10.26.10

mathew’s actual birthday was on 10.26.10. he took the day off from work and guess where he was first thing in the morning…

filling the gaps on the front of the house with bondo!

later we drove down to fremont to visit popo and she and sue had a nice time catching up.

we went to lunch at “uncle chong” and popo treated! the restaurant made a big deal out of mathew’s birthday, they played a special birthday song, everyone sang and we had a dessert of fried bananas and fortune cookies.

back at aegis gardens sue walked with popo and we thought they looked so cute talking and walking together.

as soon as we got home, guess where mathew went?! and he stayed there till the sun went down. he sanded the bondo’d areas…

…and delayed his falafel birthday dinner to stand out in the dark and paint primer on the house.

the day before, sue and i took a long walk up and over the top of san francisco (i’m not sure if it was the absolute “top” but it felt like it!) we got some nice views and some nice photos.

as i am writing this sue is sitting in our back yard “garden.” hope everyone is enjoying this autumn sunshine and warmth.

SuperTurtle turns 40!

two weekends ago we had a big party celebrating mathew’s 40th birthday.

as guests were beginning to arrive, mathew and i were running around trying to finish our decorations. my dad helped me hang my paper lanterns.

our friend alex, my parents, and my brother jason helped mathew by hanging photos in every room, showing the last three years of our remodel. the photos showed what the house looked like before we bought it, how we often made it uglier before we made it pretty, all of our lovely helpers and volunteers, and highlights along our adventure.

it was an extra special day because it was kyle’s 5th birthday that day! he had chosen to have a party on halloween weekend so that left him available to attend mathew’s party on the 23rd. (left to right) trevor, kyle and megan.

also celebrating birthdays: (left) genanne two days earlier and (right) my mom celebrated her birthday the following day.

i became completely overwhelmed by people arriving so i stopped taking photos… luckily alex was snapping away on his camera so this blog post has visuals and not just descriptions!

(left to right) turtle’s karate friends hideaki, christina and marcus talking with turtle’s mom and high school friend, mark, while jim and reirin listen in and enjoy the food.

we were so excited to see our long lost cal poly friend edward! i think it’s been almost a decade since we last saw him. he walked through the rain from the bart station to join us that night and we’re so glad he did. (left to right) edward, alex, mole, turtle.

(left to right) nancy and my mom, my older brother jason talking to mathew’s co-worker bryce.

turtle and his co-worker, joe, a new father and also in the middle of his own remodel.

(left to right) jamie, mae, alex, mole and heather. a mix of high school and college friends. this was the first time jamie and heather had even been to the house. actually, this was the first time most people were seeing the house!

we’ve really been hiding out since we bought this house, all free time and weekends have been spent on the house. but after jamie toured the house he kept saying “i get it!” finally understanding where we’ve been all these years. we’ve still got a long way to go till we’re “done” with the house, but it was so satisfying being able to show it off. all the high praise was great for our egos! and i loved hearing over and over again that my favorite color looked great in my office. 🙂

more reunions! everyone was surprised when jaya appeared. mae, turtle, alex and jaya were all architecture majors together at cal poly.

turtle and some of his parentals: mumsue, reirin and jim.

stef and nancy having fun hanging out with kyle, trevor and megan.

(left to right) mole, trevor, marisa, arthur, kyle and megan showing off her turkey drawing which she gave to turtle. marisa is one of my oldest friends, we’ve known each other for almost 30 years.

after marisa and her family left, people were asking me, “who was that woman with the three kids?? they were the cutest, most well behaved kids!” those three kids wandered around the house, eating crackers and carrots, charming our guests while their parents helped me get food on the table downstairs.

(left to right) the famous gee sisters, stef, mae and nancy, with mole and alex. these sisters are famous because not only are they excellent cooks but on several occasions they cheerfully showed up to help with the house  AND brought delicious food and sometimes their own tools!

no, i didn’t take this photo during the party! this was taken in august of 2009. i had to include an actual photo of my dad (where he wasn’t up a ladder hanging lanterns!) without my parents’ help almost EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND for months and months over the last few years, we never would have gotten as far as we did on the house. my dad often has remodel projects of his own, so i think he enjoys the work somewhat, but my mom would rather be watching a ball game than working on a house, but she cheerfully worked and picked up some new skills along the way.

most of our friends opt out because they didn’t think their work standards would live up to mathew’s perfectionism, so we were always so surprised and grateful when anyone would offer to help.

later in the night, the party was smaller but still going! (left to right) dee, a co-worker of turtle’s, turtle, doug and jennifer, a high school friend of ours, and noel, another co-worker. we talked and ate and ate and talked. noel even offered to come and help with the house sometime, we may just take him up on that offer!

we had a total of about 50 guests that day/night. and they all brought delicious, healthy food! i had to stop preparing food because there wasn’t room left on the table! at first i was worried about having all those leftovers but we happily finished them during the following week.

turtle’s parents sue and daniel catching up, in our unit upstairs. sue has been staying with us over the last few weeks, cooking lovely meals for us and tidying up our neglected back yard. last year daniel and mathew refinished the old oak floor in my office and installed new oak floors in the other rooms, which always get rave reviews.

after everyone had gone home. sue had a lively party-for-one in the office!

to all of mathew’s friends, we’re sorry if we left anyone off the guest list! we sent an evite and found out afterwards that some email addresses were old and some emails were caught by spam filters… and to everyone who made it, thank you for celebrating with us! thank you for all your lovely food, gifts and praise. and THANK YOU for being in our lives.

what’s new?

last friday mathew spent some time cleaning and refinishing some exterior parts of the house. (right) his ladder set-up made me a bit nervous… but it all went fine.

after removing some material that the previous owners used incorrectly to fill large gaps in the front of the house, mathew filled, sanded and preserved the old, exposed wood. this ladder set-up made me less nervous…

the wood preserver STINKS! mathew paints it on and it supposedly pulls any moisture out of the wood and hardens, sort of like artificially petrifying the wood. it turns black in the process. often this concern for exposed wood comes just before the rainy season, but it needed to be done. sadly it makes the front of the house just a little uglier. it’s currently covered in plastic and once the rain stops we can get out there and paint it.

we spent the rest of the weekend pulling up the floor covering, cleaning and moving into the office. here’s what it looks like at night. mathew says it shines like a beacon when he’s coming home (we just received our blinds and haven’t installed them yet.) the neighbors have all been watching the room’s progress and it’s gotten rave reviews.

(left) during the week i saw this car being taken away. it must have come out of one of our neighbor’s garages and i thought it was cool. i wish i could see it refinished! (right) and mathew’s mum, sue is visiting from england! she’s staying in popo’s downstairs unit and it’s nice to see her and have the space used again.

yesterday we proudly attended eva’s graduation from the samuel merritt university accelerated nursing program. and when they say “accelerated” they aren’t kidding. eva studied her butt off and is becoming an RN in only 12 months! eva is one of the sweetest, most caring and conscientious people we know; we know she will be an amazing nurse.

(left) sue, mathew, me. (right) me and eva.

mathew, daniel and eva.

it’s a big weekend/week for mathew. stay tuned for a BIG, birthday post!

finishing the office

This weekend, the office was finished enough to start using it: Only a nine month project. I vacuumed the walls, and all surfaces, then we started taking up the plastic and paper that’s been protecting the floors.

Underneath the layer of plastic is a layer of craft paper. Of course, we need to recycle everything we can, so we took all the tape off the paper as we took it up.

Sun in San Francisco? I guess there’s enough in the Mission to bleach the protective paper on the floor. It started out a mauve color and became a very pale pink (left.) The floors held up nicely, and still look fine.

Janeen took some close-ups of the ceiling, lamp, and the crystals that she had cleaned up.

After a couple of passes with caulk, and paint, the medallion melds well with the tin ceiling.

Dad, Elijah, and Eva came to visit this weekend. We all went out to one of our new favorite restaurants: Gracias Madre.

My ‘baby’ brother is now standing a good few inches taller than me. Dad, on the left, is trying to pull him down to size.

Janeen had the camera, most of the time, so she took a photo of the goofiest person in the restaurant (right).

We finished up the weekend starting to move things back into the office. Boxes that have been sitting down in our garage for almost a year. Maybe we don’t need that stuff??

Since winter is on its way, and I can’t see my finding time to get the outside of the house completely painted, I’ve decided to just touch up the bad spots. We’ll do the full repaint in spring. (left) Dumpy is really loving his smooth, clean runway.(right)

the factory

this weekend mathew and i spent a lot of time in our separate factories…

mathew was in the garage, a.k.a. his shelf factory! in true mathew fashion, it was only after he’d had all 16 shelves cut, glued and clamped that he began to question why he made them so complicated… he used plywood but wanted to have a fancy front edge that would show (similar to an original built-in cabinet in the hall) so that involved adding a small strip of solid wood to the fronts.

here they are after the solid wood has been planed and routed. beautiful, huh? worth the time? probably…

to match all the other wood in the office, finishing involves sanding, staining and 2 coats of tinted poly.

i thought it was fun that each shelf has a very different wood grain. mathew used whatever wood he had lying around…

here are some of the shelves in place. the final cabinets will have doors with wood and glass. oooh…

meanwhile, upstairs i was working in my “chair factory” re-covering some chairs we’ve had since college, that i first re-covered about 10 years ago. the fabric made me nervous though… when i picked it in the store it seemed like a fun choice but when i brought it home it screamed, “SHINY!” it’s a gold tapestry type fabric with matte red and gold circles. fairly low-key, right? haha.

i got to work and after some trial and error and a little help from mathew…

…we have new chairs! the thing that makes them extra new is a nice layer of foam cushioning on the seat.

if you ever decide to do this at home, a word of caution: if you have chair backs that curve in two directions, make sure you buy a fabric that has some give. i’m an experienced seamstress but these chair backs proved to be more difficult than a fitted pair of pants. with mathew’s suggestion to cut on the bias (he pays attention when i talk about fabric?!) and darts across the top we finally got these chairs to work! they are still shiny, but super-comfy and we like them. mathew is even considering making 2 more chairs to match so we can have a complete set..!

and in between the shelves and chairs we had a visit from mathew’s sister eva and our friend bob. (left) after spending the day at the always awesome, hardly strictly bluegrass festival, eva came over to take a power nap before her 11pm student nursing shift at kaiser. we got to catch up with her during a late meal of homemade pizza. (right) and bob was in the neighborhood and dropped by for a visit. of course, whenever an architect or engineer drops by there’s always lots of discussion inside and out about what to do next…

and it wasn’t all shelves and chairs this weekend. (left) mathew filled the gap between the two different crown moldings. better, huh? he also filled the gaps between all the tin ceiling tiles. i painted the bay window alcove ceiling, filled, sanded and primed the outside window sills and painted all the wall touch-ups, because “oops” happens.

(right) when mathew went to sand and put the final coat on the outside window sills he decided to scrape and sand the surface just beyond that as well, because it REALLY needed it! of course i don’t have any before photos, because it was just ugly and embarrassing… we cannot wait to have new paint on the exterior of the house! we’d hoped to get it done before the winter but since rain has already started it will have to wait till next summer. we’ll have almost a year to figure out what colors we’ll use…

hope everyone had a good weekend!

visiting grandma

last weekend we visited my grandmother at her new senior home. they were having a chinese moon festival so a few of her daughters and their families came to visit. this was also a good weekend for us to help hang photos in her new room.

(left) mathew and my sister-in-law, najia hanging photos. (right) my mom and brother, jason helping to unpack and sort photos.

(left) my aunts laura and linda sorting my grandmother’s medication. (right) laura’s daughter, cindy and laura’s grandchildren putting a puzzle together in the library down the hall.

half way through the festival my grandmother (and the rest of us) decided we’d had enough of the loud karaoke music. these photos were taken from the second floor balcony/bridge looking down on the residents and their guests.

(left) back in my grandmother’s room… my grandmother seems to be settling in well. she complains that she can’t always eat the food, and that it’s too sunny, but she’s socializing and walking a lot more, using her walker to get to breakfast, lunch and dinner. (right) as usual, i forgot to take photos after all the frames were hung. (family photos definitely made her room look more lived in.) i think i was a little distracted by the fact that my family won three prizes in the raffle including the grand prize DVD player!

here’s what’s new

(left) a couple weeks ago my “little sister” wylie was visiting from seattle. i forgot to take photos, we were so busy running around the city, cooking, baking and watching twilight movies, so this is a photo from may, but we still look pretty much the same… (right) mathew bought an old brass strike plate from building resources. he cut off the amount he needed then cleaned and polished it up. pretty cool, huh? he drilled a couple more holes and it’s now a new, smaller strike plate for a door. and in case you didn’t know what a strike plate was (i didn’t) it’s a protective metal plate that goes in the door jamb that receives the latch when the door is closed.

CORRECTION: the strike plate was actually used as a receptor for the deadbolt, not the latch (which is connected to the doorknob.) above are photos of the strike plate and the deadbolt (which is vintage, purchased from building resources. pretty, huh?)

(left) here is mathew wiring cable and internet hook ups, having a much easier time than he did in the pink room last year… (right) while i paint the crown molding.

mathew playing with his new tools in the garage. (left) a drill press and (right) a big dust collection thingy. it’s like christmas down there.

(left) and new green gloves that make him look like some weird super hero. (right) staining the top of the window trim.

(left) the chandelier in the office had decades of dust that needed cleaning… (right) while mathew polished up a brass lock knob that he bought from building resources.

(left) i cut the hole for the medallion to fit over the light in the office. (right) mathew used what he calls “janeen’s technique” to apply the medallion to the ceiling with adhesive and allow it to dry.

the last medallion. as much as mathew loves medallions, this is the last one we will buy and install. there are no more rooms that need medallions! i am not as medallion-crazy as mathew and i was hesitant about adding a medallion to a tin ceiling, but we picked a simple one that doesn’t compete too much and mathew says it hides the fact that the light junction box didn’t fall exactly centered between the tiles. he was right, it worked!

looking up

we’re making some real progress on the office, so that means time for…

(left) dumpy’s glamor shot. (right) and here’s my new brass light switch.

(left) here’s the cove crown molding detail shot i should have taken last weekend. see the “c” shape? it’s made from lots of pieces of poplar wood, finger jointed together. pre-made from the lumber yard, mathew did NOT make these! (right) see that dark gap between the small primed molding and the tin ceiling? i’m filling it with caulk. it started out as a really frustrating project but then i finally got the hang of it just about when i finished my last wall.

(left) mathew doing some trigonometry to figure out tricky angles for the crown molding that will go in the little alcove above the bay windows. (right) his calcs. when was the last time you worked with sines and cosines? ack.

(left) taking a little break. (right) towards the right in the photo above, you can see why those angles were tricky…

here we are trying to decide whether to add the 3rd piece of molding below the cove. in the end we liked the clean lines of the cove and left off the 3rd molding even though we already purchased it. it also meant less measuring, cutting, filing, installing, filling and painting…

as mathew is working his way around the room filling the nail holes in the trim, i am priming the cove molding. here is how the ceiling looked at the end of the evening.

turtle work/play

people are always telling mathew to take a break from working on the house. this frustrates mathew, because to him it isn’t work, it’s FUN. he’d rather work on the house than relax, socialize or even eat or sleep.

(left) pieces of wood recycled to make trim for the cabinet. mathew cut then routed them, sanded, stained and polyurethaned them to match. (right) here he’s trimming out a complicated notch so the trim can fit around the picture rail (see below right.)

now that my grandmother has moved out we need to make some changes to the downstairs unit to make it rent-able for someone new. this includes adding a new lockable door (recycled from upstairs) leading from the entrance. mathew cut out the top half and will add tempered glass to let light through.

during one of the heat waves we had recently, mathew realized the skylight installed by ‘professionals’ was still not done correctly. part of the flashing was getting in the way and bending the metal of the skylight making it impossible to close. mathew got his ladder, tools and flashlight and was determined to fix it. this is what happens after 11pm at our house, when most people are sleeping…

mathew doing a load test on the cabinets!

last weekend mathew and i started adding crown molding to the office. i’m realizing these aren’t the best photos to show what’s happening… but the main molding is like a “C” shape, called cove, and when two pieces join in the corners you have to cut the second piece at an angle then cut and file the backside so that they fit together perfectly at the corner. it’s quite complicated but of course mathew knows what he’s doing. there will be a second smaller piece of molding that will go above the cove molding next to the ceiling. and eventually it will be painted white.

it was a 3 day weekend so the other days were spent prepping for the new center window which we finally received. mathew used a heat gun to remove old paint from frame. and there was a weird bump of old wood on the sill so mathew planed it off…

…then chiseled it out and added a new piece which will match the new stained sill.

(left) late on monday night as the sun went down, we got the new window in! (right) and then wednesday we received a delivery in a wooden crate that managed to scratch the floor in the entry really badly. i know these delivery guys are always trying to be helpful but no one seems to realize how damaging it is to drop a heavy box on a wood floor then push or drag it! i was pretty upset about this all day but mathew says he can probably fix it.

the windows are finally in!

festivals of the mission

as you may have noticed, we have a lot of festivals here in the mission district, often just blocks from our house. the weekend i came home from southern california we had the sf street food festival.

it had a huge turn out and was a fun (yet ridiculously overpriced) way to sample food from new local businesses.

i thought it was strange that people would pay too much to drink mediocre canned beer in a caged pen…

there was live music…

and lots of bicycles,… the best way to get around in the city, especially when they close the streets for festivals.

and our local ice cream shop (with the blue awning) mobbed as usual.

when i returned from southern california it was quite an adjustment to go from 100 degree weather to wearing long pants and sweaters. and i think because i complained just a little bit, we’ve had 3 (?) crazy heat waves in the past few weeks… be careful what you wish for!