Category: life

the adventures of arwen and bella

arwen and bella have been busy in 2013, making new friends, having fun and getting into trouble…

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here they are with their new friend ‘flat stanley.’ flat stanley came to visit from southern california. he stayed for a few days and i showed him around our neighborhood, then he went home with a photo-essay to teach 1st graders about the mission district in san francisco.

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“WHAT IS THIS?!?!”

ice. 🙂

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bella climbed her first TREE!! before she attempted anything, she stood beneath the tree for about 30 minutes studying and strategizing. it all went well, but could have been better if it weren’t a lemon tree. the cats aren’t crazy about lemons…

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a lazy afternoon with bella and mathew.

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(above left) bella also climbed onto the roof for the first time. she jumped onto the kitchen, climbed to the very top of our roof, looked around, skidded down and decided she’d had enough.

(above right) at the very center of that photo (it’s hard to see) mathew is attaching chicken wire to keep arwen from climbing into the neighbors’ yard. she’s been very active in defending her territory and chasing other cats out of our yard. she’s lucky she’s never gotten a scratch on that pretty face of hers, because she has no idea what she is doing, but her size and total lack of fear has been effective. it’s just annoying to have to go through the neighbors’ house and into their yard to retrieve her!

but now she’s trying to start something with ‘foxy lady’ who lives with the other neighbors and never comes into our yard. i think arwen is just bored and looking for drama.

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bella LOVES her fort/cave!

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(above left) arwen snuggling with me in the morning. (she tends to be a bit camera-shy.)

(above right) bella sitting among the orchids (they have NEW blossoms!!) watching the morning bird show.

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in search of new thrills, arwen decided to climb onto our roof, and then the neighbors’ roof, and then the roof of the next house! she was gone for quite some time and mathew was worried we’d lose her forever. see that lump in the middle of the photo? that’s arwen finally reappearing and coming home.

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bella and arwen also made some new human friends from sweden! mathew’s aunt, uncle and cousin, bridget, mats and marja-sara. we took them on a guided architectural tour of san francisco and showed them the ferry building and the embarcadero.

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and a few days later mathew’s aunt and uncle, stella and chris flew in from england. we went for a nice walk, showed chris where we got married (he wasn’t able to attend) and had lunch at greens, the site of our wedding reception.

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we went to santa cruz to meet up with everyone including bridget’s daughter irya who flew in later.

(above right) international siblings: daniel, stella and bridget.

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we celebrated irya’s birthday twice because when you’re from sweden and visiting the states, with the time difference it’s hard to know exactly when to celebrate… or maybe we just wanted 2 cakes! (above left) this is cake #2 which appeared after breakfast.

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and somehow, when we weren’t entertaining or hosting we had time for thomas and sarah’s FANCY art deco themed wedding! (above left) photo booth photo. (above right) mathew and his buddy bob dancing during dinner. technically, the first dance, but who’s counting. the band was AWESOME and upon request, they played mathew’s fave, ‘bourbon street parade.’

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a spectacular view of the city with stella and chris.

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and a quick visit to the beach.

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and jumping! or flying? 🙂

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a windmill, daffodils, poppies and tulips at the queen wilhelmina tulip garden in golden gate park.

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and then, ANOTHER wedding!? with my parents at darren and jenny’s super hip and modern wedding.

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my younger brother justin was a groomsman for his childhood buddy darren.

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the bridesmaids at the end of the table, admiring the wedding cake. i honestly never looked at the cake because all the cookies, mini cupcakes and cake pops were much too distracting!! (and delicious!)

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and we had fun with yet another wedding photo booth. with and without props!

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i hope everyone is having as much fun this spring as we are.

maybe next month we’ll finally catch up on sleep and do some work on the house…

Waterproofing part 2

The roofing felt and cement board do not themselves waterproof the deck. On this deck, I’m using the same material that we used in the showers: Kerdi. It’s a polyethylene sheeting that has a fibrous material bonded to both sides so that it sticks to thinset mortar.

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Here I’m sticking down the Kerdi over the cement board. Arwen is watching from the stairs.

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To stick it down, I use the same cement-based thinset mortar that’s used under the cement board, and also will be used under the tile. I spread it out with a notched trowel, and then lay the Kerdi onto it. Then I smooth the Kerdi down with a flat trowel. The problem we were having is the cement board was dry, so it was drying out the thinset mortar before I could spread the sheet down. We had to wet down the cement board with a water sprayer so that we had enough time to stick the Kerdi down properly.

Above right Bella is watching the progress.

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They both really like tiling, I think. Almost as much as plumbing (they love to sit in the shower and watch the water go down the drain.) Janeen got all the difficult parts of the waterproofing – like fitting it around a pipe penetration.

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See, another difficult spot: Mole attaching the waterproofing to the side of the building. Above right we are starting to lay out the tile grid. I drew a grid on the Kerdi before starting the actual tile.

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Here are the first tiles. Actually, it’s not tile; we’re using a very colorful slate. We really liked the variety of colors in the slate. Each piece is like a little work of art.

Unfortunately we learned, after buying it all, that this slate has a flaw: The color is made by thin layers of impurities in layers within the slate, so it tends to delaminate. We tried to pick through carefully to avoid the tiles with bad layers in them. Hopefully we caught them all.

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Mole did almost all the cutting. She became the tile-saw queen. Even got into some really complicated cuts to fit the slate tiles around pipes.

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Once all the slate was done, we let it dry for a week. Because the slate has such a rough surface, I used a pre-grouting sealer on the slate before grouting. Hopefully it will make it easier to clean the grout off the surface.

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The crocuses are already up! The bulbs we planted under the lemon tree last year have come back this year. So nice. Above right, you can see a rectangle that we left unfinished. I wanted to make a virtual doormat in front of the door, by changing the tile pattern.

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We used some ceramic tile that a friend gave me for the border (the same tile I used on the front porch as an accent tile). In the field, we just cut the same tile as on the rest of the deck to about 1/3 the size.

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Above left, this is the ‘door mat’ ready to be grouted. Because the tile is so colorful, we chose a grey grout. I had to get mole to pick out colors, because I’ve learned: I wanted to get a really colorful grout… The grey looks really good.

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Above left mole is wiping off the grout from the tile surface. Above right, after the grout dries for a couple of hours, we came back with a dry cloth and polished off the haze on the surface of the tiles.

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Mole is polishing up the ‘door mat.’ Now we can get back to finishing up the siding! Here’s a pic of Arwen and Bella looking out the window from their cat tree.

 

Deck Waterproofing and Christmas Eve

Well, a lot happens, and I’ve failed to post any of it. Here’s part one..

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Before we moved into this house, mole found a lampshade made out of shells that she really loved. Unfortunately when she ordered it, it was out of stock, and no longer available. Just recently, the store got some more, so she bought it. We put it up in the bedroom.

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Bella and Arwen really like it too. So, back to house projects: almost a year ago, I stopped working on the back stairs, because I started working on the laundry room. It sounds a bit as if I got distracted and went off to another project. But there’s a reason: After dealing with all the rot in this area I had decided that the deck would be waterproofed. The waterproofing needs to attach to the side of the house, but since the laundry room was so strangely built (there was no waterproofing membrane, just vertical boards) I had to rebuild the wall to add a waterproofing membrane.

One thing led to another, and we started jacking the whole thing up to level it… OK, so it did become a bigger project than I planned. The deck at the first floor sat out in the sun and rain for a year, unfinished, while we basically rebuilt the whole laundry room. I don’t want the deck to endure another winter unprotected, so it’s back to the stairs. Above right, I’m putting down heavy weight roofing felt.

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We stapled it down and lapped it, starting at the lowest side of the deck. Here’s mole just finishing up.

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The felt is just the first layer. This deck is going to have tile on it, so we put down cement board. To make sure there is a uniform surface under the cement board, we put down thinset mortar first, and set the cement board into that. We then screwed it down to the plywood.

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It got pretty late working on this. I think I finished about 10pm. I wanted to get the cement board on before the rain, which was due in the next couple of days.

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They are so sweet when they sleep together. We just can’t help taking photos.

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About four years ago, when we were doing the wallpaper stripping in the lower unit, we started stripping the wallpaper in our front hallway too. We stopped, because it smelled moldy, and we figured we’d need to replace the plaster. Well, it sat with the wallpaper partly stripped for all those years. Talk about bad Feng Shui in our entry! So I decided to just paint white over it. At least it will look better until I get around to the replacement work. Because there’s still no heating, the paint wasn’t drying: I had to bring an electric radiator down there. Arwen came down to watch the progress.

My family came over for Christmas Eve again this year. One of my Christmas traditions now is baking bread. Above right I’m just starting to mix.

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Here’s a pic of everyone who came over. Dad got a picture of Elijah for Christmas, and wanted to include him in the photo!

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

Change of Plans (again)

I’ve finished the siding on the back side of the laundry room, and got both windows in.

Here are a couple of views showing the windows and the siding before I put the trim around the windows.

Now the trim and the fascia is on. The really hard part was fitting wood around the sewer vent pipe (in the top right photo). If I were to do it again, it would be faster to move the pipe — and the result would be better, too. One more for experience. Just need to finish filling, sanding, and paint!

Maybe these photos of the living room downstairs will give a clue about the ‘change of plans.’

Or these, of the kitchen and the bedroom downstairs?

A couple of things changed: One of them, my friend who stayed at the house when we were first working on the downstairs, was looking for a place to live with his girlfriend in town. Two: We faced up to the fact that the work I’m doing is taking too long to justify waiting to rent out the space as a vacation rental. So we dropped the vacation rental idea, and it’s going to be a regular rental. Not quite so simple, because we need to clear out all the furniture, and repaint the bedroom (the pink is not popular with anyone). The downside is that we will no longer have space for family to stay. The up side is we’ll be getting rent (finally!), which takes some of the pressure off paying bills and reduces the stress to finish the renovation work.

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.