Category: kittens

new orleans

last month mathew and i went to new orleans! mathew was competing in a national karate tournament and i tagged along because i’d never been there before and i’d heard there was good music and good food. 🙂

(left) here we are a little nervous before the tournament. (right) i was “volunteered” to help with the competition even though i knew nothing about score keeping! it turned out fine, i learned a lot, i think i even had fun!

mathew competing in kata.

we bought a new camera before our trip. i decided to get a canon since everyone seems to love them but i was extremely disappointed as almost every single photo was blurry! at first i thought it was “user error” but the camera turns out to have been defective. it’s at the manufacturer getting repaired or replaced. honestly, after all that, i’d rather get a completely different camera model and/or brand. oh well, maybe we’ll resell it.

this photo, of mathew competing in kumite, was taken by someone else’s big fancy canon.

that night there was a “banquet.” here is mathew with some of his friends/teammates: hans, john and christina. they look pretty tough, don’t they? christina has consistently been one of the top competitors in the nation for several years.

a blurry group photo of mathew’s team. notice every single person is wearing at least one medal? they are an impressive bunch.

(right) how did we celebrate? over 20 of us went for a walk in the french quarter that night. more than half of the group were kids and we didn’t lose anyone! (right) of course we ended up at cafe du monde for beignets. here mathew is standing on a table (ack) giving a karate demo. just kidding.

after the tournament most people flew home. mathew and i moved to a hotel in the french quarter to spend a few days exploring the area. here is our fancy jr. suite. i think it looks much fancier in the photos, but it was a nice, quiet room in a convenient location.

cafe du monde? again!? this time without 20 other people.

and just as the weather dropped to unusually cold temps, we went on a swamp tour.

…we only saw a few alligators. (they hibernate when it gets cold.)

…but it was a beautiful and scenic tour. here’s a stereotypical swamp photo, complete with spanish moss.

a very cool new orleans boy band: the drunkin’ catfish ramblers.

the band was playing across the street from the most photographed building in the french quarter.

the next day we walked to the garden district, had an amazing brunch at Surrey’s and looked at some beautiful, big, old houses.

that night we waited in a really long line at Preservation Hall.

this tiny concert was one of the highlights of our trip. the first song they played was “bourbon street parade,” one of mathew’s favorites.

it’s always nice to come home to our furry children. here’s bella playing in her paper cave.

i hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving. i can’t believe it’s almost december!

sep-tober life

september and october have been busy months!

last month we had a family “stay-cation” and got to play tourists in san francisco. here are my brothers at Alcatraz, justin on the left, jason on the right. that photo is blurry because my camera was dying. (no worries, i’ve since gotten a new one.)

it was a beautiful, clear day but a bit windy and cold. mole left, turtle right.

(left) my mom hiding from the wind! (right) at pier 39 after visiting the Aquarium of the Bay.

(left) look what we found! turtle and mole! (right) and a street vendor selling all kinds of evil deliciousness: pretzels, churros, corndogs and soda. there was also cotton candy.

on day two we visited the California Academy of Sciences. i think everyone’s favorite part was the rainforest. i didn’t get an good photos of them, but the butterflies in the rainforest made me very happy!

(above) my brothers and parents touching starfish and sea urchins. i even got to touch a sea cucumber!

downstairs at the academy of sciences, the aquarium is so huge, that we didn’t even see all of it because we were starving and had to stop for lunch!

(left) there were baby ostriches outside! (right) and stuffed? giraffes inside. i love giraffes. 🙂

a cool photo of my family climbing stairs to see the rooftop.

day three we had a little detour. with all my “amazing” planning, i planned for us to visit MOMA on a day it was closed! so we went to the apple store, then got onto a cable car headed for fisherman’s wharf.

we spent quite a lot of time in the Musée Mécanique, an antique penny arcade. (left) me and jason and a fun-house mirror. (right) mathew finally got to see a “whac-a-mole” game i’d told him about from my childhood.

my brothers playing games.

(left) mathew and i listened to some ragtime from a player piano. (right) i posed for a publicity shot in front of a submarine. 😉

justin found “grow a girlfriend”! 🙂

we rode the cable car back after dinner in fisherman’s wharf. and because it was so crowded justin and i volunteered to stand, hanging on to the outside of the cable car. that was FUN.

(left) jason’s cats also came for the stay-cation. here is my dad holding smokey. (right) jason and my dad walking through the palace of fine arts.

day four: we had a lot of brainy fun at the exploratorium! because my camera was acting up again, i only took photos with the chairs…

and we all agreed to extend our stay-cation by one more day so we could visit MOMA. (left) me and justin in front of a mark rothko. (right) my dad given a surprise blue bottle cappucino in front of the giant metal spider in the rooftop cafe/garden at MOMA.

thank you to my parents for a fun and low-key family stay-cation. i hope everyone had a good time!

and we saved $$$ by purchasing CityPass tickets to all the attractions. i highly recommend this option if you have out of town guests or just want to explore city attractions. it also includes a week of free muni and cable car rides.

on october 2nd arwen and bella turned TWO. they didn’t get a birthday party, but i made them a playhouse to celebrate.

they like going inside, chewing on the roof and knocking the whole thing over. they did fight over it in the beginning but they’re sharing it now. i’ve since added an escape route at the top so no one gets trapped inside.

october 20th was our wedding anniversary. we had brunch at Greens and reminisced about our wedding reception there TEN years ago.

and of course we had to walk up to the fort mason park and visit the spot where we said our vows.

it was a beautiful sunny day to be out.

and today, october 24th, is my mom’s birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! i love you. xoxo

vote for me!

this post has absolutely nothing to do with the house. it is a shameless plug to try to win a design contest i was invited to enter. the contest is being held by psprint.com, a printer i often use for work. voting started yesterday so i’m a bit behind in my campaign for votes…

i’ve entered my “patchwork christmas tree” (below) in the card design category and my “christmas is over” (even further below) in the humor card category. visitors to the site are allowed one vote per day, per category until september 19th. i don’t expect you to log in and vote every single day till then, but if you really wanted to, i’m sure that would increase my chances of winning! 🙂

to vote, just click on the photo above or click here for “patchwork christmas tree.”

and to place a second vote, click the photo above or click here for “christmas is over.”

prizes include amazon gift cards ($100-1000) and free printing of the winning cards. mathew thinks i have a good chance of winning, but he’s always been a little biased. but if i do win, there’s a good chance you’ll receive a card this christmas! 😉 so go crazy and vote for them every day till september 19th! THANKS!

and just to add some “substance” to this blog post, here are some photos of arwen and bella, helping mathew with some framing. (no, we don’t usually allow them to sit on the table!)

they really do like to “help” with projects around the house. they especially like making the bed, plumbing and changing the toilet paper…

Four Windows In

 

For a while, we were giving the cats oatmeal to help them with fur balls. Got to watch the quantity, though, and I get jumped on when I eat my breakfast.

My two breakfast buddies.

Last week, mole’s ‘little sister’ came to visit for a few days. The visit coincided with getting a new bike. And the roses are out.

We spent quite a few weekends working on the old siding. Not only was it suffering from lack of maintenance, it got quite split up when we pulled it off. First I used waterproof ‘Titebond III’ glue and clamped the split boards back together. After a day to set, I sanded them all, to remove all loose paint, and smooth out a lot of the roughness. It took quite a while to get down to solid material. There’s going to be a lot of bondo on this wall.

Janeen primed both sides, with two coats on the backs. Slowly, slowly, siding is starting to climb up the back of the laundry room again.

Once we got to about half way up the wall, I built some temporary scaffolding out of old pieces of wood. I don’t like working up a ladder. Here’s Mole holding the second window in place. She’s standing on the temporary scaffolding.

The instructions for putting in windows are very methodical. You level the window on shims, then carefully measure both diagonals. Surprisingly (for me), the windows are always out of square and need a lot of shimming and pushing around to get them square. Shipping must really bang them about. Each window takes a while. But here’s a view from the inside looking out, with three windows in.

Arwen loves the laundry room. Partly because there’s so much to explore, and partly because that’s the way to go and play outside. When she wants to go through a door, she rubs her front feet on it, over and over.

Here we’ve got all four new windows in, and the siding is up to the underside of the windows. But there’s one more wall to do.

Here we’re tearing out the last wall that needs replacing in the laundry room. This is where the toilet was, so the floor is also quite rotten. Initially, I was trying to save the tile, thinking it would make it faster to get the room done. But I’ve decided to tear it out, because it’s so hard to match, and there are some large areas that didn’t have tile.

The problem with removing the tile, is that it was very thoroughly glued to 1/2″ plywood that was nailed with serrated nails tightly to the sub-floor. When I started pulling up the plywood (really slow going, and hard work), it started pulling up and breaking the rather rotten sub-floor.

So now I had to also replace the subfloor. Here’s a picture with most of the sub-floor along the wall torn out, and the wall completely gone. That plumbing is for the sink that the washer was connected to. That’s coming out too.

Late that night, I managed to get the framing for the wall, and the plywood up. The following day I had my Mum and sister coming to stay.

Not What Normal People Do

We continued working on the Laundry room. I took off all the old siding, and added plywood. I ran out of coil strap (steel straps for shear walls can be bought individually, or in rolls, colloquially referred to as “coil strap.”) So there’s only strap below the window. Need to add some above it.

Once I got it all on, nailed, and cleaned up, we had a kitten inspection. They love this room.

Then I started on the second part: Raising the roof. Because of how this room has been built over the last hundred years (in bits and pieces tacked onto the previous pieces), the roof framing was haphazard. So I added new roof joists. I had to hold the roof up with 2×4’s while I cut the old framing and added in new.

It’s rather tricky figuring out how long to cut them, and what angle all the cuts need to be. When I put them in, because the roof slope was still steeper, they all looked short (above left). Then I put a beam across all of them, and started jacking. Above right you can see a gap forming between the wall and the roof!

Here’s me jacking up the ceiling. Maybe I should have been wearing my hard hat. Above right: When mole saw this gap, she said “this is not what normal people do to their house.” Poor house.

So Mole started working on taking out the old tile and plaster board where the old ‘shower’/toilet was. At first it was really tough going, but then she managed to get most of the wall off in one piece.

We then framed in a new wall to support the lifted up roof. Above right, you can see the gap where the roof has been raised up, and the new wall next to it. This wall is going to be mostly windows. Above left, Mole is looking out of one of the future window openings. I’ve used all the old scraps of plywood I can find to fill them in until the new windows are delivered in about four weeks! In the mean time, it’s looking like there was a fire. 🙁

Here’s Arwen playing in the comforter.

Foundation, Flowers, Travels, Walls!

Quite a bit has happened, both before I went to England and Brooklyn, and after. As usual, I over estimated how much we could do. I wanted to get a new foundation poured, and walls built to support the laundry room before I left. We almost got there…

The old walls around this space had been built in stages. Initially, it was probably open, and just posts supported the floor. Then siding was added. Then concrete. So the siding was buried in concrete, and very rotten. We tore out everything, leaving the laundry room sitting up in the air.

The problem (well, one of them) with being an amateur: Even if I know how to do something, sometimes I forget, because I do it so rarely. When laying out the foundation, I forgot that you are supposed to stretch string out to lay out the sides. That helps get them straight, and is easier than snapping chalk lines. I snapped chalk lines.

As you can see, I’m not doing real foundations, just putting a concrete wall on top of the old concrete slab. It will lift the wood framing up, so that it’s not sitting in water. Hopefully will stop the rot.

We drilled and epoxied threaded rod into the old slab, and made sure they were sticking up high enough so that we can use them to attach the new wall to the concrete.

The formwork took a whole weekend to make.

The next week, in four car trips, I got the concrete, and rented a mixer. Janeen and I poured the new concrete walls in a day. I spent quite a while cleaning up, and trying to smooth and flatten the top.

 

And that’s as far as we got before I took off. I screwed some plywood onto the outside, and hoped for no earthquakes.

When I got to Brooklyn, I pulled out the gifts that Janeen had made: Pocket Bears! She said that Misha and Aja could pick whichever ones they wanted. Misha had a lot of trouble (he wanted them all I think.)

Arwen and Bella glamor shot!

Spring is really here. The flowers are all out in our garden. Janeen took these photos while she was outside with the cats.

Here is Bella inspecting the foundations that have been setting for a week by now.

I forgot to take photos when I was in England (because my phone wasn’t working, I didn’t even think of trying to use the camera. Oh well. I spent a week in Stroud, enjoying beautiful weather, and Mum’s great cooking. 🙂

I stopped back in Brooklyn as I returned, and one day there was a track meet! Managed to snap a photo of Misha running the 800 meters, and Aja running a relay.

Nails! [Mole note: these nails are almost 100 years old! they are hand made. see how they are not round? they have corners! so cool.]

Yes, we’re back at it. And there was a 4.0 earthquake while I was gone. Fortunately, it was quite small, so nothing fell down.

Besides peach blossoms! The Freesia are blooming.

Drilling holes, and then putting the sill plate onto the new concrete. Above right, I’ve painted wood preservative into the drilled holes, and hammered the plate over the threaded rod anchors. It fits!

Janeen is dismantling the ‘Jenga’ that was supporting the laundry room. Above right is one of the pieces of wood that the jack was pushing on. I guess it was pushing quite hard!

Above left, building a new wall. Above right, with pile of wood supports removed!

Above left: I made a mistake measuring for one of the anchor bolts, so the washer and nut will extend into one of the posts in the wall. Janeen used a chisel and notched out the bottom of the post to fit over the square plate washer. Nice!

Above right: The plywood on the far left is a new shear wall. The rest of the panels are temporary. I’ve got some old aluminum windows that I am planning to resize and fit here.

 

 

 

 

happy birthday misha!

bella and arwen wish you a warm and fuzzy happy birthday and ask, “when is uncle misha coming to see us?”

bella would like to sit on your lap some more.

we hope your day is full of loved ones…

…and smiles.

…and not too much work.

we miss you and hope turning 40 is FUN!

lots of love from mathew, janeen, arwen and bella xoxo

Root Freedom

Over the past month, I’ve had a lot of work, so not much progress on the house. But last weekend the sun was out, and it was just beautiful winter weather to get a bit more done on the stairs. I pulled another “while I’ve got this open, I’ll just…”

The back porch upstairs smells moldy, is drafty, and has no insulation. So I started tearing off the siding, and added plywood. In the photo above left, the last of the old stairs is peeking out. Gone in the above right. And more nice plywood glamor shots.

Now I’ve got the stair framing replaced all the way up. Still need to finish the hand rails, painting, and.. and…

Meanwhile, we built up a rather large pile of rotten wood, and other debris. For months I’ve been trying to put a bit at a time into the garbage can. I finally went out and rented a truck. We piled it full – over a ton of landfill! Now we need to finish tearing off the ‘tear off room’. Above right, partway through pulling off the old siding.

My mum will like this: A couple of weeks ago I had an Arborist over to look at our lemon tree, and the other trees in the back yard. His first suggestion was to tear out the concrete around the tree. He said that putting concrete over roots creates a similar problem to over-watering house plants: The roots can’t get any air and are susceptible to rot.

It took about three hours with a rented jack hammer to take out most of the concrete. The tree looks so much less strangled by the concrete. Now the Arborist is going to come back and do some pruning and put in a couple of Espalier fruit trees. My mum hated all the concrete in the back yard. I agree; now that much of the concrete is gone, I feel like the garden is starting to come back to life.

I think Arwen wants to be a plumber: Here she’s looking out the kitchen window watching the contractors installing a new flue. The old furnace was starting to smell of fumes, so we had to replace it. The new one is about half the size. We didn’t get a super high efficiency furnace, but it’s supposed to be about 50% more efficient than the old one.

I also started to put in the final leg of the stairs. Because it’s cold out now (by our standards), I paint everything in the garage first.

On my way home a couple of days ago, I walked by a garage sale. They had this nice mirror hung off a tree. The cats seem to think it was a good buy.

“I feel pretty
Oh so pretty…”

Stairs Phase II

After pounding away at nails on the new plywood for a couple of days, I ran out and bought a new nail gun. My hammering of nails managed to crack the plaster over the kitchen window. Need to fix it again. I don’t understand the mechanics of it, but somehow a nail gun can shoot a whole nail in with less noise, and much less rattling of the wall. One less thing to fix if I’d only known.

Do you think this could be part of a superhero Halloween costume? Of course, the cats need to inspect a new tool: Knitted ball or nailgun – decisions, decisions…

For my birthday (41!) I got a dual fluffy-cat-hug. Then I went and put the water resistant paper (“Super Jumbotex”) on the wall with the new plywood. I layer it staggered by half a sheet, so there’s always at least two sheets thick on the wall. Instead of nailing the siding directly to this, I read it’s better to leave a gap behind the siding. The gap allows any moisture that makes it through the siding to run down the wall and not be trapped between the paper and the siding. I’ve used 1/4″ thick strips of redwood stapled over the Jumbotex paper with stainless steel staples. I’ll use stainless steel screws to screw the siding to the wall through these strips.

After hours of sanding the old siding boards, Mole put a couple of coats of primer on both sides.

I’m not sure if it’s a building code requirement, or just one plumber’s interpretation of it, but there used to be three drain pipes running up here: One for the roof drain, one for the vent for the kitchen sink downstairs, and one of the drain of the kitchen sink upstairs. Seems to me it’s less cluttered to just have one pipe with sufficient diameter for both kitchen sinks, and one for the downspout. So I changed that.

Right now it’s quite far from the wall. There’s going to be a stair landing on the right of the top of the window. When that’s in, it will be easier to work on the siding over the window. I’ll also put a proper wall jack for the plumbing penetration. Caulk really does not seal these penetrations properly.

We’ve started on the second phase of the stairs. Last weekend, with Nick’s help, we tore out half of the upper part of the old stair. Ahh, so open! Now we need to build the new stairs. Above right, you can see that I’ve put most of the old siding back on. On the right of the photo is my neighbor’s fence, which I’m planning to cover (once the stairs are in).

Here’s the view out the kitchen window downstairs. You can see the stringer for the new stair lying on the deck. Above right is Arwen using Bella as a pillow. Since we came back from LA they have been more cuddly together.