Our new home project....

The Long Awaited (Mostly) Finished Product!

2011-05-19T14:40:00.001-07:00

Yes, it has been over about two and half years since we last updated the blog, and I do apologize to all of you who have requested that we post the final pictures. In our defense, we have been busy during this time. I both started and finished grad school, graduating last June with a Master's degree from UCLA in the Urban Planning program. Then, after graduating, I decided that the time was right to open my own architecture firm. It's called Inchoate and you can be sure I'll be telling you more about it in the future. And, happily, we've also added a new member to our little family - our pup, Pantoufle!!

Now, here's the good stuff. Below are photos of us finishing the kitchen cabinets, pouring a concrete floor and installing a toilet in the bathroom, putting in the wood floor and painting the front door. Then, there are a few shots from our housewarming party and from bringing home Pantoufle. Here you go:

These are the upper cabinets going into our kitchen. We designed them to be free-standing boxes, that are independent of the others around them. Leif and Jason built these boxes out of 3/4" thick bamboo plywood with sliding plexiglass covers.

The two lower boxes have a space left in the back to allow for undercabinet lighting. These are the slim-line fluorescent tube lights that hide behind the lower boxes.

Here are the boxes, almost completely in place.....

Next, we tackled the bathroom floor. It was a thick-set tile that looked dingy and was cracked in many places, yet to completely take it out was more than we wanted to take on at that moment. Instead, we decided to cover it over with a thin set concrete. Above is a photos of the bathroom tile floor being prepped to receive the concrete. The edges are sealed with caulk and tape and coating has been painted on to help with the binding process.

Leif and Jason are mixing up the concrete. This is a self-leveling, thin-set version that you only have about 3-4 minutes to mix and again that long to get put in place, so you have to work really quickly!

Leif and Jason poured the mix in while I (as Spider Woman here) helped level it and get it in all the corners.

But this doesn't look good, does it?!

This was a disappointing moment. We had worked it for too long and the result was bumpy and blotchy. You can see in this photo that Leif was bummed and that Jason is trying to help him feel better. It doesn't help that this was done late at night.... Luckily, the concrete sets so thin that we had enough room in the bathroom to take another shot at it.....

And, voila! The second pour turned out much better!!

Next, we tackled our new toilet. It's a dual-flush, Water Sense certified model from Toto, so it will use a lot less water than a standard 1.6 gpf model. (At the time we installed this, they were actually pretty hard to find. I had to go to a specialty plumbing supply store. It's so nice to see that 2.5 years later, they are common place and you can get similar products at the big stores like Lowe's.)

Here's me trying to figure out how to get the new hardware to work with the old drain.

This is the new toilet base in place. It required some pretty exact placement, which was tricky for us to put into our new concrete floor.

And here is the final product. Doesn't it look pretty!

Moving out of the bathroom now, it was finally time to install our wood flooring. So that we could do it ourselves quickly, we decided to go with an engineered product that was floated over our subfloor. This meant that there was no nailing required!

The first step was to lay out a soft pad over the subfloor. The pad allows some give to the final floor installation and helps it to float as it is designed to. It also keeps the floor squeaks down.

Here is the floor going down. It is a 'click-together' system that fits together like puzzle pieces. It is spaced a little off of each wall and is not nailed down at all. In this way, each floor piece is only connected to the ones around it and the whole floor membrane floats in the room as a large single sheet.

Here is a close up of how each piece clicks into the one next to it.

The floor was a group effort, with Ben, Leif, Jason and I all pitching in.

Here's the whole living room done, with the kitchen in the background waiting. For a continuous look, we decided to use the same flooring throughout the public areas of the house.

Here's the last bit of the wood floor going into the kitchen. It was a puzzle at the end to figure out which pieces to use where so that the joints between the pieces were appropriately staggered.

Here's our lunch break with our work crew - a picnic in the front yard!

Gratuitous cute baby photo!

(Every blog needs at least one, right?)

After our floor was in, we were ready for baseboards. I think that Bernard and Lance did the majority of this for us - thanks guys!

We chose a bright, Carnival Red for the front door color.

Here's Jason getting all the details just right!

Oooo, shiny!

My mom came in to town to help with the finishing touches too. Here she is cleaning all our windows for us - thanks Mom!

Sometimes I don't even want to guess what's in a photo.... Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what Jason is doing here? :)

And here is the end of the last 'official' work day on the house. Great job, guys!

Cheers!

Now, it's time for a housewarming party! Only 3 years after we bought the house - that's not too late, is it?

Welcome friends!

Here's the view from the back door.

Another gratuitous cute kid picture - I think Tristan was planting watermelon seeds for us.

As usual, everyone likes to gather in the kitchen. Thankfully, ours seems well-suited for it.

A few months after finishing construction, Leif and I were finally able to add to our family. We adopted a puppy and named her Pantoufle (pronounced Pon-toof). She was the feistiest one of the litter, but has turned out to be a very sweet girl who loves all people.

Here we are on the ride home.

And with her first toy in our backyard for the first time.

Here's proof that Pantoufle took to Jason right from the very beginning!

And now for one final house project. We wanted to put up a bookshelf in our entry way.

We used a system called E-Z shelving that really did live up to it's name.

Leif did this one mostly on his own, though you can see that our curious girl is always willing to help with a project too.

He first attached rails to the wall, right over studs. Then, he put brackets on the rails and spanned the shelves between them.

The final product looks good!

Finally, this is what it's all about - a good place to live and share with family and friends. Leif and I would like to thank everybody who helped us so much over the years to get this project done. We couldn't have done it without you, and you know who you can call when you need a hand too. We owe you a lot more than one.....

Thanks!

A Real, Working Kitchen?! ....almost....

2008-08-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

First things first - we really did finish the deck! Take a look:

Next, we are getting details finished all over the place. It is really exciting to parts looking done. Here's our bedroom closet:

We bought a freestanding, Ikea system closet and installed it in a nook in the bedroom instead of installing a 'real' closet with doors and such. It was easier for us to install, and we think it's a good look as neither of us are big on sliding, closet doors.

This one is a full 8' tall. It's huge!

So, now to the good stuff! When we last left off with the kitchen, we had assembled our Ikea boxes and put them all in place and level. The countertop had been templated, but not yet installed. This starts at about two weeks ago:

Here are the supports we installed for the overhanging portion of the kitchen counter. It was not easy to find a guide on the right way to do this, so we just used the slimmest brackets we could find and plan on covering them up later so you don't see them.

Here's that same area from the top. Here the countertop installers have laid out the frame that will support the counter over the top of our cabinet boxes.

After hemming and hawing about what do pick for the countertop and if we could somehow do the work ourselves, we decided the best way would be to hire it out. We picked a solid white Corian. That hole above is for the kitchen sink.

And here it is! They installed it in two pieces, but they seal the joint in such a way that you would never know that by looking at it. The joint completely disappears.

Here's the view from the living room.

Next, comes the cutting out the cabinet doors. We were lucky enough to have both Ben over to help for this portion and to have Dan's table saw still on site. It made the job so much faster and easier (and more exact!).

We're using the same material for the doors that we used for our bathroom cabinets. It's 3/4" vertical-grained, carmelized bamboo plywood that comes in big, heavy, 4' x 8' sheets.

Cutting these doors takes teamwork!

Next, came a lot of sanding and finishing. They nearly covered the whole deck!

Leif finds the shady spot. Be sure to keep straight which container you are sticking your brush into and which one you are drinking out of there!

This was the trickiest piece. It's the frame behind the wall oven and built-in microwave. We were so afraid of breaking it!

Here are all of the boards drying in our living room. We finished them with a wax product called Osmo Polyx-Oil that is solvent-free and made from plant oils and waxes. It's very low-odor too so it's okay to use inside.

Here's that tricky frame piece in place, just waiting for the appliances.

With the countertop in, the next step was to ask our electrician, Mark Barber, and our plumber, Saul Archilla, to come back and finish up their work. You can see in the photo of the front of the house above that the exterior light has been installed by the front door. (We also painted the fascia boards.)

Here's the sink in place. We got the sink and the garbage disposal at Lowe's and the faucet from Ikea. The water filter is Aquasana. The sink, dishwasher and microwave oven are all fully operational. We are still waiting for upgraded electrical service to turn the wall oven on. The strip lights on the walls will be covered by our cabinet boxes (the undercabinet lighting).

The cooktop is by KitchenAid, as is all of the appliances. That big box below it is our down draft vent. It's the kind that pops up behind the cooktop when you turn it on. As you can see the yellow hose sitting in the cabinet there, the gas has not been connected to the cooktop yet.

Now comes the really tricky part. We needed to drill the cabinet doors for the hinges. This is pretty exact work and it's very easy to make mistakes on it, so we were pretty nervous about cutting into our nice, finished doors. The especially hard part for us was that we had all of these hinges that came with our Ikea boxes that we wanted to use for the doors, but because the official Ikea doors come with pre-drilled holes, Ikea does not provide you with a drilling template. We had to make one ourselves! (Yikes!) Above, Leif is drilling the first door panel while Jason 'supervises'. You can see our little tester piece on the ground before them.

And here's the first one in place. Not too shabby!

It's the end of another long day. Over the fridge behind me, you can see the first two cabinet doors in place.

Monday evening and we installed the rest of the wall of cabinet fronts. We still need to install most of the pulls and to align the doors by adjusting the hinges (the most annoying part of the job!). You can also see here how the microwave/oven turned out. The space underneath them will be a drawer soon, but we need to go back to Ikea to get the right sized hardware.

This is our pull-out pantry. I think it's pretty nifty!

We laid out the next set to be installed on the floor of the living room to make sure we got them in the right order. They were all cut out from the same piece of plywood to make sure that the grain would align from door to door. The blue tape marks the top, hinge-side of each one.

And here they are in place - almost....

Leif's drilling some more placement holes.

Here's the final side installed around the dishwasher.

Next time, I'll go into a few more details about how the cabinets were installed and note some other finishes, but mostly the news should be about installing the wood floor!

A Nice, Big Deck....

2008-08-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

This is the 'before' shot of the back yard. Notice the height of the door off of the ground. It's a BIG step down. We really need a deck back there!

We found these interesting concrete block foundations at Lowe's. The idea behind them is that you don't have to dig any holes or pour any concrete, but that you just place these on the ground and then 'float' the deck over them. They are preformed to accept either 2x's laid across them or 4x4 posts standing upright. They get their stability from being attached to the members around them. We won't attach the deck to the house with a stringer though. It will just sit as a floating platform on it's own.

We started by laying out one line of blocks with one joist perpendicular to the house at a height just underneath the back door threshold in the one place where the blocks would all rest on existing concrete walks.

Leif makes sure that first one is level.

Here's Jason setting up the second joist next to the first.

We cut out little 4x4 posts as we went, making sure that everything was level in multiple directions.

Jason tests the structural soundness.

Here's a close-up of the blocks in action. We dug the lawn out down to firm soil to place the block on. Then we custom cut the 4x4 to the right height to be level and used Simpson hardware to hold the joists in place.

The end of the first weekend of deck building. It's not a bad start!

Here are the blocks in place for the smaller leg of the 'L' of the deck.

There's the finished structure, part of which rests on an existing concrete slab that will become the 'patio'.

The shape of the deck is totally in place. Now comes the pretty part:

Check out my skills of a sealer! Step 1 - Pick straight, good-looking boards. Step 2 - Pick a good sealer. We're using Cabot's Clear Solution in Cedar, the same as was used for our window trim. Step 3 - 'Paint' it on!

Does Leif look tired in this picture? It's hard to tell, but it's about 6:30 am, on a Sunday! That's dedication!

Ben, Steph and Harper came over to help later in the day. Harper helped Steph install the hardware on the bedroom door.

It looks good, doesn't it? Now this bedroom is the most complete room in the house, as it's only missing trim and the closet fittings.

Later, when Harper was napping, Steph volunteered for some delicate finish work around the windows. She looks so pro!

Ben and Leif are doing a little plumbing work here. We needed to fix the hose bib anyway, as it got broken during construction, so we're relocating it to the edge of the deck.

Ben and Leif are straightening things out a bit as they install the deck boards. With the floated system, this kind of adjustment was really easy.

Gratuitous cute baby picture :)

Ben and Leif installing the deck boards

The site supervisor makes sure that the guys are working hard!

....so the deck isn't quite finished yet, but we got really close! We only have to install the skirt boards and seal the top of the decking. Hopefully, there will be finished photos next week.

At the end of a long day.....

So Much To Say

2008-07-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

For all of you that have been asking, I am sorry it has taken us so long to get the blog updated with the current house progress. It has not been for a lack of things to say.... Sadly, it HAS been due to a lack of a home internet connection! After two great months living the life of luxury at Casa Segre/Chen (thanks guys!), we moved back into the house about a month ago, (or a week after our last post). I think it will be about 2 more weeks before we get our internet connection back, but I will try my best to do more updates before then....

So much has been happening with the house work, I barely know where to start. Here is the recap on the last month. It basically covers all of July:

This is where we last left off. The house was a mess, but ready for paint!

This is the view into the kitchen.

Leif is helping Dan put jamb extensions around the front door.

And the painting begins! ....and after more than a month, we are still painting! This is one of those jobs that sounds so easy and painless to do before you begin, but once you get into it you realize that doing it right really does take a lot of time and effort. There is all the preping of surfaces and edges and protecting and clean up and needing to be careful around edges that goes along with it too. It's not just about putting the roller on the wall....

The good new is that we are using Olympic brand paint (from Lowe's), and it is all VOC free, so it doesn't stink while we are living there and doing the work. It is even GreenSeal Certified so we know it's not polluting the air inside our home. It goes on really well also, especially the primer.

Here is our finished stucco surface from the front. The stucco work finished up about a week after we moved in. The fascia boards still need to be painted though.

Here is the crew installing the stucco. It is a hand-troweled, smooth finish.

Here is the finished wall in the back of house.

This is a close-up of the finish. The photo was taken just after it was installed, so it has cracked a little since then, but overall the cracking has been very minimal, which is unusual for a smooth finish. We think this is partly because the contractor allowed the base coat to cure for longer than usual before applying the top coat and because of the way we detailed the edge of the windows with casing beads.

Now back to the inside work, we finished painting the kitchen first so that we could get the cabinets in as soon as possible. Jason, Bernard and Francesca (and Lilah!) came over to help. Thanks guys!

Francesca got our laundry room cleaned up and put the final coat of paint on the walls so that we could get our machines reinstalled.

The next day, Leif and I put the new floor in and were able to get them hooked up right away. The flooring is red rubber tiles that was donated to us by Jason's dad!

Back to the cabinets, here's Jason and Bernard putting our Ikea cabinet boxes together. We decided to go with an inexpensive cabinet box, but put our own nice doors on them so that they look custom. Everyone tells us that the Ikea boxes are great, if you glue the edges as you put them together.

We also discovered two other good tricks for working with the Ikea cabinets. One is to not use the legs that they come with, but build your own base instead. This way, they are very stable and you can level the base instead of the cabinets. The second is that you shouldn't be afraid of customizing the boxes as you need to. Above, Leif is cutting holes through the base of our cooktop base cabinet so our gas line and downdraft vent can get through.

Here, Leif is cutting the corresponding hole for the downdraft vent through the cabinet base. He is getting really good with that little saw!

Lunch Break!!

The trusty nail-gun gets some good use too. This is the base for the tall pantry cabinets.

Teamwork! The guys are putting this wall cabinet onto a rail support channel.

And here comes the fridge...

Does it fit?

Just perfectly.....although we do wish we had been able to get the kitchen door to swing out instead of in (an ordering snafu!).

At the end of the day, here's the outline of our kitchen. I'm standing where the cooktop will be.

Here's another view of the kitchen. In the foreground are all of our appliances, waiting in their boxes for installation.

Finally, for now, here are a few photos of the carpet we are putting down in the bedrooms. It is a modular tile system from FLOR. FLOR is a great, very sustainable company, and they have treated us REALLY well. See them here: www.flor.com.

We picked two different product lines and are going to combine them in a checkerboard pattern. They are called Toy Poodle, in Cece Chalk, and Next In Line, in Sage Grey. Above, Leif is laying them out, starting from the middle of the room, and testing different ways that the pattern can go together.

This is how they go together. They don't get glued or stapled to the ground, and they don't go over a carpet pad. They are stuck to each other by special, sticky 'dots' and floated over the old floor.

Here's a close up shot of the 'dots'. The sticky side is face up, and you put one at each corner of each carpet tile.

Here's the finished product! And we did the whole thing in one evening after work. :)

Leif checks out the door hardware while enjoying the new carpet.

Next post, we build a deck!

2 Weeks of Progress

2008-06-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

So, I got really busy with.... well, life these last two weeks, and I let my posting duties slip a bit. That doesn't mean that things haven't been happening on the house though, so this will be an overall, bring-everyone-up-to-speed-on-what's-been-happening kind of post.

June 16, 2008

When we last left off, the walls had just been insulated and most of the windows had been installed.

All of the windows are in here, but there's still just a hole for the front door.

The formwork has been removed from the new foundation wall, and it looks great. After the house was set down on to it's new foundation wall, they were able to finish sheathing this wall and install the window.

On the inside, the insulation for the ceilings arrived on-site, but hadn't been installed yet. This is R-30 batts from JohnsManville so it is formaldehyde free just like the wall insulation.

Our new heater was installed in just one day. There are our new, shiny ducts running up in the attic space!

June 18, 2008

Here's the new back (kitchen) door installed. It arrived last Tuesday. The doors not being on site has really been a cause of delay for us. The front door still is not there, but is supposed to be delivered tomorrow morning. One of the reasons it was late was that they installed the wrong glass in it at first (white laminate!) and had to replace it (with clear).

June 20, 2008

This day felt like a big transformation. Dan, the contractor, had all of the paper and stucco lathe on the house and was installing the notorious window trim. The redwood trim has been the cause of many conversations, questions and headaches (how to waterproof, how to fasten, etc), but now that it is being put into place, it feels like it was worth it. We think it really makes the windows look like they 'pop'. :)

Here's the view from the backyard.

This is one of the rear bedroom windows.

June 21, 2008

It's one day later and all of the trim is now on.

Here is the kitchen door and window.

A detail shot of the door trim.

This shot really shows the depth that we like with this detail.

Also, drywall was installed....

.....inside of the whole house in just one day!

June 25, 2008

This was the scene at the house today. There was full crew outside taping off all of the openings and applying the first coat of stucco.

They were mixing it up in the front yard.

Here is the front of the house half way covered. They are still trying to avoid the door area until tomorrow when the door will be delivered.

The chimney is going to be stucco too.

There was also a second crew inside taping and mudding the drywall.

This is the view from the kitchen into the living room.

And here is the opposite view back into the kitchen. What a mess!

Next time, a front door and more stucco!!

Insulation

2008-06-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

The insulation is going in! It's Johns Manville Formaldehyde Free so it won't be off-gassing any nasty fumes into the house. R-13 for the walls and R-30 for the ceilings.....the walls are about 2/3 done, but ceilings aren't in at all yet. That will probably be happening tomorrow. We're insulating all of the interior walls of the house for acoustic reasons too.

Here's the part of the house that's not insulated yet. It's the part that needed the new foundation wall....

....which was poured this past Wednesday. After the forms come off and the new sill plate and rim joist are put in, the contractor will be able to finish the north wall by sheathing it with the OSB and installing the last window.

Here is where the new foundation meets the existing chimney.

This is basically our exterior palette. The boards are the redwood that will be the window and door trim. They have been treated with Cabot Clear Solution in the Cedar tint. The two 'pie tins' are possible stucco colors. This past weekend, we mixed up the two stucco colors that we're trying to choose between because those paper color charts just never are quite right. The one on the left actually looks much darker and more blue than it does in the photo. We are currently leaning towards the one on the right....

This is the rear kitchen window and door. We've had a little scheduling problem with getting our doors in a timely manner. The back door is supposed to be in early next week, and the front door will, hopefully, follow soon after that.

Here's the obligatory overall shot from the front of the house.

And finally, here you can see that some of the windows have their metal, corner strapping in place. These walls are going to be rock solid when we are done!

Next week, we look forward to stucco lathe and drywall!!

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2008-06-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened at the house in the last week. It went from looking like a mess of sticks back to somewhat resembling a house again. Check these out:

Here's the view from the back yard last week....

... and here it is yesterday. All of the openings are framed and the OSB sheathing has been installed.

This is the front door and stoop last week. Note the ugly little awning and barely framed window opening.

Here it was on Saturday. The awning was removed, the door and window framed and the OSB partially installed.

This was the view from the street on Saturday.

Saturday was also the day we received some bad news. The north wall (the one with the chimney above) had a pretty damaged foundation. Several cracks were visible and, as you will see below, it was leaning out of plane too.

This is a level we are trying to hold up against the edge of the wall. It was not possible because of how far the foundation was skewed.

2 1/2"!!!

Here is one of the cracks in the foundation.

Was the Bird of Paradise to blame? We're not sure....

It was pretty obvious that we needed a new foundation on the north wall. So, we got the permits to fix it, and Dan, our contractor, dug out the old one. In the photo above, the house has been temporarily supported from underneath, and the sill plate, rim joist, old concrete and plantings have all been removed and a new trench dug out. New rebar and formwork is in place just waiting for the concrete.

Getting to happier news, I know the above photo is a little confusing, but this is the new header between the living room and the kitchen being installed. There are temporary braces on either side of it to support the ceiling while the beam was put into place. The contractor is putting it so that the bottom of the beam is at the ceiling level. This will allow us to have a nice, open floor plan with no exposed beam after the wall is removed.

Here is a better shot of the new beam.

And here is the best news of all - Windows!! As of yesterday, two of the new windows had been installed!

Here's a shot from the inside of the living room...

...and another one from the front yard.

Here is the house's current occupant - look closely for the eyes!

Finally, amidst all of this chaos, Jason's little garden continues to grow. Check out this great tomato!!

Down to the bones....

2008-05-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

Another day and a bit more of our house is gone. On the positive side, there is an excellent visual connection between the front yard and the backyard!

The front from the southwest

The front from the northwest

With all of the siding removed, it is interesting to really look at the framing underneath. Here, you can see the framing where two old windows used to be underneath where the current one is.

This shot shows that there used to be a window on the left side, and when the current window was installed, they cut right through the diagonal wall bracing.

The back of the house from the east

Here's the framing of the kitchen window and wall

This is the living room wall next to the fireplace where there used to be a window a long time ago.

The front stoop is a mess!

This is looking from the living room into the kitchen. The ceiling wasn't supposed to be taken down, but it fell out of the whole living room. Oops!

Leif in the living room

The front door still locks so at least we know that the house is secure!

This is the view into the kitchen

With all of the siding off, we can also really see the status of the framing. We found some termite damage in the back at one of the window frames in the smaller bedroom.

This view makes us wish we could have had cathedral ceilings....

A Nekkid House

2008-05-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

Demolition has begun on the house. The construction crew has taken off most of the stucco and it's like somebody stripped the skin off of it to disclose the guts underneath. If you thought it was ugly before, wait until you see the it now!

The front from the northeast

The front door

The front from the southwest

The gray stuff left in the walls is insulation

The rear of the house from the east

This is a close up of the back. Some of the old tar paper is still on and a lot of the insulation has come out of the wall.

There's all our stucco and faux stone in the dumpster.

Here's a view from the inside. It's easy to see all the cracks in the walls now. All of this plaster will be replaced by new drywall soon.

Here the plaster is bulging out from the wall and falling off just by the impact of what the construction crew has been doing to the outside. No interior demolition has happened yet.

Demolition Begins?

2008-05-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

If you look through the window in this photo, you'll notice that there is a big orange thing parked out on the street in front of our house. That is our proof that something has started at our house. The dumpster has arrived.

So, because nothing has really happened yet at the house during this first week, we decided to post some 'before' pictures. Here is the current state of the house:

The front from the northwest.

The front from the southwest

The back from the east (ouch!)

The living room
(click on the pictures to read the little red text)

The entryway/library and the entrance to the bedrooms. The double doors lead to the laundry.

From the living room looking into the kitchen (and a bit through the bathroom door)

The kitchen looking into the living room

The south wall of the kitchen - imagine tall cabinets here!

and the kitchen looking out to the backyard.

Next time.....real demolition?

Big News

2008-05-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

The big news is Construction!!! I know, I know - right now you're thinking, "Haven't they been under construction for a long time?" and the answer to that question is "Yes, we have". The difference now is that we have hired an actual contractor to kick things into overdrive and really get a lot of work done in a short amount of time. The contractors will be coming in to demo the whole exterior of the house, install new windows and doors, structurally brace it, and add new stucco and paint-ready drywall. We will then finish up ourselves with the painting, kitchen, decks and flooring. It is going to be a very exciting couple of weeks!

Here are some some plans:

This is the existing plan with the areas of demolition marked in blue. All of the exterior walls will be stripped of their stucco, doors and windows removed and the rear deck will be torn off too. The old floor heater and the wall between the kitchen and living rooms will also be removed.

This is the new plan with the contractor's work high lighted in green. It doesn't look like much on the plan, but the whole exterior (except for the roof and the decks) will be new when they get done.

Below are some photos of what we have been doing to get the house ready for the construction crew:

Here's Jason starting his vegetable patch.

Leif and Oda tackle the front yard plants.

This is the lavender that was next to the front door. It was massive, so we split some of it into smaller plants too. Most of these transplants are doing well in the backyard.

Leif fought this Juniper with the pick....

....and the Juniper won.

Jason and Oda happily tending the side yard vines.

We did a little interior cleaning up too. We had to move everything out of the house and into the garage.

Here Leif is leveling the new laundry room doors.

Now the real fun starts. Stayed tuned as the pictures (and posts) should be fast and furious over the coming weeks!

3 Month Recap....

2008-01-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year Everyone!

I have to admit that I heard a lot of "What's going on with the house. Why haven't you updated your blog?" over the holiday season....well, it hasn't been because we haven't been doing any work. We've actually gotten a lot done, not least of which because we were able to call our electrician and plumber back to the house to finish their rough work. And as of this weekend, we are elated to say that the stars aligned, and we now have laundry in the house!!! I think the last time that I didn't have to haul laundry bags downstairs or feed coins into a machine was when I lived with my parents, so this is truly a happy day.

Here's what we've been up to for the last few months:

First, it was time to build more walls.

Here's the opening between our bedroom and the laundry room.

We built the walls on the ground and then tilted them into place....

...like this.

Here's Jason using the nail gun.

The walls in place. I'm standing in what will be the laundry room, and Jason is in the hall. The bedroom is on the other side of the new walls.

Next, we installed the bedroom door. This is it from the inside...

...and here it is from the outside of the room.

Jason and Leif patching the ceiling...I'm a little short for that kind of work.

Uh-oh!! That face is never a good sign!

After we installed the laundry room door header, I'm putting in the framing for the dropped ceiling.

With the walls built, it was time to call Mark the Electrician and Saul the Plumber! At this point, our 'critical path' for construction is to get the laundry room working.

Here's the kitchen wall that will someday have the fridge, oven and microwave.

One of the things we needed done by the plumber was a new clean-out for the septic line. In doing that, Saul discovered that the cast iron sewer pipe was toast. In his words, 'you cannot tell where the dirt starts and the rust stops....and the whole pipe is rust'. So, the whole thing had to be replaced under the house. Ah, the joys of home ownership!

In the midst of all this, we can't neglect the yard.

Is Jason sweeping the grass?

Here's the laundry room all piped and wired and inspected and ready to be closed up

It is located between the two bedrooms, so we're putting sound insulation around everything.

Ta-Da!

We finished the wall, and called Saul and Mark back to finish their part.

Here they are, in all their glory! The washer and dryer are plugged-in, connected and fully functional. Many thanks to Oda for her donation of the machines to our cause. :)

This is our new tankless water heater

And everybody is happy!

'Labor' Day Party

2007-09-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

In honor of the Labor Day weekend, we had a little labor day of our own. Thanks so much to everyone who gave up one of their long-weekend days and came over to help us out on what turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year. This was our most productive effort on the house in a year, and we couldn't have done it without all your help. Three cheers for the work crew! We have the best friends!

Before we get to the photos though, here's a little something new this post. These are before and after plans. The first one shows the house as it was before we started the weekend, and the second is how it looked at the end.

The orange areas are the work areas that show the places where we did the demolition. We took out all of the walls, doors, cabinetry, trim and (accidentally) part of the ceiling too.

The big light green square shows the area where we patched the ceiling and the dark green rectangle is the one new wall that we built. With some strategic tarp placement, this allowed us to close the second bedroom off from the rest of the house. We're hoping to finish the bedrooms walls in the next week or so....

And now, on to the good stuff:

With the ceiling reinforced, we were ready to remove interior walls! Good riddance to attic work!!

Here's the reminder that we are still actually living in the house - we're protecting the 'kitchen'.

A little design consultation....

...and then it was time to remove some walls!

Is this my new playpen?

Um, I guess not...

Lance and Bernard tackle the kitchen

Everyone likes the 'bash gudder'

Go, Lance, Go

Woo-hoo! The nasty cabinet is gone!

The walls are coming down!

Jason likes tearing walls apart

Ben does some 'selective' demolition

This used to be the wall between the living room and the smallest bedroom

Taking down plaster walls makes a BIG mess

Here's the first shot seeing all the way from the living room through to the back bedroom on the other side of the house. That cream colored thing at the back of the photo is not a wall. It's the tarp we put up to protect our bedroom.

There was a lot of dust in the air.

Lunch Break! Steph and Francesca made us these awesome sandwiches!

Everybody digs in

Um, why is there a big hole in the ceiling? Oops!

Here was the last support standing in the middle of the house.

WOW!

Removing the final wall bases

Leif pulls down some more ceiling

Are we the new 'American Gothic' or what?

Hey! Who threw that?

Ben!!!!!

Clean up time

Yay Crew!

Great work all!

Time to start building now!!
This is the new bedroom wall. We built it on the ground and then tilted it up into place.

Um, what are they doing?

Here's the wall going up...it's not quite plumb yet.

We love our nail gun. It is the most time-saving tool we have.

Am I doing this right?

Here's our new wall, waiting for gyp. board, and new bedroom ceiling.

We've decided that Jason is part monkey.

Here's the end of a successful weekend. This shot is great because you can see the outline of where the walls used to be on the ground with the new one in place.

Up next: more wall building...

The Plans

2007-08-20T16:26:00.001-07:00

Thanks to some reminding, I realized that I hadn't posted the plans for the house since we got our permit. Here they are, before and after:

Original House with the Site

Original Plan

New Plan
(I don't know why they are different sizes. Click on them and they will get bigger.) Don't forget to scroll down to check out our first round of structural changes.

Structure I

2007-08-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

Things are starting to move quickly around the house now, and a lot has happened since our last posting. First, we installed the door to one of the bedrooms and put up enough drywall to make the room complete, just in time for our roommate to arrive! Next, we've started the structural upgrades. We had to add four 4x8 beams and about fifteen 2x6 ceiling joists to support the ceiling in a new way so that we'll be able to remove some of the interior walls. And in the midst of it all, we made time for a little gardening and yard maintenance. We got help with this from Jason, Bernard and Leif's mom, Oda, too. The next step will be to clean out the house in preparation of some major demolition!!

This is the header framing for the new bedroom door. We had very tight clearances to work with here - about 1/2".

This is the complete door framing from within the room....

...and this is the same view with the door and some of the drywall installed.

Leif gets the tall jobs. :)

We cleared the underbrush out from the front of the house.

Leif and Oda dig up some plants from the side yard to replant in the newly cleaned out area.

The vines and ferns we planted along the driveway are starting to flourish.

Look at all that lumber! And it all needs to go up into the attic. We're installing these new ceiling joists and beams so that we can remove some of the existing walls that are currently being supported by the shorter ceiling joists.

Leif and Jason carry the first beam into the front yard. It's a 4x8 that is 18' long. We got them up into the attic by passing them from the front yard through a window and up into a hole we made in the ceiling.

They're twice as long as the car!

The first step upstairs was to move all of the ceiling insulation out of the area that we need to work in. That's it in the big pile in the back of the photo. Props to Jason for helping out on this!

The Work Area

Here are some brackets sitting on top of the bearing wall where the new beams and ceiling joists will rest. We put these in place first so we would know where the joists would need to go before we got them up in the attic.

Here's Jason maneuvering a joist into place. This is difficult because there are lots of intermediate supports and sloping ceilings that get in the way of rotating these things in the attic.

Peek-A-Boo!

Those first couple of attic pictures were taken with the flash on. Here's what it's really like to be working up there.

Plus, it's August, so it's really hot! Bernard found this out the hard way.

And did we mention that it's really messy work too?

Here it is almost done. All the joists and beams are in place and many of them are nailed in. All of the roof supports have been repositioned so that they now rest on the beams, which in turn, take the load to the bearing walls.

When this is done, we'll be ready to do some serious demolition. We'd like to plan a 'labor' day of our own for the Saturday of Labor Day weekend (Sept. 1st) to get started. We'll be taking out three major walls and most of the kitchen too. We'd appreciate as much help as we can get, and we will be providing lunch and lots of cold beverages. So, anyone who ever wanted to swing a 16 lb. sledge hammer around for a few hours, now is your chance!! Email me or 'comment' below if you'd like to come.

a long overdue update....

2007-07-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

I'm just seeing now how very long it has been since our last posting.... It's embarrassing really. (sigh) Such is life and it goes on. Perhaps it's needless to say, but I haven't been posting because I thought their wasn't really much happening on the house. However, I am now looking back at the months of photos since the last post and realizing that there are quite a few things that I could have added. So here's a big apology from us to all the 'crew' that came over to help. I'll be better in the future :)

The big news for us is that we just got our permit!!!! Now, we can finally get going full-steam ahead with no more excuses. It is very exciting for us. We have already started - last weekend we knocked out a few walls in one of the bedrooms and framed the new bedroom closet and half of the laundry closet. (I can't wait to have a laundry room!)

The bad news in all of this is that our camera seems to have called it quits recently. Pictures may be sporadic until we get it replaced, but here are a few to share until then.....

Francesca and Stephanie prepping for new vines.

Ben and Francesca digging holes.

Eleanor "planted".

The New Vines

Leif and Bernard build a new deck at the back door.

Eleanor builds a 'castle'.

Francesca seals the new deck.

And so does Bernard.

Thanks Gang!!

The Finished Deck!

These are two Star Pines from Leif's Mom that lived in our back yard in pots for a long time. We finally decided that it was time to plant them:

They look good here, but they haven't weathered the move that well in the meantime. We're not sure if it was the frost or the soil quality or the amount of watering or...? Anybody know how to heal trees?

My first time using my Architect's stamp!

This is the new opening for the bathroom door. The old door was 24" and the new one is 36". We had to remove the old header, take out a few studs in the existing wall and install this new header.

This is the same thing from the other side....

...and here is the door installed.

At about the same time, we also finally got around to installing the doors on our bathroom cabinets. They are made of solid bamboo plywood - very pretty!

This used to be the wall of the bedroom closet. We're making the opening wider and going to make a spot for our new laundry room.

Here's Leif removing plaster from the wall.

We're going to be doing a lot of wall framing in the future, so we went and got a new toy! This is our new air-powered framing nailer. It's like the ones you see people shoot nails across a room with in the movies. It's kind of scary, but it make the job go super fast!

Here is the new framed opening for the bedroom closet.

Next week: drywall and a new bedroom door!

Bathroom? What bathroom?

2006-07-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

The 2nd bathroom that is. Yes, we now find outselves living in the 3 bedroom, 1 bath house that the city of LA thinks we own! Over the last two weekends, with much help from Ben and Carl, the bathroom came down. I think the pictures speak for themselves generally, so here you go:

Bathroom Cabinet

2006-05-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

We took Monday off of work, to try to make some progress on our bathroom cabinets. Ben came over to help us out and to try to keep us from screwing up too badly - Thanks Ben!! The bottom line is, the cabinets don't have doors yet, but they are in! The pictures will tell the story.....next week, tile countertop!

Building the Boxes

Realizing that I made a miscalculation!!
(Don't worry, Ben had a solution for us.)

Box with Drawer

Ready to install....almost

The Sink Fits!

Is it level?

Screw the box in place....

...and check us out! Spot On!

The Mega-Drawer solution!

Our Ikea sink - the $80 Hollviken

Ta-Da!

Bathroom Progress II

2006-05-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

The big news is the shower is working! ...and quite nicely too. We can't say "finished" yet because we still need to refinish the tub and get a shower door, but that won't happen for a little while yet. We finished the tile off by spreading a bright white grout into the tile joints, caulking the edges around the tub and sealing the grout so we don't get stains. Check it out:

Safety first!

1. Mix it up
Custom Building Products Sanded Grout

2. Spread it on

3. Watch the Haze Form

4. Clean Tile - but not yet sealed.
I don't have a photo yet, but the sealer makes the color *pop* a bit better.

13 May 2006 - Ben, Steph and Eleanor came over to help us start with the bathroom cabinets. We're using Medex MDF for the boxes. Medex is line of MDF that is good for use in moist enviroments and is formaldahyde-free so it won't off-gas harmful chemicals in your house. We're going to face them 3/4", solid, vertical, carmelized bamboo (ordered through Living Green in Culver City - they're very helpful there!). We got almost all of the pieces cut out this weekend and built the boxes that will become the drawers:

Who's excited about a work-day?

We start 'em young....

The Project Manager

The Crew

The Flower Girls

Playing during our Lunch Break

It's a box!

Clean-up Time!

The Reward for a hard day's work

Tile!

2006-04-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

Just this last weekend, we got started on actual tile work in the shower.

First we threw up some Wonderboard, which is insanely heavy and difficult to work with... But we managed. =) Then we filled the joints with mortar and fiberglass tape. The mortar was tougher to work with than the setting compound that we used for drywall joints. We let that dry for a week and then set about to begin tiling.

We used a "bright white" mortar (Flexbond by Custom Building Products) to set a bed for our tile. Its a thinset mortar so it takes very little mortar, much less than one would think, actually. The mortar gets raked with a toothed trowel and then the tile gets placed up onto the mortar bed. The tiles are tape faced into decently sized sheets, which really makes intallation fairly painless. The toughest part was aligning each sheet with one another ... and with gravity. Our level was our friend. Once a few sheets were basicaly set in place, steph would push them into place with pressure on a tile float. Then we'd move on to the next section, laying down fresh mortar and then setting tile.

We did half the wall before lunch and the half after. It went fairly quickly and was on of our best progress days since demolition. And that felt really, really good. =)

And, as you can see, I can't format this blog to save my life. Sorry about that. I'll make it pretty later.

Bathroom Progress

2006-02-13T23:01:00.000-08:00

While the going is slow, we are making progress on the bathroom. The only piece of demolition left is to remove the door and widen the opening. More positive work has been added - we built the new wall at the end of the tub and have started installing the gyp. board. The tub has been sanded and bondoed and is ready to for the refinishing to commence.

We ordered tile a few weeks ago, and just got the word today that it shipped. We're getting glass mosaic from Hakatai (www.hakatai.com). They are super nice to work with and, for you others in "the trade", they offer great discounts. We used their online custom gradient tool to mix our own blend and are really expecting it to look great. I'd guess it'll be a while before we get it installed and pictures up, so keep checking back and, in the meantime, check out the sink demolition picts below:

Value Added!

2005-11-28T20:57:00.000-08:00

We're back! Both with doing work and our internet connection. It took us longer than we thought to get DSL installed, but we finally did on Tuesday. We got service with SpeakEasy, the DSL without the phone line, and so far it has been great. So, on to the house, it's been all about bathrooms recently. The diverter for the shower broke, in what had been our "good" bathroom. So, we gave the lower bath a good scrubbing and coat of paint to clean it up, and we started using that one. And we decided that our first piece of real additive work to the house should be a new bathroom. Here's some pictures of were we were a few weeks ago:

Value Added!

Move-In Weekend

2005-10-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

We moved in this weekend, which means that no real actual work got done on the house. So, I thought I would post a plan of the house instead. Hopefully, it will help with orientation when you are viewing the photos. In the future, we'll post changes to the plan as they happen.

And because we've just moved, we don't have an internet connection at home yet. This will probably slow up our ability to update the blog for a few weeks until we get it set up....

Work Weekend

2005-10-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

It was work weekend at Hillcrest and look at the happy faces!

We got much more done than we thought we would. Tomo, Shana, Bernard and Francesca all came over and spent the day tearing things apart and getting the place ready for us to move in. We ripped out beams in the second bedroom, took down all kinds of popcorn ceiling, tore out trim and cabinetry, prepped for painting and secured the garage. Check us out:

Francesca and I rehang the garage door

Bernard and Tomo rip stuff apart...

...and find more evidence of termites past.

We discovered two or three more layers of materials under the kitchen floor.

We tear pieces of the bedrooms out...

...and find that the beams aren't supporting the ceiling, but the other way around.

We scrape the ceilings free!

And David brings pizza for the construction crew!! Thanks Pop!!

Next week: We move in. :)

Electric Starts! and Renee and Kira visit!!

2005-10-10T21:29:00.000-07:00

Renee and Kira were in town this weekend -

- and they came over on Sunday and helped finish ripping out the rest of the damaged flooring!!

On to the electrical..... so this is what we had to work with -

And this is the new stuff (so far)

Anybody notice what's missing in the above photo?

10 points if you said insulation. :( Yes, now we know for sure that the only insulation in the house is in the attic. It's funny how quickly priorities can change....

The State of the Floor

2005-10-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

We've spent the last several weeks on demolition. We've ripped out all of the shag carpet (which we're going to recycle) and padding and nails/staples. Underneath most of the carpet, we found oak, tongue-and-groove flooring. The floor in Bedroom #1 looks the best of all the rooms in the house. It's only major problem is that somebody painted the room without using a drop cloth, so there are big white splotches all over the floor. Will sanding the floor to refinish it get them out?

In Bedroom #2, there was vinyl tile over a sheet of masonite over about half of the floor. This should have protected the floor underneath, but they used so many nails that it just left it full of holes. On the other half of the floor, they glued down felt tiles. We pulled them up, but they've left a nasty residue all over, a mixture of foam and glue. Does anyone know how we can get it off the wood?
Now we get to the bad part. The floors in Bedroom #3 , the hallway and the living room were all extensively damaged. It looks like there is water damage from something that would have soaked in from above, like a carpet shampooer being used on thick carpet and there are also stains from an animal. There is definitely still odor from the later.
So, needless to say, we're ripping out all of the damaged floor. The subfloor underneath is 1x6's and they're kind of a whitish color. At first, we were afraid that the color meant that there was a fungus growing all over them, but then we realized that they were used as formwork for concrete and the white is just concrete residue. Good news there, but of course there is still some water staining and the animal smell to get rid of. Any help there?

Here is some termite evidence as well. The house was tented in escrow so they should be all gone now.

And finally, Tomo, Shana and Zelda came over and kindly brought us lunch on Sunday:

Up next: Electrical work starts Tuesday!! Renee and Kira are visiting!! and we're going to put out the word for a work-weekend soon - anybody up for Oct. 15th/16h?

2005-09-06T21:10:00.000-07:00

Here's the new house - as purchased and as is. We're going to try to do as much of the work as we can ourselves and try to document it here on our blog as we go along. Since this is our first house and will be our first time doing a lot of this kind of work, we're hoping to get you all to help out! And while physical labor is always appreciated, I was more hoping that anyone reading this would write in with suggestions and help whenever you see something that we're doing something a** backward.

Thanks! -stephanie and leif

More original photos - it gets ugly so just remember to think of it as full of possiblity:

Front door

Back yard

Inside