Author: janeen

the money pit

many years ago when we first started shopping for a house, a co-worker of mathew’s recommended we see the movie, “the money pit,” staring tom hanks and shelley long. i think she meant it as a cautionary tale. of course we never saw it. and now i keep thinking about that movie…

plumbingaccessories

(above, left.) we’ve got major plumbing drama this week. on saturday we had plumbers tear up our sidewalk, dig down to our sewer line and repair the broken pipe and connection, only to return today to test it with high pressure water and find that the clay pipe is broken further up the line… this means we need to tear up the driveway concrete leading all the way up to the house and replace all the clay pipe with cast iron. $$$$. the upside: we shouldn’t have to replace the sewer line again.

(above, right.) check me out in my super-cool accessories! respirator, goggles and ear protection: makes me feel like a star wars character. this weekend as mathew got closer to completing the upstairs bathroom plumbing, i did more scraping, sanding, moulding removal and paint stripping. have you ever tried sanding a ceiling? hard work!

plaster

and i had my first try at plaster (with lots of help from mathew.) paint is coming soon! exciting. guess that means i should finally decide on a color.

mathew

mathew’s work hasn’t been too photogenic, but here’s a nice shot of him removing superfluous pipe outside.

progress?

from last weekend: doesn’t it seem like the upstairs keeps getting more destroyed?

bathroom

mathew working on the upstairs bathroom plumbing.

construction zone

mathew’s “workshop” outside of the bathroom.

sparks

crazy sparks fly as pipe is cut.

stripping paint

i’ve been prepping the upstairs bedroom for plaster and paint. i removed the picture rail moulding. and stripping the paint on the window sill is quite satisfying! i’ve been using a heat gun, scrapers and a respirator mask.

hopefully this weekend we can make more progress…

dia de los muertos

today is the day of the dead, a mexican holiday to honor and celebrate the deceased. there is an annual procession that walks down 24th and 25th streets and this year for some reason it came down our street. we watched from our steps as hundreds of people walked past our house carrying candles, wearing costumes, dancing, chanting and playing drums. there were bands, children, bicycles, strollers and even a float. there are altars set up at garfield park where people are encouraged to add flowers and photos of loved ones who have died.

day of the dead
here is the altar i put together to celebrate friends and family we have lost.

from left to right: adam and gisela bittleston – mathew’s grandparents; paul chisholm – a childhood friend of mathew; phillis and jim skellam – mathew’s grandparents; rick skellam – mathew’s uncle; winfred jang – janeen’s grandfather; ‘gung-gung’ andy chan – janeen’s grandfather; debbie kim – a high school friend of janeen; wil mckissock – a high school friend of janeen and mathew; yuen c.m. jang – janeen’s ‘bau-po’ great aunt, and the reason janeen’s father was able to move to the united states as a child; david kessler – a high school friend of janeen and mathew; greg gize – a childhood friend of janeen.

scraping, sanding, painting and pizza

scrapingscraping

i spent the morning scraping adhesive off plaster walls with a heat gun. with my respirator mask on, i could imagine it smelled like warm chocolate frosting…

bathroomoveralls

mathew finished his bathroom framing. later this evening he sanded and painted the new siding outside. (above right) mathew in his new birthday overalls! [notice the shiny clean kitchen floor? i scrubbed it last night. – mathew]

pizzapizza

for dinner we made pizza and tested the oven with an oven thermometer. as i suspected, the oven has no temperature control (i baked a lasagna and a casserole last week…) if you set it at 400 degrees it will preheat for 10 minutes and keep getting hotter. after baking the first pizza for 5 minutes the oven was 525. after 5 minutes of baking the second pizza it was up to 575! how hot could it get? so, this oven isn’t great for cookies but it’s excellent for super-thin crust pizza! too bad you can’t smell these… mmm.

birthday weekend

lemon treelemon tree

early this morning i found mathew up in the lemon tree (with the spiders) pruning and harvesting. (left photo: if you look closely you can see mathew playing “where’s waldo?”)

lemons!

lemons for our neighbors! this box was completely gone by the time we came home in the afternoon.

hats

we had a birthday celebration for my mom and mathew at my grandmother’s place. my mom and younger brother, justin looked so cute in their beige baseball caps. like mother, like son.

refrigerator

after lunch (at a vegan chinese restaurant) we celebrated with gifts, pie and cheese cake, then came home to move in our new refrigerator (a gift from my parents!)

jasonjason

my family stuck around for a few hours to help with the house. jason, my older brother, got busy taking down the four ugly closet doors in the bedroom. then he moved on to helping bring the “hall closet” back to it’s original form as a built-in cabinet in the foyer.

floor

and i had the satisfaction of exposing the final bit of red floor in the living room. i wouldn’t let anyone help me finish it. (and you can’t really tell, but i am wearing my new (ebay) eeyore work overalls! embroidered with dragonflies…)

rainy wednesday

as if our day jobs weren’t keeping us busy enough, mathew also has woodworking to do for karate. his dojo is hosting the annual nationals tournament and they need poles to hold the region banners. the tournament is this weekend! he’s also been training to compete in it.

workshop

he’s here sanding this rainy morning instead of at his day job. but the upside? he LOVES his new workshop.

rain

rain!

bathroom

and he sealed up the openings he made over the weekend. because it’s getting COLD.

our wedding anniversary is this saturday and most likely mathew will be at the tournament all day. hard to believe we got married this weekend 5 years ago. the last 5 years have been great, time has flown by, i’m just wondering why we’ve had such a cold and rainy october. what happened to our san francisco summer?

janeen

one more thing: mathew wanted to show a little glimpse into my life. the little stool that sits by my chair holds my new tape measure, my new camera (thanks justin!) and its cables, etc.

urban ore

we finally got to visit urban ore in berkeley and it was pretty amazing. and overwhelming. our plan was to go take a look around to see what we could get there, before buying new. if you have time and want to save stuff from landfill, you can sell your old stuff or buy something discounted here. they have everything. we didn’t try selling old things yet (though we are building up a collection).

toiletstubs

so many toilets. we’ll be back for one eventually. a field of tubs. even fancy ones with claw feet.

sinkssink

sinks that reminded me of easter eggs. and the one sink we almost bought. but in the end realized it wasn’t really us.

windowswindows

windows, windows and more windows!

doorsfancy door

doors! and fancy doors.

fancy doorknobsdoorknobs

glass victorian doorknobs that i love (we might need some more of those) and really old antique ones.

espresso machinebuilt-in cabinet

even an industrial espresso machine that mathew had to get a closer look at. and an original built-in cabinet (hiding behind something) that we might go back for. (i’m crazy about built-ins.)

lampsvanities

funky old lamps. cool antique vanities. they even sell clothing, books, records, golf clubs… it’s amazing how much people throw “away.”

vanity sinkbreads of india

after all that we bought a plain white kohler sink and a small, glass, pendant lampshade. as we were leaving i found this vanity sink (above, left) i think i have to have (last night i checked the measurements and it’s exactly the size we need downstairs.) we stopped to have dinner at breads of india.

san francisco

returning to our city, with the smallest sliver of a moon i’ve ever seen (do you see it to the left?) next stop: lowe’s, where they seemed to be out of everything we wanted… where the employees are nice, but know nothing…