Here is the (new) House

Whenever they catch you they will kill you – but first they must catch you…

Wow 2011 was a crappy year. I might be tempting fate by saying this before 2011 is actually over, but to hell with it! If I never see 2011 again it will be a year too soon. Man, what an exceptionally crappy year it has been – for pretty much everyone I know. A year ago I thought we'd be much further along with our projects by this time, but of course I didn't foresee all the craziness that has been this last 12 months. As we round out our 13^th month living in CA we're just now starting to feel like we actually live here – branching out and making plans, trudging along and hoping 2012 doesn't suck as much as it's predecessor. Now on to the pretty pictures…

Well the guest house is exterior is really mostly done. The only part left to go is the upper trim which you really cannot see as the fascia comes down and blocks it. But trust me it's there – one small row of white top trim left to do – we are maybe halfway done with the top trim for the whole house but the chilly temps and decreased number of daylight hours are making this take much longer than we thought (wow that sounds familiar!)– hopefully by the end of the year it will be all done. Oh and notice the new color for the concrete base – dark grey-ish rather than the yucky beige it used to be. This will eventually be blocked by a raised planter bed and colorful, hardy plants. Eventually anyway.

Also check out the rabbit that Eric dug out of the dirt – I guess he used to be a cute little lawn ornament but spent several years underground and now looks worse for the wear – in fact the rabbit was buried upside down, so when Eric grabbed it by the ears to free it the ears broke off – we glued them back on but he still has lots of scars, which is kind of fitting for us given this past year. We thought about sanding and repainting him, but we kinda like him all scuffed up – he reminds me of "Watership Down" thus I call him "Bigwig"!

We did replace the old rotten wine barrels in the driveway side with new fiberglass wine barrels and new plantings. Unfortunately within a day of planting the deer came and ate most of our colorful (and evidently tasty flowers) so much for "deer resistant"! Damn, deer are destructive.

Of course now that the guest house looks new and shiny, the main house looks pretty sad in comparison. The thought of re-siding the main house seems downright insurmountable right now. But rather than focusing on the daunting task ahead let's focus on what we did accomplish! The house on the right does look much, much nicer right?

We also decided to replace the old heating system in the main house - it worked but not very efficient and was certainly approaching end of life. While the install experience was none too fun (unreliable contractors – sound familiar?) – we had several days with barely functioning heat as well as lots of banging and crazy activity around these parts but it eventually was wrapped up and the heat has been much better since. We also opted to have a whole house humidifier installed with it and my skin has been much happier ever since. We had a full audit of our ducting system which passed the tests with flying colors (well for an older house anyway, and we still did very well stacked up to new construction) so it seems this was certainly a worth investment. We do notice much more heat coming out of the vents (the cats have noticed too and often time we find them splayed out over the floor vents sucking up all the heat!) but our bedroom is still a bit chillier than the rest of the house. This is probably because it was added on later and used to be sun porch. One thing we did was remove the crawlspace hatch which is under our bed and put weather stripping around the opening to tighten up the seal – cheap and easy fix and it brought the temp in the bedroom up a couple of degrees – yay!

From an organizational/functionality perspective we did a couple of things to make inside life better – first off we got a shoe storage solution for the small mud room. We never use the front door, we always come in the back door and shoes would pile up here since we've long been fans of not wearing shoes in the house. We managed to get something a little nicer than our old ikea shoe wall solution in Brooklyn with these steel shoe holders – when we redecorate inside we will most likely paint these but for now white metal will do.

Around the corner in the laundry room (I never get tired of saying that – a whole room just for laundry!) we installed the accordion drying rack on the wall for hang drying. Since it's a tight space I wanted something that would fold up against the wall when not in use – this works great!

What else? Oh yes our new double mailbox finally went in, making it much easier to get mail rather than heading down the street to our old dumpy mailbox. Looking forward to seeing how the cooper oxidizes…

Is that enough? We've been working nonstop and somehow this seems like a ton of work and yet not enough simultaneously. I can has vacation soon?

Bringing NOLA to Norcal

Back in August, on my third medical-related trip to New Orleans in just 5 months' time, Eric and I were strolling through the French Quarter when we had a lightning bolt of inspiration – our huge, blank canvas of a back yard should be designed like a classic New Orleans Garden with a little Savannah and Charleston thrown in for good measure. The fountains, the gazebos, the slate pathways, the dark, leafy plants, the black wrought iron, the hedges, the brick/stone work, the gas lanterns…we want it all…what better way to compliment out already out-of-place-in-Sonoma Colonial house with a southern garden?

As anyone who has done design knows, often times there are TOO many choices and once you pick one central piece or theme, the whole plan comes together cohesively. Well, we are still not in that cohesive state yet, but the overall plan has really helped us set the tone for the home's accessories as well as start the dialogue about how we want the exterior landscaped.     

I for one am thrilled to take a little bit of NOLA home with me – that magical town that helped take me apart and put me back together again this year did it with just the right combination of healing care, expertise, charm, southern hospitality and just a little bit of voodoo. That's the feeling we want in our garden – that magic you can't quite put your finger on, but you know it's there.

Now onto another problem worth having, our yard is so big and even with our new theme there are still so many possibilities and choices. I'm now on the hunt for inspirational photos and a great landscape designer to help us pull this all together. It took me years to get good at gardening in NYC – figuring out what plants did well and where they did it and now it's like learning how to garden all over again – we'll definitely need some help to jump start things. And all the planning is paramount since we'll need to bring sprinkler, propane and electric lines through the space to bring our vision to life. So for now I gather inspiration…and recommendations for landscape designers…

On a related note, when we started our siding project (almost done!) and went to get a permit for it we found out that the county required us to file for an address for the guest house in order to renovate it. Later we found out that we were required by law to post the number of the guest house and to provide a separate mailbox for it. A bit overkill for us but should we or the inevitable next owners want to ever rent the guest house out a separate mailbox and address would make this easier.

Now currently our mailbox is a ways down the road at the bottom of a very steep hill (yes we live in the middle of nowhere!) which is not really convenient as I don't really enjoying walking at a 45 degree angle. We had asked our mail carrier about moving our mailbox to the front of our house and she said it was a complicated task and in general did not seem in favor of our grand idea to have our mail delivered closer to our home. But once we got the new address we were allowed to move the box as the space at the bottom of the hill would not accommodate 2 boxes – score!

We flirted with the idea of getting a mailbox in the shape of a chicken or a turkey but that really doesn't fit out NOLA theme so I looked around and found a nice double mailbox post with black wrought iron and copper/patina mailboxes that will complement the whole style when it's all done. We need to dig an 18 inch hole and buy some cement to install this so we'll get to it after the siding is done. But look, shiny!

When it's all installed it will look like this:

And while we're doing picture time, here are some garden inspiration photos I've been collecting:

Yes, we'll be getting some sort of tiered fountain, but don't worry! We haven't lost our taste…no peeing cherubs or anything like that…less this…

More this:

Oddly enough that fountain above is called the "Williamsburg" fountain, but I'm assuming they mean more colonial and less hipster

Or this:

A black fountain would be nice…

Less of a wedding gazebo but I see some type of gazebo in our future…

Hedges…how cool…would love a hedge maze! But we are going for more "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and less "The Shining"

Oh yeah, and don't forget the gas lanterns...

 

(Almost) Done Siding!

Sorry for another long delay between blog posts – we've been working our butts off here – too much doing, not enough blogging. Yeah, yeah, yeah – I know…we'll work on changing that. So the siding is about 3/4 of the way done now, with the door side, driveway side and garage side of the guest house done. We are currently working on the back of the house and have all the trim done so it's just a matter of getting all the siding cut and up, then caulking and painting before we call it done. We are hoping to have it all done and buttoned up before the raining season hits here in Santa Rosa, which is the same thing as saying winter since that's all it really does in winter is rain and hit lows of about 40 degrees – not bad at all. I consider this mostly a 2 season town; it's pretty much long spring, long fall and a tiny summer and fairly non-existent winter. I can totally deal with that – pretty much the opposite of NY lately!

This siding project has been VERY slow going and we realize why – siding isn't really your average "do it yourself" project. We are sort of addicted to the DIY network show "10 Grand in Your Hand" where they show you how to knock items off your contractor's bid and save yourself money by doing some work on your own. They typically do things like demo, doors, windows, cabinets, tile, wood floors, etc. I've seen them do a little siding patching but never a whole siding project as a DIY undertaking. Now we know why – this is some labor intensive stuff and it's not as straightforward as you may think – there are a lot of layers and a lot of detail that go into it. I'm sure it becomes second nature for people who do it every day, but for us it was slow going and lots of double, triple and quadruple checking.

Shown here, first off we had to trim sections of the bottom of the water table (base trim) board to accommodate a concrete bump out in the slab – you can see where it is uneven on the bottom in the pick below but we'll put some wine barrel planters in front of the eventually so you will never see it. This PVC trim board will be water resistant and also has a built in drip cap to help with water run-off. The yellow mesh on top of the Tyvek paper moisture barrier is a rain screen that helps to guide water down and out if it gets behind the siding and the black mesh between them is a bug screen that loops behind and then in front of the rain screen at the top and bottom where it meets the upper and lower trim – should prevent most bugs and critters from getting up behind the siding which is good because we found all sorts of fun dead things under the old siding when we demo-ed it! All this is done before you can even start thinking about siding. I'm willing to bet most places don't do this many layers of protectant – if you want it done right you deal with the hassle of doing it yourself!

I should note that before all that sheathing went up we marked all the joists off and then used a laser level to draw them out on the Tyvek paper. This way we knew where to put nails and staples – thinking ahead saves so much time later on!

The bottom row of siding was by far the hardest as it needs to be perfect level--it is the foundation that all the other rows of siding will build upon. These boards are heavy and they don't like to stay level so it just requires good old fashion strength and coordination to hold it while securing it to the sheathing. The kind of thing that would be easy it we all had 3 hands. Then you nail around an inch off the top of the board into all the joists and that is covered by the overhang on the board above it.

Once the first row is done things get a little easier. We got these clips called "Solo siders" which clip onto the board below and then the board above rests on them. You adjust for level and then nail 'em up. The biggest consideration is staggering the siding joints and leaving 1/8 of an inch on either side for expansion of the board. Also for every cut piece you need to prime the cut end to seal the fiber cement board. And don't forget that tar paper (that black square) that needs to be nailed behind any siding joint.

Then it's just a matter of accurate measuring and cutting and remembering all the steps above – it's easy to miss a step so you have to take it slow and be methodical. Once you're in a grove it gets easier, but it's never "easy"

Last row being done of the driveway side of the house – the siding is just primed, not yet painted its final color – a colonial blue. The PVC boxes around the light fixtures will be painted the same while as all the trim. We will also be putting a top trim board up but we still need to order that so that will be the last things we do. You can't really see it anyways since the soffit hangs over and it's protected from rain if we don't get to it ASAP.

Half-way done door side of the house – we'll be repainting all that concrete you see below the trim on the left and doing a raised planter bed held with a retaining wall around that left side of the door and wrapping around to the corner to the back side of the house. A project for next summer—goodie! As if we didn't have enough!

There will also be base trim around the door to finish all that off. I love that door – I think it looks great and people are shocked when we tell them it isn't real wood. Can't wait to see how it looks with the white trim and the blue siding!

Will post more picks of the finished siding but the really exciting thing coming up is the blue paint – cannot wait to see how that turns out…all in good time…

Tales of an Epic Siding Project

Everything is supposed to be so much easier than it actually winds up being. For instance, our first re-siding project is turning into an epic battle between us and…well…siding…and we haven't even gotten to the actual siding yet – we're still in "prep mode" for siding. At this rate we're just hoping it's done by the end of the summer.

So here's what's been going on:

Several sections of the wood sheathing were crazy rotted and needed to be removed. Most of these areas were around the windows and at the at the base where the siding meets the driveway/ground. We bought some pressure treated plywood (standard size ¾ of an inch) to cut out the rotted sections. Then we discovered that our sheathing is not the standard ¾ of an inch but only ½ an inch. And guess what, they don't appear to make pressure treated plywood that thin. So we needed to buy regular ½ inch plywood and treat it with this nasty chemical called "Copper green" which smells like hell and probably would kill you if you drank a tiny amount of it. However it serves its purpose in making bugs not want to eat the wood through it so it has served its nasty chemical purpose. After a coating of nasty cooper green we applied Vycor plus 12" to all the places that might come into contact with water.

Then the Tyvek papers goes up to wrap the house and gets tapped at all the seam. More Vycor plus around the windows for good measure…

Now the guest house has a separate garage next it to that was built later on (more of a large shed that a garage actually) but they built a false wall in the front to make it seems like was one structure. Drainage and water management between those two structures was a nightmare (lots of plywood needed replacing there) so we took down the false wall and will eventually wall off the 4^th side of the garage to make it into a more functional shed/workshop.

Looking in where the false wall used to be:

The fully wrapped house, from the driveway side

There were some very harsh and ugly motion detector lights, one by the garage and the other closer to the door. They weren't pretty but they served their purpose – when it's dark here is SUPER dark. I found these great copper and bronze lights online and ordered a bunch as they have motion detection and dusk/dawn settings built in without looking bulky or boring. Awesomely enough these lights were called "Napa" so it all made sense…yay real lights! And they were nice and cheap…I love a bargain!

The other light, by the garage – here you can get an idea of the scale of the light and its projection. Most of the other motion detector lights we saw with motion detectors built in were MUCH larger than this, but with this one story bungalow style house this size made the most sense.

Woohoo window trim! Hard to see how good it looks against the white home wrap but it looks great – it give the windows a much more finished look. It will really pop against the soon-to-be blue siding. And where you see the screw holes we have little plugs that go in to cover the holes and made everything look seamless.

So, on the agenda for this weekend, finishing up the window trim and then starting on the water table trim (which goes at the bottom where the house meets the driveway/ground) – that water table trim is probably the hardest part of the install, so we'll see how long it takes us. Then all we need to do is the corner trim and the rain screen and then we FINALLY get to put up siding. But the work will stop for a bit while we have some back to back house guests and a trip to New Orleans. We'll pick up again towards the end of August and hope this is done by…maybe…end of September? One can only hope. Don't forget we have the much larger, 2 story main house to re-side after the guest house is done…sigh, it' never ends!

But what's Mr. S being doing through all of this, you ask? He's been sitting in open windows, something he didn't get to do too much of it Brooklyn…and the view wasn't as nice…he's a very happy cat…

The Door Can See Into Your Soul!

Really, the door can do all that? Ha, no!

Oh the door, what a fantastic journey we went on together. It all started when Eric and I decided we wanted a really cool, natural, dark wood kick-ass front door for both the main house and the guest house. We spent hours poring over doors and finally decided on what we wanted but we went to order it, our friendly neighborhood door salesman asked us about the position of the door and how much direct sun it got. Eric revealed that it gets direct sun from noon on and sometimes the door and the handle get atomic! (he would know better than I would cause his office is in the guest house) So it was recommended that we DON'T get a wood door as all that direct sun would warp the door and make us very unhappy in a couple of years. So then we moved onto fiberglass doors which either a) look like cheap crap or b) look great but are really expensive. So in our true fashion we hemmed and hawed a bit and then opted for an expensive fiberglass door that looks like real wood. Our thought – hey how often do you replace your front door? It should last a LONG time…and so it was ordered

On Friday we got a call saying the door was in and decided to rent a truck and pick it up ourselves from the Lowe's in Cotati (about 20 minutes away) It was a race to get the door loaded, unloaded and the truck returned on time but we did it all Friday evening (we used to go out drinking on Fridays, now we buy and transport doors…who would have thought it?)

Eric tackling the old green door:

No more door:

Prepping for the new door:

Bright and early on Saturday we started on the door, hoping to get it up before the sun hit the door at noon and made working on it miserable. Well, Eric must have read 4 books on installing doors and watched several videos. We both have done interior doors, albeit wood and metal, but thought we could do this together no problem – after all it's not rocket science, right? RIGHT?!?!

Two days later we were tired and sweaty and pissed off but the door was up. I can only say that the books don't do a very good job of handling all the issues you might have with doors—they also all address exterior doors with frame construction and the guest house is on a slab so that was different—our slab appeared to be level in all of our testing but was just slight off enough to make the whole thing no square up--sigh. Another issue is that we ordered the frame for 2x4 construction and found out we needed a 2x6 frame—oops! That's one mistake we won't make again and we'll just trim it out later to make it work—time consuming and a pain but ultimately doable. Also, we weren't aware that the pre-hung fiberglass door came in a composite frame that had the texture of MDF—you try squaring an MDF-like frame! The minute we screwed into it, it would bow and the whole shape of the frame changed and through if off-kilter. So the door came in and out several times and there was a lot of banging our heads against walls, but we did it. No molding around it yet but it's sealed up and certified functional.

Door up! With shims…

The next issue came with the gorgeous, beefy door handle set I bought to match our oil-rubbed bronze theme in the main house. What should have been a quick installed turned into a production when the latch didn't move but luckily a good soak in WD40 did the trick…man, I love WD40…

Handle, working and installed. Door, in the sun and experience some serious glare, it's really not orange at all:

Door and handle from afar, no glare. It's meant to look like mahogany and it does…a little more brown than red like it looks in this photo:

Rockin'! Well we learned a lot and hopefully won't run into any more door issues in the future…now it's time to finish removing that siding and get the house wrapped once and for all…and then…SIDING! Are ya'll ready for the blue? I know I am…

Guest House Siding Project Begins!

Leading up to the 4^th of July weekend we got our materials delivered and our trash container ordered as we geared up to start the siding project—not the best timing on our part as I just had surgery and can't do any heavy lifting or any displays of brute force, but Eric agreed to do the brunt of the heavy lifting. Just scoping out and ordering the materials alone was a saga we were not quite prepared for. Eric did a ton of research and settled on a particular manufacturer called Azek for all of our trim pieces. The composite material and built in siding integration seems to ensure that the installation would be snap and we wouldn't have to touch anything for 20 or so years. However we didn't realize that all the big supply house in Sonoma County don't carry Azek but a competitors (inferior in our opinion) brand, so just getting these pieces ordered was a huge pain in the butt. But we finally got all of our material delivered along with the container and were ready to tackle the demo:

We were off to a great start! Until the almost 100 degree, totally out of the ordinary heat wave hit us that holiday weekend and slowed our pace down to a crawl—the plan was to get all the demo done in those 3 days but with a man down and crazy insane heat and sun it just didn't happen. We kept the container for another week and continued to chip away at the siding—what they don't tell you in all the books is exactly how hard it is to get siding off—there's no easy way, you just need a crowbar and brute force!

At the end of the weekend most of the siding was off and we were pleasantly surprised at the condition of the plywood underneath…some sections will need replacing but for the most part it looks okay to proceed.

Side of the guest house facing the driveway:

Front of the guest house with the old door:

Notice also that the 6 rosebushes on the front of the house are now gone—that was all me! I maybe not be able to exhibit brute force but I can murder a rose bush like it's nobody's business. Point to remember – rose bushes really aren't fond of moving and they will get their thorns into you no matter what you are wearing and how thick your glove are. But I prevailed—yay!

So there are still a couple of pieces of siding to come off around electrical boxes and fixtures as well as some more pieces on the back/garage side, but the bulk is done and the container was picked up to prove it. Next up, wrapping the house and getting the country to inspect it before we put the siding on—we're moving along, not zooming, but keeping a good, steady pace…

RIP Jules

It's been a while since I've posted and I know that's a big no-no in blog-land, but hey, there was A LOT of stuff going on. Most of it wasn't house related so I didn't bother posted but as is the tradition of my blog we do post about cats and there is some news on that front. Sorry to say that my 17 year old cat Jules passed away the first week of April– she put up a very good fight against Lymphoma but in the end she was just starting to shut down so rather than put her through more medication and procedures we opted to put her to sleep. She had an amazingly long life and was around for a full half of my life. I miss her terribly – even though we've still got great cats, Jules had a fantastic and unique personality. Best of all, she was MY cat and she never let anyone forget it. Her dying at this point is definitely sad, but not nearly as sad as when we lost my cat Vincent a couple of years ago – Vincent was so young and got sick so quickly, but Jules has been slowing down for the past several years so her progression just felt much more natural. I like to think she held on long enough to make sure that we made it out to California okay and were settled before she let go. She was a rock star, first class. Miss you lady!

Jules in a rare cuddling session with Mr. S:

About a week before she passed, Jules started spending a lot of time next to the Vincent pillow…hmmm:

At the vet with Mr. S – he didn't like his case and climbed into her sleepypod.

Sitting in my office, watching the birds outside and dreaming of a chicken dinner

Sad, both my original cats are gone…miss you two…here's hoping the Jules and Vincent are eating royales with cheese together in kitty heaven…

Bamboo Bed

Summer is here in Santa Rosa and as such, we've got a litany of guest lined up for visits. Good thing we have a guest house! But we also have multiple guests coming at once which necessitated getting a real bed in the main house's guest room. Ideally we wanted to rip out the carpet and install wood flooring as well as paint before getting a bed, but with the exterior house issues taking precedent over the interior now, we just bought a bed to be done with it. Given that the guest room is pretty small (at least by CA standards, it's still bigger than the master bedroom in our house in Brooklyn) we wanted to get a bed with some storage underneath.

Here it is with just a queen size mattress on the floor

Now we love that queen mattress—it's a very comfy bed even just sitting on the floor. But our attachment to this mattress has come back to bite us. We bought a nice bamboo platform bed with drawers underneath. In the showroom it was paired with an 8 inch mattress and looked great. Of course we are morons and forgot that our mattress is almost 14 inches tall so now we have a VERY tall bed. But Mr. S gives it his stamp of approval

And speaking of stamps of approval, Monkey very much likes the afghan my mom made for us. It's supposed to go in the guest house but Monkey has claimed it for his own despite it not matching our TV room color scheme. We don't have the heart to take it away from him.

The Blues

So we decided on "blue" for the color of the new siding for the house but that didn't seem to make the decision any easier. You know how many shades of blue there are? And do you know how difficult it is to find exactly the right shade from a tiny swatch? Maybe you do, and I certainly do as well. But man, this seems harder than usual. Maybe it's because our last blue house was definitely too dark for me—good thing we sold it!

So we narrowed it down to some options and here they are:

Now you've gotta ignore the green door and just look for the contrast between the blue and the white trim. Now we've made our decision already, unanimously (can it be unanimous if you only have 2 people?!?) but I'm curious to hear what you are think.

Top left – Blue Heron (sort of a periwinkle)

Bottom left – Hale Navy (very dark navy)

Top Middle – Lucerne (bright medium blue)

Bottom Middle – Van Deusen Blue (a blue/gray)

Top Right – Fiji (bright light blue)

Bottom Right – Champion Cobalt (bright blue)

Here's a wide view of all the color swatches on the guest house…maybe we should just leave it like this…like a funky quilt…

The Votes Are In! House Color Contest Results

Thanks everyone for your votes regarding the new house color. Between the comments here and on Facebook we heard a lot of feedback, mostly conflicted! It just goes to show that color is a very subjective thing and we all have our likes and dislikes. As previously mentioned I was thinking dark red as my #1 choice and dark blue as my #2. However Eric was very anti-dark red and in the spirit of marriage and compromise and all that other crap I've listened to him and we are going with dark blue. I still think dark red would look nice (and match my hair) but in researching this style of house it appears that dark blue with white trim is a very classical colonial house setup. In fact several paint manufacturers will name their medium/dark blue color for exterior paint "Colonial Blue" I guess it's a big thing—I really had no idea. So in keeping with the spirit of the house and letting it guide us, we are going with a darkish blue color. I should pop well against all the greenery and the recently bloomed red, purple and pink flowers around the house. So it's going to wind up looking something like this:

In fact, we found an article on the "This Old House" website (great site!) about people upgrading their front facades and we found this place, which is kinda similar to our façade right now—before:

Here is the after:

Yeah, that's about right…of course our columns are two story and our windows are larger and French-paned, but the overall effect is exactly what we are looking for. Reminder of what our current façade looks like—the door is actually a dark green, but that is hard to see in this pic:

 

We will probably do a slightly darker blue, but we love the natural wood door and the white railing with the wood caps. Also we like the red brick columns and we will definitely be incorporating red brick as well. Ideally we will do a door with more windows so we get more light, but I really like the natural wood door.

Also, we won't be getting the boards with the color impregnated into them. We don't think it pays to spend twice the cost on the product when we can paint it ourselves and it will last almost as long. Also, if we chip or scuff it during the install how will we touch it up? This way we can get the exact color we want. I see an industrial paint sprayer in our future!