making and repairing holes

countdown to grandma: 10 weeks.

look at what mathew did to my carefully painted wall! he needed to get to some wiring for downstairs and we also needed a way to insulate the last wall upstairs.

inside the crawl space were these really old wooden “Shell Aviation Gasoline” boxes, and i was thinking they could be lost treasure or some cool vintage artifacts… nope, just bits of broken plaster and construction debris.

and downstairs, more new holes! this was actually where the old ceiling medallion used to be. don’t worry, we’ll plaster over it.

and part of the never ending wiring project included the alternate entrance. this is where we’ve got rotten wood from a leak and mathew found dead termites… he replaced a lot of the wood and made it more weather proof. (right) i’m not sure, but i think this is a light well between our house and the neighbor’s house that i’ve never seen before!

(left) i don’t know what mathew is trying to show us here… (right) even though mathew’s only wearing a t-shirt as he’s finishing this door frame, it’s getting COLD out!

here i am attaching gypboard to patch holes that were made in the wall. i even added some insulation near the alternate entrance. mathew’s goal for next weekend is sanding, prep and plaster!

justin saved us $260.

so, we need a new refrigerator for our kitchen upstairs. and if moving in an upholstered chair was challenging, imagine how difficult a refrigerator will be! mathew has been pushing for a smaller, 10.3 cu ft model and i’ve been pushing for a 15.5 cu ft model, both are energy star models. mathew said that if i created a life-sized model of the refrigerator and successfully moved it upstairs then we could buy the larger one.

my brother justin was in town and offered to make the refrigerator model for me.

as you can tell, we never made it up the stairwell. the 28″ width worked at the bottom but the 31″ depth wasn’t going anywhere. at one point we thought it might work if we took the doors off the actual fridge. luckily justin had the sense to measure at different points at the top of the stairs and found that it actually narrows as it goes up. nothing over 27″ was making it upstairs without a crane and removing the living room window…

so, this was a time-consuming but convincing way to decide on which refrigerator to purchase. and in the end justin saved us $260! (the difference between the two models.) thanks justin, for saving us time too!

no more exceptions

we’ve seen a lot of family over the last month or so, which has been great, but hasn’t helped us to make much progress on the house. as of last weekend, we are no longer accepting any invites of any kind in an effort to finish the downstairs remodel. that means weeknights and weekends we will be working on the house. mathew is serious about getting my grandmother moved in by the end of the year.

countdown to grandma: 11 weeks.

a delayed post

here’s what happened last weekend…

on saturday my parents came to help with paint prep, sanding and painting in the downstairs living room.

(left) the primer is white so the room doesn’t look that different yet… (right) on sunday we started working on the foyer. i stripped paint on the outside of the living room door trim.

(left) months ago mathew had agreed to refinish a teak table for mark’s new cafe. since we’ve got too much on our plates these days, he had mark and his girlfriend atsuko help out with the sanding and polyurethane.

mathew started demo on this corner of the foyer. there was a leak that damaged the wall and trim. mathew spent the rest of the day reworking bad/dangerous wiring.

here is the picture rail covered in many layers of paint. i uncovered lots of white, beige, red and gold! but this paint wasn’t coming off as easily as upstairs and the trim in the corner was damaged beyond recognition so we’ve decided to replace the picture rail in this small room.

sorry for the boring post…

plaster and trim

last weekend it was time to plaster the final wall in the downstairs living room.

mathew sands the plaster used for filling holes.

say good bye to the modern art…

plaster begins. and voila! [there are no “during” photos because i was running around fetching water, mixing plaster, rearranging the ladder and platform, and scraping buckets… but we’ve done this so many times now that you get the idea…]

(left) touch-up plaster on the ceiling and above the picture rails. (right) the window trim i stripped and sanded last weekend.

more trim stripping.

mathew attaches the window trim.

(left) and even more trim stripping. (right) window trim in place and a reflective new plaster wall (to the left of the window.) you probably don’t know it, but this small bit of wall, to the right of the window, is possibly our most dramatic change in the entire house so far. there had been a leak at the upper right of this window, causing water to leak into the wall (for years?) that eventually broke through the plaster leaving a huge ugly hole. of course i don’t have any “before” photos… but if i did you would be seriously amazed by the change that has taken place. either way, mathew did a really great job on the repairs and the new plaster in this room.

another weekend update

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.

last weekend

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.

free labor + lunch

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.

a hot friday

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.)

a labor-filled weekend

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.