strange san francisco summer

instead of the standard summer cold and fog we’ve been experiencing heat waves along with the rest of the bay area this summer. the garden likes it…

there are also lots of mystery plants that are also thriving. last night we harvested cilantro and two types of basil.

i’m not sure if it’s normal for our neighborhood or because of high fire danger, but every time anything happens lots of trucks and fire engines show up! i counted 6 today, with one in our driveway, but i don’t know what the emergency was.

where did the weekend go?

sunday night mathew and i were both wondering where the weekend went. we both felt like we got very little done. but in looking at these photos, we sure kept busy.

(right) mathew took the drywall off the outside of the bathroom so he could wire an outlet into the inside of the medicine cabinet. (right) attaching a veneer strip to a vanity shelf.

(left) medicine cabinet with a hole cut for the electrical outlet. (right) our sonicare toothbrush, the reason for the outlet.

i spent the entire weekend stripping paint off trim in the living room downstairs.

drawers for the upstairs bathroom vanity.

years ago mathew had read about drilling holes in glass and was excited to finally get to try the technique on our medicine cabinet mirror. (left) he enclosed the area with a wall of putty then filled it with water to keep the glass cool to avoid breaking it.

he said the process was really slow, but it worked! (right) with knob attached.

the 4th

on the 4th of july we had dinner at our friends’ house in north beach. it had nothing to do with the 4th, we were just having a casual dinner with two good friends we haven’t seen in a while. most of the city was at the wharf for the fireworks show. later that night we could hear the fireworks but from what i’ve heard, the show was pretty much just colored clouds and fog.

just before midnight we made our way back to our neighborhood, which was still in the middle of celebrating (which it has been doing for the last few weeks…) there were mini fireworks shows going on all around us. we tried to photograph some from our bedroom window but they looked better in real life.

hope everyone had a nice 4th.

a productive weekend

i had an early start upstairs on saturday and painted a couple of coats over the weird paneling (that will eventually be removed.) my parents came over to help downstairs. together they pulled up the top layer of linoleum in the foyer.

when i finished painting i went downstairs and my dad moved into the living room to remove the window frame, picture rail and baseboard from the water-damaged wall by the window. i helped my mom to remove the fiberboard and linoleum “rug” that was under the linoleum. this floor originally had a linoleum “rug” with a painted red border, a layer of fiberboard, 2 layers of different patterned linoleum and a layer of carpet. i guess the idea was, “if it’s ugly, cover it.”

in true turtle + mole fashion, “it has to get ugly before it gets pretty.” (left) my dad removed all the trim around the window so that mathew can figure out where the leak is coming from and then repair the plaster wall. (right) mathew spent saturday down in his workshop making the frame for our medicine cabinet mirror, trimming and finishing shelves for our living room and other things.

on sunday i finished pulling up the fiberboard and linoleum “rug” (pictured left.) isn’t that the weirdest thing? now it’s just unfinished wood with a painted red border.

i spent a little time in mathew’s workshop personalizing an aluminum strip that will go on the inside of the medicine cabinet mirror frame. cool, huh?

(left) mathew making drawers for our upstairs bathroom vanity. (right) paint stripping begins in the downstairs living room. the smoke alarm went off after 5 minutes, at least we know it works!

visitors!

last tuesday we had our first visitors in our new space upstairs.

midori and andy have moved back to the bay area from portland. we’re very happy to have our good friends back.

the heat wave ends

last week we had a heat wave in san francisco. it got into the 90’s, which is especially unusual for june, when it’s supposed to be cold and foggy…

it wasn’t until saturday afternoon that it felt like the fever had broken; the temperature started to drop and we finally had clouds and a cool breeze.

i spent the entire day painting the living room. originally when we stripped the baseboards we considered polyurethaning them instead of painting them white. but they were quite uneven in color, had been very abused over the years and needed lots of filling. in the end we decided to paint them white and we’re pleased with how nice they look.

as usual, mathew was working on a hundred things at once. (left) here he is wrestling with (installing) a GFI outlet in the kitchen, much safer than a standard outlet if installed near water. (right) and on top of that he installed a 6 plug outlet.

i’m not sure if it’s the mission district, or just our street, but there’s always lots of drama and entertainment to be found outside our house. we’re not sure what happened to cause 3+ fire engines to arrive, block off traffic and for three teams of firefighters to go inside the yellow house across the street. perhaps an over exuberant barbecue? ah,.. summer.

on sunday we had our first meal upstairs, breakfast. then it was off to work! i got busy moving into the kitchen and organizing all the cabinets and drawers.

mathew further organized his workshop while searching for the glass cutter i used to use in college (for stained glass work.) in the end he borrowed one from our neighbor to cut this mirror in half. the two pieces will become our bathroom medicine cabinet. next he cut, glued and clamped the wood frame.

late in the afternoon i cleared out the living room of all of our paint and construction tools and we started moving up furniture and boxes from the garage. (left) here mathew is putting together a shelf we built together in college. the ceiling height in this upstairs unit is much lower than we’ve had in the past, so he took the pieces back down to his workshop to size it down to fit the room better. he also decided to bevel the edges with his router and sanded it. in the past it was an unfinished shelf, now we’ll polish it with beeswax. (right) the kitchen is starting to shape up. it might look small but it’s quite comfy and functional (plus we’ve got tons of storage in the dining area.)

hope everyone had a nice weekend.

now with photos

[the blog software is up and running again so here are those photos…]

last week we had the carpets cleaned upstairs. they were pretty disgusting with lots of stains from the previous owners, eventually we’ll replace them with bamboo floors, but until then we need them cleaned before we move upstairs. i am allergic to perfumes and chemicals so we decided to use the earth-friendly, san francisco based, healthy choice carpet cleaners. they only use non-toxic cleaners (made from grapefruit seed extract) and their truck is run on eco-fuel. they did a great job and it only took an hour and the carpets were completely dry the next day.

we started moving upstairs on friday and continued during the weekend. it was the shortest move mathew and i have ever made! but the most difficult thing was the box spring. the hallway and stairs leading up to the bedroom are tight so we had to move the box spring through the back door and up the exterior staircase. we tied ropes around it so we’d have something to hold onto. i wish we’d gotten photos because it must have been a sight, i was on the bottom holding the queen sized box spring above my head while mathew stood several steps up holding onto the rope handles. the box spring made it up safely with hardly a scratch and none of us fell over the low hand rails!

this makes me wonder… my parents have given me their piano from my childhood. i think to move it upstairs we might have to remove a window and hire a crane to lift it up to the 3rd level! is it worth it?

on sunday when i finished moving in our clothes, i started cleaning the kitchen upstairs (left: pieces of the san francisco chronicle that i found from thursday, june 22, 1972) mathew worked downstairs cleaning the bedroom and repairing the shower and sink in the bathroom, among other projects. until we get the living room completely painted, our bedroom will also double as our living space. and eventually we’ll have closets, cabinets and shelves built into the walls. but it’s nice to finally be moving into our house.

a sunny weekend

my parents came up to the city to help with the house this weekend.

they helped with the laborious task of paint prep, which made it possible for us to start painting this weekend. (right) here i am using a recycled dental tool to clean out the picture rail trim. it made me realize that i could never be a dental hygienist!

after i removed “plaque” and “tartar” with the dental pick, my mom followed with a good brushing with a nylon bristle brush that resembled a big toothbrush. my dad and mathew worked on plaster touch-up and scraping and sanding the baseboards.

after my parents went home mathew and i put on our respirator masks and mathew pulled back the carpet to finish stripping the baseboards of paint.

that night we primed the ceiling.

on sunday mathew stripped paint from the window sill and added more emitters to the drip irrigation system for the garden.

it’s been quite sunny and warm recently and the plants with drip emitters were doing so much better (left) than the ones without (right.) hopefully the garden will be looking more healthy in the days to come.

i spent the entire day priming the walls and in the afternoon i was able to start painting actual color! (right) here i’m painting one of the long walls but this is as far as i got because we suddenly decided to leave this wall white and only paint the end walls. we still need to paint the window and door frames, picture rail and base boards in this room. mathew put a final coat of white on the ceiling so at least that is done.

the color is called “montgomery white,” kind of a beigy, slightly peachy, cream color. this room gets a lot of light and we’re liking how subtle this color is, but it makes the yellow in the dining area seem fluorescent in comparison! we may add a lighter yellow above the chair rails in the dining area to tone it down.