turtle + mole

happy 2010 everyone! how did turtle + mole celebrate the new year? by making a homemade ravioli dinner, going to bed early and getting up the next morning and working on the stairs! well, maybe just turtle worked on the stairs, mole was probably inside knitting.

mathew happily showing off his giant can of bondo. if you keep buying small cans over and over again, it means you need a larger quantity!

popo told everyone she didn’t want a big birthday party this year and that she wanted everyone to visit individually. i guess when you’re 86 you can tell people what to do and they do it. my aunt laura and uncle mike came over for lunch a couple weekends ago.

and the following night my aunt linda, uncle joel, cousins lynne, jarrett and serena and their sons timothy and benjamin came over for their family birthday celebration. (above) the boys playing with all the noisy, scary christmas toys i “love” so much… so glad christmas is over!

(left) aunt linda and popo. (right) popo and her fancy birthday cake.

the following weekend my parents and uncle gilbert and aunt pauline celebrated popo’s birthday again. my mom made cream puffs for dessert and popo had 3 of them! and she celebrated on her actual birth-day with uncle winston and aunt karen. i stopped taking photos because the blog was becoming all about popo and not about our remodel!

last weekend i found mathew painting the stairs. i quickly suited up and went outside to help with the primer. it was sunny and warm while i was out there. but as we finished the primer, clouds covered the sky and rain threatened…

…but that didn’t stop us from putting on a first coat of color! it’s looking a little smurfy right now. i think the color will improve with more coats. (it should be a medium periwinkle. and for all you non-graphic designers, that’s a blue-ish purple.) just not sure when that will happen since rain is forecast for the next 10 days… but at least this part is done and mathew can get some rest and stop worrying about the stairs rotting with every storm that comes.

we’re using a special outdoor step and patio paint that supposedly isn’t slippery when it rains.

and we added a peephole to the door so that popo can look out when people ring the bell. we had her stand there so we could get the height just right. she is tiny! that hole was drilled at 4 feet 4.5 inches. we’re about to order a new door tomorrow, but when it comes we can drill a new hole and use this same peephole.

hope everyone is having a nice new year!

okay, i’ll admit, this has nothing to do with the house. well, maybe a little bit, at the very end.

my mom’s chan family christmas is always held at my aunt and uncle’s house in hercules. (left) uncle jay, popo, uncle winston, uncle mike. (right) my mom, aunt linda, aunt jackie.

uncle jay and aunt jackie stayed downstairs in popo’s unit on christmas eve and had lunch with my immediate family on christmas morning. unfortunately i forgot to take photos.

(left to right) catching up: najia, tanya, ronny, justin.

(left) me and mathew. mathew actually looks relaxed! (right) cousins playing “apples to apples.” i want that game!

our christmas traditions have been streamlined quite a bit over the years. my immediate family no longer has a gift exchange, so christmas morning we come together, talk and enjoy each other’s company free of gifts and waste. and with my cousins on my mom’s side we have a big white elephant game instead of a pile of presents. some of the gifts made special repeat appearances from last year. the most popular items in the game were movie tickets and chocolate.

aunt laura, popo, aunt jackie, my mom, aunt em (hostess), aunt linda.

my dad and uncles playing along with me. (left to right) my dad, uncle jay, uncle winston, uncle joel.

my cousin larry loves visiting our neighborhood and often would donate his time to help us with the house. he’s recently become quite a chocolate and chocolate cake connoisseur, and although i was intimidated by his high chocolate standards, as a gift i decided to bake him a vegan chocolate cake. to my surprise, he awarded me with his 2009 “perfect” chocolate cake award! (click to read more)

you probably wouldn’t guess it, but it was a small gathering this year. my cousins with little kids alternate attending thanksgiving and christmas so there were no little ones running around. it was a relaxing and rather peaceful day with lots of interesting conversations and laughter. if everyone had attended there would be 19 more people in this photo!

and the day after christmas? mathew was up early and working on those stairs!

hope everyone had a peaceful and relaxing christmas.

have a safe and festive new year’s eve!

turtle + mole wishes everyone a happy and healthy 2010.
see you online,
janeen

…or the day before christmas.

there was a break in the rain and mathew was outside again working on those steps! i joke that it’s “mathew vs. mother nature” and mother nature is winning, but mathew is making good progress despite too-short breaks from the rain.

that night we had our annual bittleston christmas eve gathering. (left to right) jim, reirin, daniel, dan, leonora and mathew. i should have had someone take a photo of me and evamarie.

after dinner, lots of laughs.

(left to right) eva and reirin, leo and dan.

taking a group photo was like a comedy of errors. and all of it secretly captured on dan’s video camera…

my dad’s annual family christmas party was at our place this year, my mom volunteered our house with the incentive that there would be a vegetarian feast! mathew and i have had so much going on this month that we didn’t allow ourselves to think, plan or stress about it until that day. the work started in the morning but we didn’t have time for photos until the sun was setting and guests were arriving. there was shopping, cleaning and cooking to do. and mathew took advantage of another break from the rain to put in a few more hours of work on those stairs.

my brother justin putting up some twinkle lights and having fun with mathew and slow exposure photography.

(left) i’m still prepping upstairs while family is arriving and taking a tour of the house. (right) my sister-in-law najia and my cousin julie (and me in the background!)

my parents cooked and prepped in popo’s downstairs kitchen.

(left to right) steve, najia, warren, alvin, janet, walt and chet.

(left) sisters! (right) sisters! and lots of food… in the end my dad insisted on serving some meat, so they hid that in the corner.

dinner time! (left to right) najia, justin, jason, sherry, janet, walt, chet, popo (popo = grandma. aka: muriel.)

(left to right) darren, steve, alvin, warren, mathew, mathew, kayleigh, landon, deb, lynne.

(left) sherry, kayleigh and landon. kayleigh loved playing on the daybed and with popo’s musical rudolph. but she wouldn’t let you turn it off, so there was constant noise. i’ve repressed it now, i’m sure rudolph was singing that reindeer song over and over and over again. (right) alyssa and deb.

(left) alyssa showing off her portrait drawn by kayleigh. quite a surprising likeness! (right) mom, julie, mathew and linda congregating in the hall.

my aunt janet knitted and crocheted hats and/or scarves for EVERYONE! my family felt the need to pose with our gifts. perhaps this will be my family’s holiday card photo? perhaps not.

(left) the girl cousins on the daybed. (right) the boy cousins in the hall because the girls would not leave the daybed. where is mathew? why isn’t he in this photo?

(left) popo and justin listen as kayleigh gives an impromptu christmas medley concert. (right) a round of applause for kayleigh.

mathew said it was another test run to have 24 people over for a party. the house held up fine and i hope everyone had a good time.

mole enjoying a mellow sunday afternoon. it was a nice christmas party. but turtle never rests, the sander was buzzing on the steps outside…

hope everyone is having a happy and healthy holiday season!

it’s that time of year again. holiday parties, dressing up, shaking hands with strangers, eating finger food (my pet peeve, a bad combo during cold and flu season!) and late nights.

here we are two fridays ago, after attending a dinner party at a “bread museum” at fisherman’s wharf on a very rainy, cold night. we came home with so much sourdough bread (restaurant party favors) we even gave some to the taxi driver.

on saturday we finally hung the rest of popo’s photos in the kitchen. (left) first we laid out the photos on the floor. it was a challenge to arrange them because they were all different sizes. (right) popo sat and watched the entire time, laughing and thoroughly enjoying “the show.”

(left) photos of popo’s 7 kids. (right) photos of those 7 kids’ families.

that night we attended a beautiful piano and cello recital in berkeley, met up with friends and had a late dinner.

on sunday i started sewing a cover and pillows for popo’s new daybed. mathew really liked the sketches i made to help decide the color scheme.

we finally got a break from the rain and mathew was outside sanding, scraping and paint stripping the stairs again.

this is how the daybed came out. i made a fitted, quilted, pink cover for the twin mattress, 4 pink cushions, 4 green pillows and 2 fancy, floral, accent pillows. that was my first experience with cord piping. it went well!

this is how popo’s living room is looking after she put out all her christmas “decorations.” all of these toys sing and dance and i can’t spend too much time with them when they are on. that christmas tree on the table (with the santa hat) is motion sensing, so you think you’re walking into a quiet room then suddenly the tree comes to life singing and talking to you, LOUDLY. somehow it has a moving face and freaks me out every time. there are also other singing things in the kitchen and in the hall.

ho! ho! ho! scary christmas?

Janeen decided to make curtains for a friend of hers. They went out and bought hundreds of dollars worth of fabric and Janeen had the sewing machine running all weekend, dawn to dusk. [that is not true! since when do i even get up at dawn? -mole] ok, noon to night…

Meanwhile, I went shopping… well, I got a Zephyr hood for the kitchen. The old fan was the fan that came with the house. I cleaned it and reinstalled it last year, but it had two problems: Most annoying is that it had no damper, so we basically had an open hole in our kitchen ceiling letting all the heat out; and it made a racket. I was planning to get a fan with more power, but then this one was on sale at half price. Couldn’t resist saving $200. So, finally we have a working hood in our kitchen that doesn’t sound like a ‘plane taking off.

I am a little disappointed in the lower than expected power (the spec sheet and the store said it was 400cfm, but it feels more like 200) and the cheap feeling controls, but it works, and the lights and damper are great. The photo above left is after I’d taken out the old fan. Janeen says it makes our kitchen look like a “Real Kitchen” (above right). To test it out, I made a really spicy Indian inspired lentil dish for dinner.

Oh, and I started working on the front steps. Bad timing, really, because rain is coming. I managed to strip the loose paint on most of the steps, but now they have no paint on them and it’s going to rain for a couple of weeks straight. Oops. Hope it doesn’t ruin the wood… Janeen says the photos look like I fell asleep on the steps.

some of you have been asking what we’ve been doing and where the posts have gone… now that popo has moved in the focus has changed slightly.

we’ve spent a lot of time finishing popo’s space, hanging photos and making adjustments for her. mathew created built in shelves for her dozens of photo albums in the living room.

here mathew is hanging her very large chinese painting.

last weekend we got to do something we hadn’t done in a long time, we continued working on our unit upstairs.

mathew climbed into the crawl space to check on wiring.

our living room upstairs had one electrical outlet. one! so mathew cut some holes in the baseboard. (left) yes, those are christmas cards. no, they are not from this year. i never took them down from last year…

and together we worked on the wiring and put in 2 new outlets and rewired the old one. hopefully soon we’ll work on adding outlets on the other side of the room. this will involve cutting a hole in the wall so mathew can climb through. previously we had access to that side before the bathroom walls were done so we were able to insulate that side of the house but didn’t have time for the electrical work.

and we finally finished insulating this one side of the living room. we cut fiberglass insulation down in the garage, carried it upstairs in a big bag and i passed it to mathew through the opening. it was a tiring, strenuous, dirty process. in some places mathew was dangling over the rafters sliding insulation under parts of the living room floor. at some point i couldn’t even see him because he was lost in some tiny crawl spaces. (right) he was extremely happy when he was done! he had bruises and scrapes all over his body but was ready for dinner and a good night’s sleep.

is it winter yet? the temperature has really dropped. hope everyone is staying warm and well.

now that my grandmother has moved in things have relaxed quite a bit.

here we are celebrating my mom and mathew’s belated birthdays.

(left) justin and najia. (right) me and popo.

(left) popo, mathew, me and friends, andy and midori, who have spent time with popo in the past. (right) my immediate family + popo.

this is what mathew and i look like relaxed…

a few days later i got on a train, fell asleep and woke up in a different state…

…to snow! somewhere in oregon…

it takes 22 hours to get from emeryville to seattle. if you want to truly relax, take a long train trip somewhere. there’s no where to go and nothing to do but read, knit, listen to music, watch movies and sleep. ahhh. it’s a beautiful way to just slow down. i had a nice lunch in the dining car and met people from all over the country. (left) i sat outside during a stop in portland. this is the guitar playing guy i met from new york.

here are i am with my “sisters” in seattle. we watched “new moon” on opening day. (left to right) laura, me, elissa and wylie.

elissa had a group art show opening. i was so glad i could attend. and i bought 2 pieces! (right) elissa and her mom, chris.

(left) this is the view from my bedroom. (right) on my last night the family cooked an amazing early thanksgiving, going-away dinner.

(left) back on the train. i’ve done sleeper car trains in scotland and didn’t enjoy it. these are coach seats and i found it much easier to sleep. plus you get to meet all kinds of nice people. the seats recline and there’s tons of leg room, similar to business class on a plane. (right) a bridge. in oregon?

i’m excited to plan my next train trip. i want to visit my “other family” in seattle again in the spring. and i’d like to travel by train to chicago with mathew.

my family’s thanksgiving celebration in sacramento. if everyone had shown up it would have been 51 people, but that night we had 43? crowded but festive.

hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving!

Now that Popo has moved in, we have slowed down a lot. It’s been over two years of working nonstop on the house. The photo shows a few of the checklists we made — with everything checked off. Feels a bit like I am climbing out of a hole that I’ve dug for myself! Hmm. Mole references…

Over the past couple of weeks, we finished up the back door and put it back on. The laundry room and ‘tear-off’ room leak a lot of cold air, so the kitchen had been rather drafty. The hardware for the original door was some of the nicest decorative brass on all the doors (below left). This is the original brass hardware for the back door after Janeen and I polished it up and removed all the old paint.

The door was stripped, carefully sanded, stained with “Early American” oil based stain and then two coats of integrally colored polyurethane “Natural Cherry”. I sanded the polyurethane between coats with a very fine grit (220) sand paper to help the polyurethane adhere better, and also remove any dust or roughness that got into the first coat of urethane. The doors all have an aged but cared-for look to them now, and the color polyurethane helps to unify the color of the door, filling, and any blemishes.

Above right, you can see the door installed in the background.

I also made some built-in shelves for the living room. In the space where there used to be a door between the living room and the bedroom, we now have built-in shelves for photo albums. I found pieces of wood for the shelves in the rather extensive pile of wood I’ve built up. Also the trim that holds them up is recycled:

To make the front edge of the trim look finished and more decorative, I cut off and bevelled the trim, and added a piece of the same trim to return it to the face of the wall. Below right is a matching pair (left and right side).

Above are the shelves as they are being installed. I had a bit of a dilemma: when in an old house where the floors, ceiling, doors (everything) slopes at various angles, do you install shelves so they slope the same as the floor? the tops of the doors? the ceiling? or ignore all that, and make them horizontal? I decided to make them slope the same as the top of the old doorway, so the shelves and the trim will at least both have the same slope…

While Janeen was out of town (she went to visit her “sisters” up in Seattle), I put insulation and gyp board on the ceiling of what used to be a bit of a scary little room in the garage. The photo below left shows it as it was a couple of years ago. Below right is with the gyp board on the ceiling, all the piping and wiring are now hidden.

The kitchen is quite moved in. Popo is doing her ‘homework’ (as she calls it). In the background you can see the outdoor steps in the back yard that go up to our unit and still need much work…

it was a stressful, tiring, crazy weekend…

(left) mathew doing some last minute work on the kitchen (right) while my parents, older brother jason and uncle winston helped move boxes from my grandmother’s house to our house. we tried to get others to help but because it was halloween, no one else was able to…

(left) as the moving continued throughout the day (right) mathew worked his way around the kitchen finishing things up.

(left) they put in a long hard day but you wouldn’t know it from their smiles. i think because they were ready to go home! they left before it got dark and made it home in time for trick-or-treaters. (right) mathew and i worked that night. mathew is very proud of this cable/telephone junction box he created and organized in the garage.

(left) the butcher block my mom refinished, how nice it looks in place. (right) mathew scrubbed the kitchen floor until it was reflective.

on sunday mathew and i joined my parents for another day of moving. (left) here is a view from my grandmother’s old apartment. (right) that night we went back to work finishing projects. here is my grandmother’s bathroom with a new mirror above the sink and a medicine cabinet to the right. we worked as late was we needed to then had dinner at midnight.

monday was another day of moving. my parents helped move more stuff over and professional movers brought the large furniture. it was a challenge trying to fit furniture from a 2 bedroom apartment into a 1 bedroom apartment, especially after all the boxes had been moved in! i did not take photos of any of the mess or chaos. even my office was completely filled and climbing was required to find things. (above) my auntie em, my grandmother and my mom unpacking in the kitchen. for anyone who questioned the bright pink we painted the bedroom, notice what color my grandmother is wearing…

i was worried because my grandmother’s first night was also the night of the annual day of the dead (dia de los muertos) parade. (left) it consists of hundreds (thousands?) of people dressed as dead people holding candles, dancing, music and drumming till after 11pm. it’s a celebration of those we have lost and our street becomes completely filled with adults and children in costumes. everyone ends up in the park one block away, where there are altars and photos remembering the dead. we have a great view from our front steps. we wandered around a little bit but it was so crowded. this was the first year where we weren’t working during the parade, we enjoyed being able to sit outside on such a warm night and take it all in. (right) our neighbor created this dead light sculpture, a woman in costume poses beside it.

“Don’t just cry mournfully over the individuals, dreams and influences that have helped make you what you are. Dance for them; sing for them; honor them; leap into the air and kiss the sky for them.”

(left) during a really great musical portion of the parade i went inside to check on the noise level. my grandmother was talking on the phone, sharing her new phone number with relatives. she had no idea anything was happening outside. those new windows were expensive, but worth it! (right) my auntie em unpacked and organized all day and continued that night. we are so thankful that she could stay for a few days to help unpack and ease the transition for my grandmother.

on day 2 my parents were back to move more of my grandmother’s things and my uncle gilbert stopped by for a visit. i expect to enjoy many more family visits in this new kitchen.

oh, i almost forgot to explain the title: turtle + mole + mole. my grandmother, like me, doesn’t enjoy the sun either, but she is more extreme, she likes curtains closed during the day and rarely leaves the house. but she loves visitors so let us know if you’d like to drop by, we’d love to see you!