we had a casual family gathering last saturday night to celebrate my parents retirement.
the rest of the weekend was all about prepping the downstairs living room walls for plaster.
and then finally applying plaster.
mathew is getting really good at this! while mathew was working on this level i was down in the garage stripping paint from trim that will go around the new window.
we took some time off last weekend to attend a high school friend’s wedding. we had a really great time and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
it was a beautiful ceremony at the coolest venue ever, the lawrence hall of science in berkeley. in fact, we were impressed with pretty much every detail that night. congratulations jennifer and doug, we wish you all the best, and thank you for including us in your special day.
on sunday we finished painting the exterior window trim.
and it was time for the scaffolding to come down.
my parents came up to help us work on the house on saturday. and they even brought a home-cooked lunch!
(left) my dad filling holes with plaster. (i don’t know why there’s something in his mouth.) (right) my mom being silly. she filled the holes in the hallway (above her) with plaster but i got there too late to document it. in this “dramatic reenactment” she is holding the wrong tool for the job and says she has no idea how to use it.
(left) mom taking the wood frame off the old window. (right) dad trimming the expanding foam that he and mathew used to fill the gaps around the new window. sorry, no photos of mathew this weekend. he’s not big on “dramatic reenactments.”
mathew spent yet another weekend up on the scaffolding attaching and painting pieces of wood i refinished in the garage. here is some impressive clamping mathew did. (well, at least i’m impressed.) on sunday we also painted the exterior with paint i had bought. unfortunately i didn’t buy the right finish so the new paint is flat and the old paint has some gloss, but we’ll repaint it all some day.
(left) my weekend was spent just like last weekend, stripping paint, filling holes with bondo, scraping, sanding and painting. i wore my respirator mask for about 10 hours on sunday… (right) garden update: we have tomatoes! and they’re quite tasty.
(left) not sure if you can see them, but we’ve finally got jalapenos! and lots of pretty green ground cover and blue and purple flowers.
the outdoor temp gauge read 100 degrees this afternoon! i had lunch with my grandmother in the richmond district this afternoon and our neighborhood in the mission felt 10-15 degrees hotter.
mathew’s aunt karin and cousin sylvia have been visiting from england. they drove up with daniel today and mathew took the day off work to hang out with everyone.
afterwards he got back to work on the house. i found him cooling off on the scaffolding and using his new toy (some sort of power nailer.)
we worked all weekend. all three days were spent in the garage refinishing the exterior wood that was removed to install the new downstairs living room window and fix the leak.
because the house was built with beautiful, solid redwood and replacing it is expensive and wasteful, we’re reusing every bit that we can. i spent the weekend stripping paint, gluing, filling, sanding and painting exterior siding and trim.
this is what we looked like for most of the weekend. mathew up on the scaffolding: scraping, removing, installing, sanding and painting, me with my respirator mask, gloves and various tools.
we’ve gotten into using bondo, a car repair filler. it sets fast, is waterproof and durable. it makes the siding and trim look new again. but it smells really bad. (left) all those little blocks of siding were in pieces when mathew removed them from the house. it was a job for “puzzle savant” (that’s me), now they are whole again.
see? more bondo filler. (thanks bob, for the tip.)
(left) a view from the scaffolding. (right) mathew wiping down the wall with a wet cloth after sanding with the vacuum attachment, trying to minimize the amount of lead paint dust we release into the air!
a piece of refinished trim that goes near the window.
our furniture finally arrived!
we’ve been waiting over a month and a half for these 3 pieces.
how does a vegetarian household end up buying a leather loveseat? (especially when we both agreed before going to the store that we didn’t want leather?!) leather sofas tend to be shorter in height, an important factor when considering our narrow entry, hall and stairway.
and the “grasshopper” chair almost didn’t make it up. it had to be carried through the downstairs kitchen, up the back, exterior staircase and then through the bedroom window, which mathew removed in desperation.
