house done, life over

Oh, the Japanese saying.

I know we are going to hold on for a while before we go crazy, and fix anything.

Because the last house, and the first one as well, we jumped right in, and then later, we had to rethink flow, and ultimately ended up re-doing some stuff.

I suppose it’s inevitable to do, re-do, and re-do again.

When we bought the house, we were thinking (ridiculously) that someday we would give the girls their own rooms, and build a master suite third floor. Given the houses in the neighborhood, there is almost no way that we could overbuild.

Before drywalling

The weird open box is a California cooler.

Begone

I could have saved myself a lot of effort by just drywalling.

Sadly, I now understand why construction is so wasteful.

What, was I thinking?

What posessed me to think that I should try and save 90-year old beadboard? At least in this house, dear little Shady Oak farm, the beadboard was hammered through from the other side before they lath and plastered. That's right! It's not mounted to anything!

So, as it splintered and fell apart, I felt compelled to try and save it. Here are the base cabinets and the oak Numerar Ikea countertops as I was placing them. I wanted to save the open shelves, and cover them with glass-paned doors.

It was DOOMED.

not because of my carpentry skillz, but because of the mounting issues: lead paint, beadboard instability.

I just didn't want to do all the work and then hate it when I was done.

Oh, the blue is going to go. Just saying.

the in-process

So, then, let's go room by room. Here is a little taste of kitchen. Our budget is $0.

I only sort of joke. Also, I excel at ripping out things. This is the wall between the kitchen and living room. I don't even think I have a "before."

These are farm cabinets, the bane of my life. They are too narrow for a standard dishwasher. When we were closing on the house, I went on craigslist and bought a bosch dishwasher that someone took from their in-process foreclosure. I was convinced that I could throw it in there, only to measure everything up and realize that it was un-possible without changing out cabinets, countertops, doing the electrical and the water.

Sheesh.

So began the great accumulation. I worked to get cabinets (which were in the dining room for far too long more on this later), and then I had to get a different set of cabinets. Two kitchens worth of cabinets for $150.

The maple craftmaids are in the garage. The Ikea are in the house. We finally could take it no more. 

So NOT like the blogs

It's probably me. Every house I've been in has some tension between finishing a project in one part of the house and getting other parts of the house in order.

I have a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the BEGINNING.

In fact, I want to start the discussion here in two places. I want to walk through the decisions we made at the beginning, when we bought the house, AND I want to chronicle what I'm doing now. I think we can do both here, but it perfectly illustrates the split. We bought the house three years ago, and have pretty much had a constant amount of work going on.

There are little things that come up (naturally) in a 90 year old house, and other things that force the issue. In truth there is work that I've done that I've already hated, ripped out, and re-done.


The truth here is that it's not like www.apartmenttherapy.com, or www.younghouselove.com, or any of the other blogs that are simplifying things too much.

It's far messier for me: I am re-doing a kitchen, re-envisioning the backyard, updating the electrical from knob and tube wiring, building a sleeping loft, painting every room. All pretty much at the same time, and while I am being the dad to a 5 and 7 year old.

The truth of the project is that there has yet to be the "TA-DAAAAA" of completion.

House done, Life OVER

Oh, the Japanese saying.

I know we are going to hold on for a while before we go crazy, and fix anything.

Because the last house, and the first one as well, we jumped right in, and then later, we had to rethink flow, and ultimately ended up re-doing some stuff.

I suppose it’s inevitable to do, re-do, and re-do again.

When we bought the house, we were thinking (ridiculously) that someday we would give the girls their own rooms, and build a master suite third floor. Given the houses in the neighborhood, there is almost no way that we could overbuild.

Well, we bought a house

Here is what we liked:

A: Neighborhood.

The house is a small California bungalow on Alameda, an island city of 75,000 south of the Bay Bridge and West of Oakland. The house is in the middle of the island, and borders a large area of historic Victorians built by San Franciscans for summer houses (“The Gold Coast”).

Our house is the smallest, crappiest house in a very big circle, feeding into one of the best elementary schools.

B: The yard

It’s a big, big yard.

What I don’t like:

A: The kitchen

(more on this).

B: ONE BATHROOM.

C: I don’t know what they were thinking. The people that lived here for 60 years were relatively modest in their updates, but they walled in the windows over the bungalow mantle, and over the bed in the larger bedroom, swapped the leaded glass doors in the bookcase for the mantle with those, um, doors.

D: instead of putting a heater and ducts in the house, they just swapped the floor monster for a wall heater (which they chopped up the dining room wall to install.

E: ivy. in California. WTH.

With all the Asian stuff, and the wallpaper mural, and ivy, it seems like they might have been more comfortable with a 70s ranch house on the East Coast. Or. Something.

first impression

Every new house starts with the list. The list of things that you would change, fix, rearrange. This is our fourth house. Here is how it looked when I saw it for the first time.