they went from bad to worse before starting to look better.

The wax was really thick and grimy at the edges, but that's where it has scraped up more readily. After making progress with the 12" on either side, I covered it with a runner and ignored it for a while since the visible parts were quite nice looking. :)

The central traffic area was smooth and most resistant to scraping off, but quite discolored compared to the exposed perimeter. After a few hours of scraping, I decided to give the chemical wax stripper a go. Not the smartest thing on a day when I can't open all the windows of the house to ventilate, but I had a one track mind about the floor. I'm less than impressed with the results, even after going at it with steel wool with plenty of the solvent.

After letting them dry, I used Johnson One Step Floor Wax which is supposed to clean and wax in one step (duh) with no buffing required. It claims to be able to remove wax too, but I knew it was no match for the amount of buildup on my floors. The label said it wound dry shiny and if it did not, that meant there was wax buildup that needed to be removed. My floors are not shiny, so there is more scraping/scubbing in my future. I think I'm going to see if I can find a brillo-type pad to attach to the sander to save my hands a bit.

Since I don't have a photo-worthy hall floor, I'll leave you with a photo of the new kitchen cabinets complete with hardware and butcher block top:
More progress to come, eventually. Painting the kitchen is near the top of the to-do list when we get a dry spell.

A paint job is only as good as the paint beneath it

Such was the sage wisdom I received from the kind fellow in the paint department at OSH this afternoon. This weekend's project was painting the back bedroom in preparation for moving the rest of my stuff out of storage this month. It will be the guest bedroom via an air mattress whenever the need arises.

In any event, I had not tackled this room for a very good reason--it was the dumpiest aspect of The Dump. Peeling paint, cracked glass in the windows, popped up floor boards, etc. It was also the first interior item on the list when it came to big remodel plans, so I just kept the door closed all the time.

Anyway, after a ton of paint scraping, spackling and sanding, I deemed it as good as it gets for a fresh coat of paint. I could tell the last paint job painted over chipped/peeling paint, so this is not a new problem for this tragic room, but I was determined to make the best of it and move along at a good clip.

Wrong.

Apparently when paint that doesn't want to stick to the layer beneath it gets wet with a fresh coat (primer in this case), it bubbles away from the wall and peels off on the wet paint roller. Yuk!

After scraping away of some wet bubbles of peeling paint and rollering very slowly and carefully, I decided it was finished and was hopeful that the primer would form some sort of flexible "glue" that would hold it all together when the real paint does on. I had to run to OSH for a few other items, so I decided to have a chat with Mr. Paint. I told him the situation and he grimaced and actually said, "Yuk," before dropping his bomb of a pearl of wisdom. No matter how well I prime that mess, it's still going to peel off.

I decided I will wait until next weekend to deal with the real paint. I'll keep an eye on it during the week and will remove any other bubbles or cracks/peels that develop. Ceiling and trim are all painted and ready to go. The wall color is leftover from the condo (two gallons never even opened), and is ultra-boring cream. Whatever--I'm using it up instead of sending it to hazardous waste, and I didn't have to buy paint (the mis-mix bin was not going to help in this case since the room is big enough to require more than one gallon).

In a more successful turn of events, Arturo came out to run the gas line to the fireplace and also removed the nasty old wall heater in the living room. He patched the wall, so I primed and painted it and am amazed at how much space I just reclaimed in my living room:

I can actually use that corner now! There is a little gap in the floor and baseboard, but I'm not going to bother fixing it at this juncture since that is where I plan to put my wine cabinet. I'm thrilled since that is one less piece of furniture being stashed in the "guest bedroom."

Looking back, I don't seem to have posted a good photo that includes the heater, so here you go:

Oh, you can also see the major improvement in the soot-covered bricks. Simple Green, a scrub brush and a bucket of warm water were highly effective in removing the soot buildup in preparation for the fireplace insert coming next week. After that is installed, I'll finally get around to painting the mantle.

Super Cute - Version 2.0

Almost exactly a year ago, I posted the first major transformation of The Dump--my super cute pink bedroom, which was the cheery retreat when the rest of the dumpiness got to be too much. I eventually had to give the twin bed back to the Blancos and hauled my queen sized mattress out of storage, and boy, was it ever nice to have it back.

This weekend I hauled the rest of the bed out of storage and set up my bed with it's true vintage-inspired bedding.

So, here I give you my super cute bedroom version 2.0:



The bed is much too big for the room , but it will have to do until I get the back bedroom painted and the windows repaired (found a great how-to article in This Old House that has fully empowered me to tackle that project).

the other major improvement of the weekend is that I scrubbed the heck out of the brick facade of the fireplace to prepare for the gas insert I ordered on Saturday. It's an amazing change. If I had known that Simple Green and some elbow grease would remove the soot so easily, I would have tacked it a long time ago!

Anyway, back to that insert...The wall heater in the wall between the kitchen and living room does not work, and a ton of heat escapes through my damper-less chimney. I was planning to cover the opening to seal in the warm air, but then decided I would take the plunge and get the fireplace insert now, which will act as the primary heat source for the living room and kitchen for as long as I live in the is house (eliminating the need for a forced air furnace). It comes with a programmable thermostat no less!

I need to book a chimney sweep ASAP and a plumber to run the gas line through the masonry and expect to be sitting in front of my fireplace all toasty warm by Thanksgiving. Now, THAT is what I call progress.

Semi-after photo

Well, I was not as productive last night as I had hoped I would be. I needed to run a few errands after work, and as such, only got the front curtain hung. So, I'm calling this the "semi-after" photo. Or maybe it's the "mostly-after" photo.

As I mentioned in my last post, I still need to work on the mantle this weekend. I used the power sander, but it has many layers of peeling paint that are resisting removal/smoothing.

I will swap out the switches and outlets, but that will require waiting until there is some daylight since I plan to turn off every switch at my electric panel. They are not labeled, and outlets seem to be linked in the darnedst fashion (as evidenced by what goes off when I trip one).

I'm also planning on painting the front door and closet door white, but will wait until a dry day to do that. Possibly this weekend.

Miss Kitty seems to be out of sorts since I removed her favorite chair (it was in front of the window thinking she might like to look outside like a normal cat). She'd stopped sitting on it several weeks ago and had resumed her bad habit of sitting on the back of the couch (it took me MONTHS to convince her that the chair is a better place for her). Soooo, I decided to reconfigure the TV placement to make it feel less cramped and didn't move the second white chair back into the living room. Anyway, when I left for work this morning, she was curled up on the floor even though there is a kitty pi (that she has similarly ignored, adored and eventually rejected) on the couch and another cat bed on the white chair. She's weird.

Roses

While I may not be making rapid progress on the construction front, I'm experiencing great success with my roses. If you recall, back in January, I attended a rose pruning & care seminar hosted by my local garden center. I pruned the two out front and pretty much ignored the one on the chimney since I don't have a ladder.

The trailing white floribunda at the end of the driveway will need some more serious pruning next season, but here it is when it was covered with the first round of buds (click on image to get the full effect). Craziness:

It has very densely petaled blooms that are very fragrant. They don't last more than a day or two, but it's certainly prolific enough that you hardly notice.


And the "mystery rose" that had finished blooming by the time I first met The Dump turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise. Again, it will need more serious pruning next winter to coax it into a nicer shape, but it's been very rewarding this season. The blooms start as hot pink with orangey-peach centers and fade to pink and cream. I've been pinching off the side buds to force bigger, bolder blooms, and they are really nice for cutting.

Lastly, it seems that ignoring the climber on the chimney didn't deter it much. Here's what it looked like at the peak of the first wave of blooms (mid-April):

Since I haven't gotten up there to deadhhead at all, it's slowed down as the season has progressed, but it still has a few blooms a week. I'm really glad Pete (the architect) thinks it won't be too difficult to repair and preserve the chimney. I quite like the charm it and the rose add to The Dump.

Tree trimming extravaganza

Both brothers were in town this past weekend for the sad occasion of a memorial service for our aunt, but we managed to enjoy hanging out at home and maximized the rare event that we're all in the same town at the same time.

John listened to my dilemma about the magnolia tree and promptly went to work. I'm so glad I got such conflicting info from two different tree companies and took the "I cannot be bothered to sort this thing out right now" approach. That meant that my tree was an untouched canvas on which John could work some tree trimming magic.

As a reminder, here is what it looked like before:

And now, you can actually SEE the house:
I know that's not the very best comparison since the lighting is totally different (morning vs mid afternoon), but you get the idea. I've also been working on pulling the grass from the driveway. it really annoys me that the grass sprouting in the driveway is way more lush than the grass in the lawn area. I've finally gotten 98% of it and my house looks somewhat respectable once again.

John also advised against trying to keep the apple tree. It seems to be too far gone to rehabilitate into a handsome addition to the yard. I'll call around in a few more weeks to have that removed. I'd like to at least enjoy the apple blossom season after being forced to deal with picking up all those apples last fall.

The roses are putting out buds and I'm excited to see what the one closer to the house produces (it had stopped blooming by the time I moved in while the other one was going strong all the way into January when I pruned it). It is definitely another floribunda. Both have beautiful, lush growth and I sprayed with soap yesterday after spotting some aphids. I hope they bloom soon!

All in all, it was a productive weekend at The Dump and some quality time with the fam.

Gnoming around

In a fit of "I have a yard and it needs some character," I bought a garden gnome. Actually, according to the website where I found him, I "adopted" him (they were having a 50% off "adoption event"). His name is Buckston.
I put him in the back yard to hopefully decrease the chances of him getting bitten by the travel bug.

Impatiens = Cheap and Cheerful Color

This weekend brought some amazingly beautiful weather with it. Saturday was busy with lots of stuff, but Sunday offered several hours to putter in the garden. My pre-emergent weed killer I spread a month or so ago has done a pretty good job of keeping the weeds in the rose bed to a minimum and most of the pansies are thriving.

The bed in front of the porch has been weeded and enriched with compost and pre-emergent weed killer several times, but still grows some amazing clover. I weeded it again and decided that it needs some plants to improve the curb appeal a bit. It's a mostly shady bed, due to the magnolia tree, so I was struggling about what to put there--I didn't want to invest in some nice perennials that are going to get trampled once construction starts, but most bedding plants are sun lovers. In the end, I opted for a flat of impatiens for $20 in the "mystic" mix of hot pink, light pink and super-light pink. I plugged in all 48 plants, and I'm sure they are far too close together, but I so don't care at this point. I want an explosion of color and foliage that won't break my heart when they get thrashed by construction workers with big boots.

I watered them this morning and told them they better not die today--I need them to last at least a week. :)

First House Guest and Inspiration

Big brother Tom is in the midst of a kitchen remodel himself, and we've been chatting regularly about it. A Southwest fare sale popped up in early January, so I booked a ticket for him to come visit and help me plan my kitchen.

We got down to business on Saturday--went to Quesco to drop off the drawing for kitchen planning, picked up the list of stoneyards from the Countertop store and trekked on up to a stoneyard in Brisbane. After about two hours of browsing, I found it--the kitchen inspiration I had been seeking. It goes by the name of "Kashmir White":

It's an overall light effect, with the ability to tie in darker elements. I love the white, gray, green, red, black potential of it. I was on the fence about the direction I wanted to take the kitchen, and I think this Kashmir White will lend itself to straddling the contemporary/modern that I'm embracing elsewhere in the house with the more classic look that I can quite let go of completely.

We went to a few other places looking at stone, tile, flooring and appliances and all in all, I feel really good about the information I have gathered.

To top it all off, Tom pried up some linoleum in the kitchen and found oak under it! Yeeee-ha! I'm really hoping it's not totally thrashed so that I can keep all the existing oak in The Dump. That will save me another round of indecision...

Christmas all over again

So, here are the goods. Signs of real progress. I'm so excited, I can barely stop looking at it to type this post.

This is the drawing of The Dump in its current configuration that I received two weeks ago:

They also sent one that had a lot of walls removed so I could go wild and crazy if necessary, but I really didn't want to go down the avenue of a wild and crazy reconfiguration. For the most part, I like the layout of The Dump--it needs to be optimized, not overhauled.

And here is the current plan (click on picture to view it full size):

I have a few tweaks to do before I'll consider it final, but it's really, really awesome to see it coming together.

Moving forward

Howdy all! It's been a month since my last posting and quite a bit has happened. I'll quickly recap before moving onto to the exciting news.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I furnished my living room because I was tired of sitting on my bed with my laptop perched on my knees to freeload WiFi, watch DVDs, read, knit etc. I wanted a proper place to sit since it was going to be at least 3 more months before construction begins. I knew I'd have space for this stuff in my storage unit when the time came. Here's the living room full of holiday cheer:
Here's the best pic I have of the outside all decked for the holidays:

The first weekend after the new year will forever live in my memory as The Great Flood of '08. The bay area had a whopper of a storm (actually, 3 storms back-to-back-to-back) that flooded lots of places, knocked down redwoods in Marin, killed power to hundreds of thousands of people, and generally wreaked havoc. That Friday was my first day train commuting (my new year's resolution). As I drove home through Atherton, it was quite dark. I passed a street closed down by PG&E--my neighborhood was without power. In fact, most of RWC was without power, including the shopping center across the street where I was going to venture to acquire some candles and a flashlight. Instead, I decided to go to my storage unit since I knew there was a box labeled "candles" readily accessible. Thankfully they had power, but they also had water. I opened my unit (3rd floor with 2 exterior walls) to find my TV and several boxes sitting in a large puddle of water.

I immediately called Mrs. Blanco since she also has a unit on the 3rd floor. She informed me that her yard (in my neighborhood) was under 12" of water because their sump pump can't do it's job without power. At that point I knew I was in trouble at home, but first I had to resolve this minor flood.

I called Kat to see if I could pull a major favor from them and have them come help me move into a new unit. She in turn called Axt and he and his lady Susan rolled over to pitch in too. I have GREAT peeps in my life!!! Blancos, Inneses, Axt and Susan, mom and I set about moving everything into a new unit, which is happily on the first floor, but unhappily, is smaller than my current unit. Putting off facing what was waiting at home, I took everyone out to dinner as a small gesture of my great appreciation for what they did for me.

After that, I went home and found Great Lake RWC in my crawlspace. I had a sneaking suspicion that the submersible pump I found in the shed at the close of escrow meant this would happen, so I was not totally surprised. However, I WAS surprised at how much water I proceeded to pump out of the crawlspace over the next 2 days (the three storms didn't give the ground enough time to drain). I'm fully aware that this issue will be resolved during construction--adequate gutters, french drain, sump pump etc will all prevent this from being a long term problem.

However, all that water must have triggered a massive growth of mold because I've been plagued by a hideous amount of snot for the past two weeks.

Last Saturday I was vacuuming and got totally frustrated by my vacuum's poor performance on hard floors that I went out and bought a new one:

Notice how full the canister is after one pass of my whole house. I have a very hairy feline. Hopefully the new Dyson will help reduce her impact on my allergies since the mold is definitely doing a fine job on it's own (again, I am NOT freaking out about this since the house is going to be gutted in approx 2 months!).

Last Sunday I attended a rose pruning seminar hosted by my local garden center. I immediately came home and pruned my roses that definitely have not been properly pruned in many years. Here's how they look after I was finished with them:
The adorably crusty old man who taught the seminar said that I will likely lose the really thick woody part of the climbing floribunda, but to leave it for this season and let new canes sprout from the base (oops! Mom thought those were suckers and pruned them the first weekend here!). The tea rose has also been poorly pruned, so I'm hoping some new canes sprout up this year and I'll be able to bring it back into a normal shape at pruning time next year.

I fertilized and spread a preemergent weedkiller today and will spray them with copper and horticultural oil next weekend (rain in the forecast for Monday) to see if I can help prevent rust and mildew issues.

Alright, this brings me up to the current week. I figured out how to use my work phone as an internet connection, so I can use the computer anyplace in my house. yay!

Also, I got the drawings from Remy's QC on Friday. SOOO EXCITED! They sent over one version of the floorplan exactly as it is now, and one with a lot of walls knocked out so that I may doodle all over it. We're meeting Tuesday evening to go over it and move forward. It's pretty exciting to finally be doing something that feels like progress. I'll see if I can figure out how to get the drawings up here so y'all can give me some suggestions.

Gardening

My neighbor's yard is really shaping up--the sidewalk looks good, but the patio I don't like so much. In any event, I needed to step up my efforts for the cutest house on the block competition, even though I know the big work down the road will make me a shoo-in for that title. This recent activity next door called for some short term tactics that wouldn't be too far off course for the long term strategy, or be too much of a time or monetary resource drain. Bedding plants to the rescue!

We got lots of rain on Saturday, which I figured would help release the weeds from the rock-solid soil. It did, to a certain extent, and I pounced on Sunday. I pulled up lots of weeds from the bed that runs between the driveway and the fence, but there were some that still wouldn't budge. The soil in Redwood City is very heavy, dense clay, so it was a very muddy, messy task, but strangely satisfying.

I went to the garden center and got some gypsum and compost to mix into the bed for an interim fix. I know I'll need to do it again in a BIG way (with the help of more powerful equipment) when I deploy the big garden plan, but for now, I wanted to be able to plant some seasonal color. Mixing it in proved to be a challenge since the existing soil was like concrete about 2 inches down. So, I mixed it as best I could without damaging myself and then plugged in a flat of red and white pansies. They are so cute and perky and cheery, and just the trick to add some pop for the winter months:
As I left for work this morning, I caught myself talking to them, encouraging them to grow.

I am, maybe a wee bit crazy.
There are some weedy patches at each end of the bed that I just could not clear (see above, far right--the whole bed was like that), so I'll work on them again after the next rain, and will plug in some more pansies when the time comes.

Super cute!

I put the finishing touches on my little pink room last night (opted out of painting bathroom trim since it was cold and damp out--it would have taken forever to dry and I'm sure I would have messed it up along the way). I have to say, it looks SUPER cute and I'm totally in love with it.

This is how it looked before:
And this is what it looks like now:

Even though I do not have a nice wide-angle camera the way most realtors do, I'm sure you get the idea that it's a drastic improvement.

Next up is to use the floor wax solvent I got last weekend to get rid of some of the grimy wax buildup on the floors. I sure hope it works!

And, since it's taken a gazillion attempts to get these two photos uploaded (Blogger was clearly having some issues this morning), you're just going to have to wait until later to see the bathroom photos. Sorry!

Lawn mowing and soap scum

Busy day out at The Dump on Saturday... I went to the Nike run in SF with Eryn and then planned to spend the rest of the day working to get the bathroom clean and functional. That meant that I needed to get the shower useable (read: clean enough to use without getting cooties).

So, I worked on scrubbing the soap scum off the tub some more. I had made great progress with the stuff on the tiles last weekend, but the layer on the tub was persistent. It had definitely had plenty of time to accumulate! I finally resorted to scraping most of it off with a straight razor blade, which sped things up considerably. It's still not gleaming, but I think if I keep spraying it whenever I'm there, the lingering bits will eventually melt away.

After some yardwork (mowed the lawn, raked up magnolia leaves, pruned back the jasmine stumps even more with some long-handled pruners and raked the driveway smooth), I was ready to test the shower. But I had to keep it quick since I hadn't repaired the wall over the tile yet. At least it was mostly clean.

BEFORE:

Many years of soap scum, mostly deteriorated caulk, a few spots of grout failure, plus the water damaged wall made for a really ugly picture. Too bad I framed it poorly and you can't see where the tub meets the floor--that was pretty gross too.

The one advantage to all that soap scum is that it sealed the grout pretty well. The black mildew scrubbed right off instead of penetrating and staining the actual grout.

When I went to peel the poorly executed caulk from the top edge of the tile, half the wall came with it. Alas, I did not photograph that interim step. Just know that it was pretty bad.

AFTER:
Note the gleaming tiles, once again white tub, mad-crazy caulk job and the kick-ass patch job (more about that later). Mom cannot decide which is more impressive--my caulk or drywall skills.

I still need to figure out how to remove the soap dish. It's pretty much corroded into uselessness, so it might as well go away.

Here is a close up of the tub just because this is a miraculous comeback for a 50 year old tub:

In addition to the straight razor, the other product that made this miracle happen is Lysol Bathroom Cleaner (formerly Lysol Basin, Tub & Tile). I had stopped using it about a year ago in lieu of less toxic cleaning products. As much as I like the Method Home line of cleansers, I knew I need to bring in the big guns for this task. I used a whole bottle on the bathroom over the course of one week, which I think burned all the hair out of my nostrils even with the window open for ventilation. Once I've achieved baseline cleanliness, I'll go back to the nicer for me and the environment stuff.

Zero lot line

So, I'm pretty close to a neighbor on one side. The other side has a fence and a wee little strip of dirt (where the dog run will eventually go). I've taken to calling the fenceless side the "alley" since that's what it feels like. I've tried to explain this to a number of folks, but I clearly wasn't doing a good job, so here is a photo:
To give you a better idea of the layout of the house, that's the laundry room door, kitchen windows (the ones over the sink), bathroom, then large bedroom.

I have a door onto the alley from my laundry room, but my neighbor does not. In fact, there is no reason for him to ever enter the alley because his access to his yard is on the other side of his house. However, under that blue tarp is a bed frame that needs to be removed pronto, and there are a couple screens hanging out back there too. I plan to discuss that with him tonight when I'm out there to mow the lawn (with my awesome new Brill reel mower that Nancy gave me--so cool!).

Haircut

Yesterday's major accomplishment at The Dump was to remove the jasmine that was growing wild on the front porch and carport. While it was very pretty when it was in bloom, and I'm sure smelled like heaven, it a) was way too much for the little house and b) needed to come down anyway when it came time for doing the roof. Probably was going to be in the way of wrapping the house for termite fumigation too.

I decided to remove it now rather than wait. I wanted an instant improvement and I definitely got one!

Here is what it looked like a few weeks ago:

And here's what it looks like now:
It was growing up into the roof and was tied on with string and twist-ties and looked like it had never been thinned out. All in all, it was quite a masterpiece of plant gone wild. There are some really thick, woody stalks that I could not cut with my hand pruners, so I'll get some long handled loppers this week to take care of them next weekend to bring them down to ground level. I'm not sure if it will send out new sprouts or if I cut it back enough to kill it. If I didn't kill it, I wouldn't mind having it climb back up, but would definitely do it in a more controlled fashion so it doesn't overpower the little house.

When I have someone out to remove the apple tree, I'll have them limb up the magnolia while they are there. I think that will do a lot to open up the view of the house from the street. Much like trimming shaggy bangs...

We also took a whack at the shed attached at the back of the house, but it wasn't ready to budge, so we left it there.

And I now have a nice, clean living room:
(remember how it looked on the 5 cent tour?):

And here is an apple-free yard:
Worked on the bathroom yesterday too. That is some persistent soap scum, but it is coming along. No photos of that until it's totally clean so you get the full effect. However, it's cleaning up so nicely, I'll be able to shower there if necessary without getting the heebie jeebies or needing to wear shower shoes.