Author: janeen

last week

we were in berkeley last saturday and sunday, spending time with mathew’s family and attending and celebrating leonora’s graduation from berkeley.

bittlestons

bottom row: evamarie, leonora, elijah. middle row: anne, gail, reirin. top row: turtle, mole, daniel, mia, misha, matt, jim, sue.

miasue

contrary to what these photos show, we do not put our house guests to work! (left) mia putting weeds in the compost bin. (right) sue sweeping the back porch and steps.

mathewsue

(left) mathew transplanting jasmine and carnea after a day at work. (right) sue cleaning the upstairs refrigerator.

during the last week we’ve had eva, misha, mia and sue staying with us. we ran a little low on bedding but everyone had their own space during their stay. and everyone took showers in the new bathroom upstairs. it got rave reviews.

blog post

lightingbathroom

mathew’s family is in town again so there was another reason to get the upstairs bathroom functioning. i tried out the shower yesterday and it was awesome!

flor samplesflor

my flor samples arrived! i’m really excited about this product and company.

florflor

it’s made from recycled carpet, they even take back your carpet when you’re done. but the thing i like the most about it is they don’t use toxic adhesives so i won’t get sick from the off-gassing.

evaeva

mathew’s siblings started arriving on thursday. here is eva. even though we’re having a heat-wave, she couldn’t resist the urge to get outside and start gardening. she and mia (not pictured) weeded a few of the garden patches in the backyard. eva has plans to plant vegetables!

official progress

because of a mother’s day celebration on saturday we had less time to work on the house. but we still made some pretty good progress.

paintingpainting

how many weekends in a row have i been painting?

workshopbaseboards

down in the workshop: mathew in his “another pacifist under surveillance” shirt. and baseboards made from the same cedar as the bathroom floor.

doordoor

the doors get another coat. when they are wet, they are extremely reflective!

baseboards

baseboards get installed. mathew was chanting: “fit, cut, file. fit, cut, file.”

vanityvanity

the vanity makes an appearance upstairs. i helped to hang it on the wall.

laddervanity

mathew finally captures my goofy ladder moving technique. how else are you supposed to move something that big and heavy?? (it’s adjustable and expandable and weighs 60+ pounds.) right: mathew cutting a hole in the temporary plywood vanity counter.

vanitybathroom

getting there…

door drama

there’s been a lot of door drama this week.

door1_5908.jpgdoor

we bought some polyurethane/stain for the new door (on the left) that was supposed to match the old bedroom door, a deep cherry wood color. mathew prepped the new door and sanded the old door (on the right) because it had dents and scratches (kids writing, etc.) after he was done with the second coat the new door was very splotchy and the stain wasn’t quite the right shade.

doordoor

so he bought a new shade and sanded the doors (again) and coated them (again.) because the doors are made from different woods the color is coming out differently. i don’t think they’re quite right yet (by mathew’s standards) and i believe he is sanding and coating them (again!) tonight…

very turtley

there was a lot of finishing and painting this last weekend. and don’t let the photos of mostly-mathew fool you! my parents were also here again, helping us paint. (walls with lots of trim take a long time!) we had some interesting conversations while we worked, each of us in different rooms upstairs, so we could hear each other but we couldn’t always see each other.

medicine cabinetdoor

medicine cabinet refinishing. custom-sizing the new bathroom door.

floordumpie

sanding bathroom floor. dumpie makes a new friend.

cutting boardfloor

refinishing a cutting board counter. bathroom floor with polyurethane.

painting(placeholder: mathew wants to take a photo of my goofy ladder-moving technique. it’s making me stronger.)

doorfridge

re-stained bedroom door. the fridge gets a new home. (but we may get a new one, this one is ancient.)

paint

and mathew feels like he didn’t get anything done this weekend…

a long day

sunday morning started with more paint prep: sanding, scraping and cleaning.

laddersanding

laddersanding

mathew set the ladder up on the stairs, which seemed scary at first but worked quite well.

tsppainting

after sanding the walls and trim we cleaned with TSP to take off any grease so the paint will adhere better, then we rinsed and applied a base coat of primer.

with all this scrubbing and painting i couldn’t help but think about the movie, karate kid. mr miyagi, i’m ready for my karate lesson! wax on, wax off.

dumpieyellow

where’s dumpie?? at one point i couldn’t find dumpie! it’s a game i play with my brother, justin. in almost every post, if you look closely at the photos, you’ll find dumpie in at least one photo (you could go blind playing.) but on sunday dumpie went missing and it was a real game of “where’s dumpie” for me. eventually i found him in the kitchen.

paintingclock

we painted until 11 pm, cleaned the brushes and rollers, then went downstairs to have dinner.

family day

saturday was our family visit with my grandmother and a belated birthday celebration for my older brother, jason, my dad and me.

showerjustin

my younger brother, justin and his wife, najia arrived early and got to watch mathew install the shower fixtures. justin got in to try it out. mathew told him to turn the top lever but he didn’t fall for it.

colorsnajia and justin

(left) showing the different trim color choices used throughout the years. (right) najia and justin laughing at something mathew is doing.

popomom and popo

(left) my grandmother. (right) mom and grandmother.

najia, dad and justinsiblings

(left) najia, dad, justin. (right) jason, mole, justin.

paintingsanding

while my grandmother was here she kept complaining about how long the remodel was taking, complaining that she wouldn’t get to move in till september, complaining that it was going to be years before she could move in. she wanted everyone to leave so we could get back to work. i don’t know about you, but i’m not motivated by complaints! but when everyone left we did get back to work.

april shower

okay, so i’ve probably gone a bit overboard with the photos, but it’s exciting to have the shower finally go up!

showershower

drilling holes in the tile to attach the shower walls.

mechanicsshower

the inner workings of our kohler shower. supposedly it’s got a special temperature gauge that never allows you to be scalded.

showershower

adjustments.

leverageshower

more adjustments. because we altered the angles a bit, the nearest wall had to be adjusted quite a few times to make sure the door magnet could securely attach. (left) mathew puts his foot against the opposite wall to get enough pressure to drive in the screw without destroying the head. (right)…almost done.

all work and no play…

the weekend went by too quickly.

bedroombathroom floor

the bedroom is now ready for us to move in but that won’t happen until the bathroom at least has a toilet. i finished painting final bedroom trim while mathew put moisture barrier paper over the sub-floor.

floorfloor

next he started cutting cedar flooring to create the border for the bathroom floor. since it’s such a small room, we decided a single border was enough.

taxestaxes

sunday was tax day. doesn’t mathew look happy? we’ve never put off doing our taxes before… mathew’s freelance business is so lucrative, that even though we pay estimated taxes during the year, we still owe the equivalent of 2 years of our old rent! this year will be different, mathew just accepted a position with arup, an engineering company he’s always wanted to work for.

floorfloor

after taxes were done it was back to work upstairs. in the left photo above, you can see him using ‘daniel’ (to keep with naming tools after the people we’ve borrowed them from). it puts special serrated nails into the side of the tongue-and-groove board. not many people use this old mechanical version any more; the more modern version is air-powered and shoots staples instead.

sandingrouting

while mathew finished installing the floor i sanded the dining area. i got about half of it done. in the photo above right he’s routing a groove into the bottom of the board to fit over the tongue on the border boards. the router is attached to the vacuum to catch the sawdust– sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

floorfloor

floorfloor

pretty.

singin’ in the bathroom

mathew has been in new york this week visiting his brother and hanging with the guys at another one of those crazy destination bachelor parties. he made sure to leave me with enough house projects to keep me busy. (as if i need more projects to keep me busy..!)

flowerscleaning

(left) on friday genanne brought me early birthday flowers! tulips and daffodils are some of my favorites and they opened to greet me saturday morning. (right) first i vacuumed the dining area which we had been using as a workshop.

trimpainting

then i gave all of the trim in the bedroom a second coat of paint. i moved onto the bathroom trim and wainscoting giving them a coat of primer. we can’t use tape on the unfinished plaster walls so i just have to be super careful when i paint. i think i spent 8 hours painting yesterday!

bathroomwainscoting

today i went back up to put a 3rd coat on some bedroom baseboards (although i forgot to sand the 2nd coat! …hope that’s not a problem.) i put a coat of white satin on the trim and wainscoting in the bathroom and i remembered to sand this time. and i’ve also discovered that this bathroom has really excellent acoustics for singing (not that i’m worth listening to..!)

we’re not sure if we will paint or polyurethane the plaster walls in the bathroom. i want yellow paint but mathew has gotten very attached to his plaster walls and wants to keep them exposed…