kittens – Page 2 – turtle + mole

Green Eyes

The tile continues. Most of the tile is now on the wall – save the last fiddly bits.

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I put up all the whole tiles first, then fill in the cut pieces. I’m getting quite good at cutting out the tricky tiles that go around pipes and electrical boxes. In the upper two photos, I’ve got almost all the whole pieces of tile on. Just one more row at the top, and above the windows.

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Cutting the tile to fit around the windows is quite slow work. The tile at this window took all day. I’m standing on a ladder in the photo – Mole came downstairs to check on me, because it was past 9pm and we’d not had dinner!

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The next parts to finish: the difficult sloping cuts up close to the ceiling (left), and the other window (right). I just ordered the shower door: The price was so low at overstock.com that I just couldn’t resist (less than $600 including shipping for a frameless 3/8″ thick shower door with side panel.) Hopefully it’s not junk!

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I didn’t include any photos of cats in my last post, so here’s a close-up of Arwen.

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and Bella looking at her water fountain.

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Arwen taking a nap…

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If you were a small creature in our house, this would be the last thing you would see. Where do you think Mole got the idea for the tile color?

Tile progress (turtle pace)

At long last, we ordered the tile. We waited so long, that the original color was discontinued! So now, because we already have a couple of boxes of the discontinued color, we ordered three other close shades, and will be mixing them up. More on that in a later post. We also decided, since the Fireclay tile is so expensive ($28 per square foot!!), that we’d just use that tile on the wall that’s facing the door, and use white ceramic tile ($1.30 per square foot) on the other two walls. It also is in stock (we have to wait about a month for the fancy tile to be made). Value engineering!

So I got started on the white tile. I covered about half a wall before I realized I hadn’t been thinking.

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The white tile has special spacers built into the edges, so you can lay it out with very tight gaps. It’s almost perfectly uniform, too. So I thought “great, I’ll make the grout gaps as small as possible.” Then I realized that the Fireclay tile requires a minimum gap of 1/8″ because it’s hand made and dimensionally irregular. So I need to also space the white tile to match, if I want the grout lines to match up (of course I do — you know me). Luckily I realized this before the end of the day, so I spent the rest of the day pulling tile OFF the wall, and scraping thinset off the back. One day, and I’d have got just as far by going for a bike ride!

The next time I started I decided to start with the wall had has a niche (photo above right). I’m making the shelves out of a piece of stone back-splash.

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Above right, you can see one of the decorative Fireclay tiles we got at their “boneyard” (over-runs and imperfect pieces at discount). I’m adding it as an accent in the white tile.

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After three days tiling, above right is where I’m at. All the grout lines are 1/8″ and lining up. I have to make one more shelf, and continue the tile up to the ceiling…

And I have to include a picture of Arwen. I hope you’re keeping as cozy as she is:

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Restoring a door

A few months ago (in my last post) — well, that was six months! — I started restoring the door that I was planning to put into the laundry room. Hmm, so riding my bike got in the way, and I stopped working on the house for quite some time! Very enjoyable.

Back to work:

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Above left I’m clamping pieces of redwood (the door is old growth redwood) to the sides of the door to slightly increase the width and height. Above right, I’m test-fitting in the pocket door opening.

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I also bought an old, beautiful brass door lock from building resources. The old door hardware is more difficult to install than the new hardware. I had to hand carve out a mortice to fit the lock.

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And then July Fourth came along… Harrison street was again a war zone of fireworks: Exciting for humans, but terrifying for Arwen and Bella. We put their “thunder shirts” on. They look a bit peeved, but it did help to calm them down a bit.

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Not that they were totally calm… but at least they weren’t hiding under the couch!

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Here’s the door ready to be stained (left) and stained (right). Still need to put polyurethane on it.

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Right next to the door, in the laundry room, is a sink. I made a cabinet that will hold the sink, and be wall-hung. None of the walls are perpendicular, so it took some trial and error to get the cabinet the right shape. I stained it with the same stain used on the door. It came out close (a bit lighter) because it’s fir, not redwood.

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Janeen spent a day filling all the nail holes, sanding and priming the wainscot. I finally finished installing all the trim.

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And here’s the door on, and the sink in. The room just needs tile on the floor and paint.

ALC day 7: LA!

i left san francisco at 5:30 on saturday morning. mae and i had a GREAT time driving down to LA together, the hours flew by.

i got a good photo of mathew on his bike! since he’s such a fast rider, he got into LA before me and was waiting at a nearby cafe for my text when i arrived.

so proud of him!! and so happy to see him again.

cooling off.

yay! 545 miles from SF to LA in 7 days. and that’s a steel frame bike! 😉 he said he wasn’t sore at all and that he could have done the ride in 4 days!

eva and jacque were there too! they both work nights but they gave up their sleep to see mathew ride through the finish line. and it was a surprise to mathew, i didn’t tell him they were coming.

“WHY I RIDE” signed by riders. mathew didn’t get a chance to sign it but if he did, he would have written “for Jim and Jack.”

during the ride, mathew got a letter from a 3rd grader named abigale! i love how so many schools got involved in supporting the riders and the cause.

jacques and eva.

mathew couldn’t wait to take off this red nail polish!

mathew with the sisters of perpetual indulgence. some of them did the ride, but not in these costumes.

mathew and some very exuberant roadies! our friend alan is on the left and alex is on the right.

gathering their bags and walking them to the car felt so much like picking kids up from summer camp! 🙂 thankfully mae rented a mini van because we needed it! mathew shipped his bike back but we had 4 roadies, 1 rider and all their bags, which were big enough for me to fit into!

that saturday was also alex’s birthday. we took him out to dinner at fig in santa monica.

we spent the rest of the weekend with the gee sisters but have absolutely no photos of them because mae refused to have her photo taken! 🙁 but we had a fun ride home on sunday.

guess what i did on saturday..!

bella and arwen were very happy to have us home. bella was a super affectionate love bug this morning and arwen got to play outside. they each got new scratchers this morning. in the above photo i think it’s less about them sharing it and more about each one trying to claim it for their own!

ALC day 3 + 4

mathew’s ALC day 3 update: 1) he was moved to tears by the people in bradley, especially the kids. 2) he ate a huge waffle cone and then quiche for dinner and was thankful for lactaid. 3) he said it was a great day.

around noon yesterday he sent me this photo with the caption “helen highwater at mission san miguel.” i didn’t see it until just now because it went into spam!

17 miles into day 4 he sent me this photo: half way to LA!

and then after another 17 miles he sent me this photo “Back on the coast.”

he got delayed for a few hours at lunch getting a new tire. and then had fun at rest stop 4 where the theme was “Four is the New Black.”

and here are kitty photos for a friend of mine. you know who you are! 😉

arwen being naughty!

bella enjoying her paper bag.

sisters. 🙂

Custom Moulding

I started out trying to just re-use the door that used to be in laundry room.

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It isn’t a beautiful door, just a hollow core door, but at least it wasn’t painted. The new door needs to be narrower and slightly taller than the old door; so I trimmed the width, and added a piece at the bottom. When I was testing its fit, it looked so dull and out of character for this house, that I decided to go and get an old door from Building Resources. No question why this is taking me so long!

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Above left you see the door I bought. It’s in pretty poor shape and has been painted and dinged up quite badly. It’s going to be a project to make this door nice.

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First I stripped all the paint with the heat gun. You can see there are some deep gashes from where the door must have rubbed against something. There are also screw holes and dents in lots of places. Still a lot more to do to make this door nice.

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Meanwhile, in the laundry room, I’ve almost finished putting up all the trim. To match the molding for the rest of the house, a local custom milling company used a sample of the old molding and duplicated it. In a time of poorly made, imported, machine made stuff (our couch for instance), Lowpenski Moulding are one of the treasures still operating from old San Francisco. They spell “Moulding” the English way — hence the title of the post.

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Still needs painting, but it came out really nice. Above right is one of the complicated fiddly details that I enjoy.

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For the last few years, our couch has had a squeaky, loose arm. Sitting across from it, I noticed that the arm looked like it was starting to come off, and the couch was sagging. With Arwen’s help, I took off the fabric on the bottom of the couch to find the problem: The frame is made of particle board, and was broken.

I don’t know for sure if we broke it, or if it arrived broken from Macy’s, but here’s a clue: There were two layers of fabric stapled over one another onto the bottom of the couch. The inner layer was torn (we bought the couch new.)

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I glued, screwed and clamped new wood inside the couch, and bolted it together again. It should hold now. You can see Bella exploring inside the couch on the left. She needed an “emergency” shower when she came out – covered in strange powdery particles of filling/foam/etc that we didn’t want her to eat.

Above right, Arwen is enjoying a blanket that mole is knitting.

Here’s a picture of Bella trying on another one of my shirts:

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Cuteness Awards Continued

Janeen just caught some photos of Bella working on her cutest cat award: Bella decided to get into my ‘Obama’ hoodie:
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She liked it so much that she went to sleep inside.

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I finished up installing the wainscot. Now I need to get the moldings for around the doors and windows.
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I always enjoy looking back at old photos of this project. The photos above on the right are of the same wall. The lower photo is from February 2012.

Laundry Room Wainscot

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Arwen has been working on her modeling again… trying to get a nomination for “Cutest Cat.”

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Never outdone, Bella’s doing her best…

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You know, humans aren’t the only ones obsessed with computers.

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We got a real tree again this year. My family came over for a Christmas celebration, and we managed to get the tree up a good couple of hours before everyone showed up. Arwen decided that this present was for her. I think she knew that Janeen would like the purple paper.

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Here’s Janeen, Eva and Leo comparing stripy socks.

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Christmas dinner around our little table: Seats eight.

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We even took a conventional family picture. That’s Mia on Skype on Dad’s phone.

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I did two batches of beer last month: an English Brown Ale, and a Chocolate Stout. I plan to give most away as thank you gifts for sponsors of my AIDS/LifeCycle ride. Let me know if you want some!

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Arwen and Bella are very “helpful” when it comes to making the bed. They love to play “thumbtack” when you move the sheet.

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OK, so this blog was supposed to be about working on the house. Well, not been doing a lot, but I did tear out the old tile flooring in the laundry room (no photos), and put in cement board ready for new tile. Looks cleaner already.

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Continuing with my goal of reusing old wood, I have a pile of short scraps of old wood that is still left over. To make baseboards (nice, thick, big baseboards), I cut the pieces of wood into identical sized strips, planed and glued them together. Here’s one of the boards, using lots of clamps.

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Before and after going through the planer. I routed the triple bead into one line of the wood strips before glueing together. On the right, I’ve filled the nail holes, and the board is smooth after going through the thickness planer a few times.

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Here’s the baseboard going in, and the start of the wainscot. I’m finally using the recycled wood I made and talked about back a couple of months ago. I still need to make boards for the window sill. I’ll probably buy molding for around the windows, though.

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Happy and Peaceful New Year, from turtle, mole, arwen and bella.

the BIG “life” post

there’s a lot of “life” that happens when we’re not working on the house. i’ve been meaning to post these photos for months…

back in may i helped mark (our friend and downstairs tenant) redesign his cafe website. this involved a photo shoot where we got to eat and/or take home everything that was shot. definitely one of my better projects!

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(left) some of the beautiful, delicious food. (right) it was a late night and mathew was probably a little bored.

to see the finished photos and website. click -> epicenter cafe.

fun fact: i also helped choose the color palette for the cafe when it opened in 2008.

an animated collection of mathew’s “selfies.” these were taken when misha was visiting in may. i could have made the image larger but i didn’t want to scare you.

i’m no food photographer but sometimes i take photos of stuff i make. (left) poached eggs on english muffins. (right) vegan ginger cookies!

ice cream is a regular, if not daily occurrence in mathew’s life. look how happy he is making an ice cream sandwich with luna and larry’s coconut bliss and my vegan chocolate chip cookies.

in june i went to seattle to visit my “other family.” i also visited the new chihuly garden glass exhibit.

a dramatic show. beneath the space needle.

while in seattle i caught up with my old friend erik. we had a very touristy day which included the pike place market, china town, souvenir shopping, ice cream cones and a ride on the new ferris wheel at the pier.

here i am with two of my “little sisters” elissa and wylie up at crystal mountain, where they spend every winter skiing.

the same day i flew back from seattle, leonora and dan arrived from boston. (left) dan, leo and their friend andy, starving, waiting for burritos. (right) lovely handmade gifts from leo and dan.

while leo and dan were still visiting, mathew, the cats and i took off for tahoe with my parents. the 4th of july is CRAZY on our street so it’s always good to get the cats away from loud, booming, unpredictable explosions. but they HATE the drive.

i bought them “thundershirts” to help calm them down. supposedly the constant pressure is soothing to animals (and humans), sort of like a mini straight jacket. it helped but they still hated the drive. (above right) bella crying, arwen cowering on the floor. 🙁

ah, the rock cabin. like a giant cat tree. here they are relaxing on the spiral staircase.

mathew and arwen outside.

leaving day, the thundershirts are back on. and for anyone who thinks my cats are fat. the thundershirts prove it’s all FUR! 🙂

home after the long drive. snacks for humans and cats.

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in july we met up with our friends midori and andy and their son adrian. all three of them celebrate july birthdays. we had an ethiopian feast in oakland.

what are those?? ninja cookies! (and some brownies.)

in august mathew and his sensei khim celebrated passing their belt tests. khim is now a 5th degree black belt and mathew is 3rd degree. they had a party. i made ninja cookies. 🙂

morning glories in the back yard. and the most amazing fuji apples from our little tree. mark called them “rock star apples.”

an evening at terrapin crossroads in san rafael with mathew, mark and mike, visiting from austria. good food, live music and grateful dead memorabilia on the walls.

and what is THIS?

in august we went ziplining in the sonoma redwoods with our friends bob and irene. that’s mathew above.

that’s me! the location was beautiful and the ziplining was really fun.

in october misha and aja visited. here we are having an impromptu picnic in the backyard.

misha and aja were visiting because aja had a work event in san francisco and mathew and i got to go too! here are the brothers in a photo booth at the autodesk gallery, where the event took place. i love this photo. 🙂

a feature of the photo booth was being able to add filters and characters.

here we all are. but aja and i got distorted a bit being so close to the camera. that’s not how we really look!

and it wouldn’t be a “life” blog post without extra cat cuteness! they look like they’re taking a nap but in reality bella (on the right) was sleeping and arwen decided to join her. i’m not sure if arwen just wants to be with her sister or wants to steal the cat bed. a few minutes after this photo was taken, bella had left the bed to arwen who seemed quite happy to curl up in it alone.

bella enjoying my new knitting bag that i got at aja’s sustainability book launch party.

i just realized i still have lots more “life” photos to share but this post has gotten way too long. look for “life” part 2 coming soon! xoxo

planer vs heat gun

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Sometimes Bella likes to lie half hanging off shelves. No problem with heights, I guess!

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I did some more wiring. The garage was on the same circuit as much of the downstairs unit. And with all my fancy power tools… the breaker would trip. I added four circuits. Two for the garage, and two for our upstairs kitchen (which was also on the same circuit!) But it meant taking off more ceiling, and lots of conduit bending and pulling wire.

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Stringing the wire through the conduit took much longer than I thought it would. As usual, what I thought was a one day project was really a four day project.

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And now that the girls are three — they can go into the garage. Here’s Bella inspecting the conduit bender.

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Here’s Bella doing her best impression of an otter. Her hairy belly makes here look really big. heh. And Arwen taking a nap on her favorite blanket.

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Mole, Arwen, and knitting. Cozy! Arwen is on my lap as I write this. She has a unique squeaky rattling loud purrr…

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The wood that was the laundry room siding was thickly covered in flaking paint. Before I put the wood on the soffit, we stripped it with a heat gun, and it took many hours. I decided to try another (faster) method for the rest of the wood: a planer. For the first pass, I hooked the dust collection up to a HEPA vacuum to try to catch the (probably leaded) paint dust I created.

The process generated two full garbage bags of paint chips, and wore through a set of planer blades (paint is quite abrasive and I hit a few nails.) But I stripped about 300 linear feet of wood (both sides) in one day. Of course, this method only works on flat boards, but the heat gun takes about 10-20 min per foot per side.

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Here’s a picture of the pile of wood part way through planing. Some of the old wood is really beautiful tight grained wood. There are some rotten bits, but I’ll trim them off.

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Here’s another photo of some of the boards after planing. Next step is to rout a decorative edge, and edge the boards so they fit together neatly for the wainscot in the laundry room.

And now for a photo of Bella relaxing in the sun:

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