Please report to the office

Oops. I forgot to report on our office. I was re-reading the published blog (the one I just posted about the miniature horses) when I recognized its glaring absence.

Last weekend (I think -- they're all blurring together now) we woke up realizing that we needed a shelf for our office. That was the ticket to making it more usable.
Actually, I think it was a little more panicked and a little less about the shelf. It was more, "WE NEED TO GET THESE BOXES OUT OF HERE AND MAKE THIS ROOM FEEL LIKE A PART OF THE HOUSE!"
So Jesse headed to the BOB (Big Orange Box) for the necessary hardware.
An entire day of sorting and cleaning and organizing later, this is what we have.

Notice the bookshelf behind Jesse. Cheeba's bathroom is strategically placed here - out of sight (and cleaned daily to remain out-of-smell.)He's a very hard worker.
The office bed. Every office needs a bed.

I also forgot to mention that in addition to the windows that Jesse made beautiful in the previous post, we headed to BOB to order our cellular (honeycomb) shades! We're taking it window by window because they're pretty expensive - but they're super energy efficient and should help us with our living-room-overheating-problem. They'll be delivered in two weeks!

Also, it's 11:00pm here and Jesse's working hard on his homework. He took a break to read my first post a few minutes ago then disappeared. He reappeared then moments later I heard a loud "BANG" -- the post reminded him that he left a shim in the window and wished he hadn't so he went to the garage and came back with a mallet and a 2x4 to bang it down level with the others! At ELEVEN O'CLOCK AT NIGHT.
oh dear.

For the Cleaning and Care of Hooves and Coats

Curious, isn't it? That's what we thought.
Why on earth would there be an equine care product in our garage among the previous owner's belongings?
There certainly isn't room to board horses here.
I like to think there used to be a wild herd of magical tiny miniature horses indigenous only to our canyon and that the former occupants of our house were responsible for their care. Of course, that begs the question, "where did they go?"
The answer I prefer is that the occupant decided they needed a bigger canyon to roam and took them to a better location. But s/he left behind this bottle of product for the cleaning and care of hooves and coats. Hopefully, they picked up a replacement bottle on the way.

Um. Anyway...

After intermittently having internet access over the past few days, our friend from Cox came out to our house (again) to check up on us. Apparently, another house that uses our pole has some bad hardware that sends funny signals to our hardware and another guy who is above our cable guy has to come out to fix the problem. Or something like that. But we have internet and cable for now - woo!

Back to the whole point of the blog...Renovations!

Oh but wait. I have to tell you about the laundromat. I was shamed by Robert May's comment to go to the laundromat up the street. In my defense, it's not that I'm afraid of my neighbors - it's that the laundromat nearest to us is dirty - and I'm kind of a freak about dirty things.
So there I am doing laundry, getting run down by small children playing tag and screaming into the dryers, when this lady comes in with a stroller. No big deal, right? Ha! There was no baby in this stroller. It was full of napkins, plastic forks and food - empenadas, specifically. She was selling empenadas out of a stroller. I loved it. A few minutes later a truck pulled up and a lady got out and opened the tailgate. She came in to the laundromat (I have to add that there is a taco shop next door) and asked everyone if they wanted to buy fresh tamales. Despite my love for tamales, I declined; only because I could visualize my friend Annie (an inspector for the San Diego County Health Department) with a thermometer measuring the holding temperatures of the all the foods...

Okay - renovation, blah blah blah.

Windows -- poorly done by previous owner. Jesse fix. Yay!
Below, the living room windows with the shims put in by Jesse (after sanding away all the joint compound and crud that was trying to cover up the unevenness of the windows.)
Below, our newly leveled and cased windows! The window sill has been Cheeba approved as wide enough for her to play on and jump up to. Notice the potted white flowers, courtesy of Jesica (in addition to the basil plant!) Also notice the rockin magazine rack that I fell in love with at Crate and Barrel.

Speaking of Crate and Barrel, that is where the lovely blue throw pillows were procured. Sadly, now that I'm looking at all of these pictures, pretty much all the furniture belongs to my friend, Emi, who is moving this weekend and will need it all back (shelves, tables, etc.) I guess it's time to hit up craigslist for some new stuff!
Haha - we've only put one thing on the walls so far - it looks a little sad, don't you think?
Below is a sunny view of our new windows. Ignore the brownish crud around them - it came with the house and will be masked by the primer and paint that we apply in the coming months (...years...)
I like my floor. It's super shiny. That, and I wanted a chance to show you the sweet magazine rack again.
We bought our door!!! But we can't paint it (blue) until Jesse buys an airless that actually works (as opposed to the one he bought at the pawn shop then was made to return by me...) Also, we can't install it until we get the stinkin permits -- which we should have by next week -- if the people actually sent the plans to 'historical review' like they were supposed to -- we don't know because they were supposed to call us last week and never did...
(Semi) organized garage!! It took an entire day and the discovery of some really weird things (see blog title.) We also filled up our trash container with garbage left by the previous owner on a Sunday and trash day isn't until Friday!!! Woe is us.
Here's Jesse's reclaimed (see first or second post) work bench all cleaned up. I took a picture because it was the first time I had really seen it all cleaned off and wanted a way to remember it.Jesse's two sweet rides that I doubt will get as much action as they did when we lived in Pacific Beach.
My sweet ride that I miss cruising on ever so much. Check out that bell! I used to ride from Jesse's house to the grocery store then home in the mornings -- ahh, sweet beach cruiser.
And now, for the best thing to happen to me in a long time:



Yes, folks. It is a toilet seat. But it's a wonderful toilet seat. No slamming, no grossness, just a light tap and it slowly descends. I'm trying to train Jesse to give it a tap on his way out of the bathroom (no luck as of yet but these things take time.)

That's it for now!

Apologies and Excuses

We apologize for the lack of posts recently (it's Jesse's fault - not really.)

We would like to take this opportunity to blame the following things:

Dead camera batteries
Cox Communications (internet and cable provider)
Laziness (Jesse and Corinne - NO!)
The time it takes for one revolution of the earth (24 hours not sufficient)
Homework
Work

We have a TON of pictures and stories and really would like to share them! If our internet connection cooperates tonight and I have time before bed after travelling to the non-scary laundromat that is miles away, I promise we'll post.

Comments

A few people have mentioned that they've tried to post comments to no avail. I finally decided to try to figure out why.

Rejoice!
All people can now post comments - even if you don't have log-on information. Just select 'Anonymous' when commenting -- but be sure to leave your name!

My apologies to Chere' for forcing her to set up a gmail account -- but really? Hotmail? I take my apology back -- she needed a gmail account.

The Last Week in Pictures

By popular demand, a picture of Cheeba. The reason she's not on the blog more often is because every time I ask her to help, she doesn't respond. I think it's because she's deaf and can't hear my repeated requests but Jesse thinks she's ignoring me.
Regardless, she's still here...I guess the sign from a few posts ago has been working. I think Jesse's getting used to living with a cat -- actually, I would go as far as to say he is enjoying it.Jesse and Tanner started working on tasks you don't need permits for (due to the delay I'll speak of later) -- one of these being sanding down the scratch-coat of stucco that is one of the reasons for our neighborhood 'crackhouse' designation. When I say Jesse and Tanner, I mostly mean Tanner. I wasn't actually present (no spring break for me...) but when I came home, Tanner was on the ladder and Jesse was watching from the ground. All of the pictures seemed to confirm this -- I saw no pictures of Jesse working...
One of the things I know Jesse did that day was to take a lot of trips to Home Depot and Harbor Freight Tools. I know this because of all the receipts that were handed to me when I got home from work. I think Jesse wrote a bit about this in his last post.
Tanner seems happy to be covered in dust. At least we sprung for the fancy eye protection. The masks came with the house.
One of the things Cheeba does while she ignores me is sleep. Right next to one of our dish drying stations. Granted, it's in the sun - but really? She later moved onto the towel...it was washed and the drying station moved shortly thereafter.
Tanner (again) hard at work. I guess someone's got to take the pictures...
There was no lighting in the garage and we couldn't really go in there after sun down. Jesse assured me this was not because vampires patrolled our garage and even installed some lights to prove it. Now I'll go in there - but only with garlic cloves in my pockets and if he's within screaming distance.
Semi-finished window -- all sanded down and ready for the top coat of stucco.
One of our weekend projects was lighting and furniture for the master bedroom. I'll spare you the drama surrounding the furniture and let Jesse tell his story later (suffice it to say he narrowly avoided a fistfight with a bedroom set purveyor.) Below is our new ceiling light in the master bedroom and our new bed -- it has nightstands on either side. (We still don't have window coverings...baby steps.)
Our dresser with two great lighted globes from Ikea. Detail below.

Close-up of the ceiling fixture. You would think it would be easy to install -- no. Apparently, we do things differently here in America than they do in Ikea land and nothing quite matches up. Maybe it has less to do with xenophobia and more to do with the old house and old junction boxes not matching with 21st century junction boxes, but oh well. Regardless, Jesse and I had to make a trip to Lowe's for parts then he made another dusty plaster mess in the hallway and bedroom before making my pretty new lights glow.
Jesse's old lampshade for his squat light broke so he decided to be edgy and match it with a tall skinny shade. I think it works.
Cheeba doesn't like it when we move her perch.
Ahh - the only proof we have of Jesse working on the stucco. Apparently, the pH of stucco is pretty high - and most people know to wear gloves when handling it (according to the lovely gentleman at Lowe's upon examining Jesse's hands). Jesse went gloveless that day and has paid the price with peeling, bleeding leprosy-hands ever since.



In this next picture you can see the ceiling light for the hallway along with Jesse's dangling legs. The story here is that at around 11:00pm he decided he'd had enough and wasn't going to take it anymore. The bathroom door opened the wrong way and the switch for the light was on the wrong side. Much banging and dust and drilling ensued. Now we have a much more functional bathroom door and light fixture.

Where the old light switch was. Notice the hole on the other side of the wall. That's our linen closet. Apparently, someone wanted access and they wanted it quickly.
This wall is coming out anyway so we did a quick-fix patch.
Oooohhh Aaaahhhh - the new light switch. Good job, Jesse.

A great many things happened in the last week that were not photo-documented. Here's a quick list of what I can think of (apologies for the very sleepy prose):
- Jesse did six loads of laundry at the laundrymat
- We tried going to Crate and Barrel twice in two days -- the first time it was closing as we walked up (at 7:00pm!!!) and the second time was Easter. Who knew that Crate and Barrel were religious folks?
- All clothing put away - this included a huge purge and arguments about who is entitled to what closet space (dresser drawer score: Corinne - 7, Jesse - 3)
- Box wars. They seem to attack us everywhere. We were minding our own business on the sofa, talking to Jesse's dad when a whole column of them fell on top of us -- twice! They also jump out when you're not paying attention and trip you.
- Drafting guy. Jesse gave up on the drawings and we hired drafting guy to finish them for us. It was getting ridiculously time-consuming.
- Lowe's and the Big Orange Box - too many trips to count.
- Accounting system established. This is a ridiculous accounting system that a CPA would have a hard time following. But it works for me!
- Paint color wars. This time the foes are Jesse and I. We've yet to see who comes out on top.


All in all, we've gotten a lot of the nitty gritty things out of the way. I had taken last Friday off and we sat down, dug in, and compromised a lot. I guess that's what this is all about. Not my way, not his way -- our way. It's still going to take some getting used to - this whole 'sharing a space with someone ALL OF THE TIME' but I think we're doing pretty well so far.

But I'm pretty sure I'll win the paint color wars.

Dust, dustier, dustiest

Today was supposed to be the day that I went downtown to get permits for the renovations. Unfortunately, the drawings and paperwork are yet to be completed and so no permits were obtained. Instead, Tanner and I set to work on other, seemingly minor, fixes around the house. The terrible patches around the windows were ground down to something closer to flatness, the big metal security screen door thing was removed, and the windows in the living room were de-drywalled.

The plan in the living room is to install traditional looking casings, and to do that the old, terribly done trim-out had to be stripped. This process was made easier by the fact that the old owner only had about 12 nails in his posession at the time he was installing the windows, and so the corner bead was only barely nailed and some of the strips of drywall were not nailed at all. This job was made harder, however, by the fact that it generally sucked and pretty much any time you have to take down old wall board its going to suck. The difficulty was further compounded by the fact that the original workman laid a ton of mud around the windows, and so a ton of drywall had to be sanded off. I started with the regular pole sander but got nowhere. As a last resort, I switched to the old belt sanded with the 60-grit belt which quickly removed the offending mud but filled the entire house with a huge amount of super fine dust.

I totally dropped the ball because I was pretty frustrated by this point and didnt close doors or anything and everything in the entire house is covered with dust. Corinne took it pretty well.


Meanwhile, Tanner was outside on a ladder grinding down the stucco scratch coat which stuck out past the original stucco. He was using an angle grinder with a $25 diamond grinding cup from Harbor Freight Tools. Well worth it, as the cup cut really fast and consistently and had Tanner nicely enshrouded in a cloud of dust. Also worth it, cause the bosch version costs $100. He was able to get the first 4 or so windows all taken care of, and unless we get sidetracked tomorrow he should be done and able to move on to patching the stucco.

Tomorrow: either permits and demo or more of the same, getting the stucco patched and ready for paint and the windows cased and the room ready for paint. Corinne doesn't like the white interior of the house, and although I don't love it I'm more excited about removing our house from its current neighborhood blight status.

Stabbing at Our house!

We'll get to the stabbing in just a few minutes.

First, lets begin where we began our morning - looking out the bedroom window to see a beautiful blue sky and the top of this lovely palm. What you don't see is the bottom of this horribly overgrown palm accompanied by Jade plants so big they have their own interstates and weeds so tall that when I go out back, I have to take walkie talkies so Jesse can find me.


Time to tackle those problems. Actually, we were supposed to be postponing those problems until after Jesse and I finished up the permit paperwork...but sometimes you get a wild hair.

Luckily, the previous owner left us a lovely wheelbarrow to help us with our task. Unfortunately, it had a non-working front tire -- off to the Big Orange Box for a replacement!

The first thing we tackled were the dead palm fronds near the bottom of the tree (we would later determine that this is a Canary Island Date Palm...more like a Canary Island Death Palm.) Once we got all of the dead fronds away, it started to look quite a bit better. However, there were still many fronds sagging dangerously at eye-level. I like my eyes. I really like that they can see. We decided to prune these scary fronds away. We ended up with a pile almost as tall as Jesse.
Now that you've seen the scale of these things, let me show you the real scale...
Yeah - see that spike? If prisoners could get a hold of those things they'd never have to make-shift a shiv again. They're super stiff, hearty, sharper than any knife in my house, and huge. And they're at the base of every palm frond. Lots of them.Jesse and I were both mildly skewered a few times - enough to where we decided that once we had the tree pruned, we'd better make sure none of these guys were left at the bottom. Then we were hauling the fronds up the hill to a pile before loading them onto the truck. That's when Jesse, in a moment of "lets hurry," decided that he didn't need to gently hand the frond up to me. Instead he threw it, like a medieval weapon, at me. I had no time to react. In my head I was saying, "noooooooooooo!" and trying to move my hands away quickly enough. It wasn't fast enough. Three of the evil-spikes went through my work gloves and punctured my hands. One of them quite badly. The pain was awful. The screaming woke the dead. I would later find out that many people think this particular species contains a toxin or poison that causes immense pain for days - even if the wound doesn't get infected. I am one of those people. This happened around ten in the morning. It's 12 hours later and I still can't lift anything with my left hand. Yuck yuck yuck.

Needless to say, I wasn't going near those things again, so Jesse took the lead in loading up the truck (our neighbor let us use her driveway to get back there.)I wasn't completely useless, though. I took the weed whacker to the Corinne-high weeds. We even found a little retaining wall that someone had built long ago...


Here's the finished tree -- we still have some work to do around the trunk - shaving down some of the left over fronds to eliminate the death-spikes -- and by we, I don't mean me.Ha - we never even used the wheelbarrow.

We finished up pretty early so I could make dinner (cranberry, apple and goat cheese-stuffed chicken breasts with cous cous) for Jesse, Tanner, and my cousin, Eric - who's in town for the week. Not a bad dinner for not really having a functional kitchen yet. It was missing a side of veggies, though. Afterward I baked these amazing things that I've only heard tell of before yesterday - chocolate chip cookies that are already made - all you have to do is put the dough on a cookie sheet and bake them for ten minutes! Brilliant!

As I type, Jesse is next to me trying to get the paperwork all ready to take to the permit office tomorrow...we'll see how that goes!

Celebration Station

We wanted to celebrate all of the great things our Mortgage Planner (Jeremy Beck) and our Realtor (Ibanez) had done for us so we invited them over for drinks Saturday afternoon. Jesse had been working in the back yard all day and I had been running errands (side note: my most expensive trip to the grocery store EVER...more than $200 - of course that included two bottles of liquor, two bottles of wine and nearly a case of fancy beer for the festivities...)

Jeremy and myself:Jenn and Jenn:

I met Jeremy through my friend, Jenn - his wife, who I went to school with (and who I would not have made it through school without.) I met Ibanez through Jeremy. I also met my last roommate, also named Jenn (we'll call her Culver - incidentally, her boyfriend's name is Jeremy...it gets mildly confusing) through the first Jenn. Regardless, it's a big web of fantastic people who all know what they're doing a lot more than Jesse and I.

I made some bruschetta for the evening - my trademark dish that I learned to perfect while working at Koozinas - and we decided on margaritas. Not only because I had just bought all the fixins, but also because Jenn and Jeremy brought a lovely gift bag full of margarita glasses and a margarita pitcher!! Perfect! They also brought along their fantastic daughter, Adelaide, whom I adore to pieces. Ibanez also showed up bearing gifts (this was supposed to be the occassion where we gave them gifts --- not the other way around...but that is not a complaint.) He had already showered us with moving supplies and sweet cards and he upped the ante by bringing a book I've been meaning to read, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad."

Anyway, we had a lot of fun drinking and chatting and telling them our plans for the house. Jesse even did a little presentation with his computer hooked up to my TV - showing them our plans for the house then walking them through it in 3-D. I think Ibanez took all the pictures because, regrettably, there are none of him. Next time.

Jesse and a 3-D view of our future kitchen looking at it from our future living room:

Speaking of next time, we had double-booked ourselves for the evening. Our friends Patrick and Jenny were coming over at 7:00 with pizza and beer. I took a lot of gruff for the double-booking. It's a mistake I'll never make again. So now I owe Jenn, Jeremy and Ibanez a fancy-schmancy dinner in our new kitchen - that is, if they'll ever return to our house after my faux pas.

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This is a plug. Not just because I like them but because they are the best at what they do. We would not have closed escrow if it were not for these two pros. They had curve ball after curve ball thrown at them, and they caught every single one. They love what they do and it shows. If you're thinking about anything having to do with a loan or a house or a condo or ANYTHING, call these guys:

The GreenHouse Group
Jesse Ibanez, Realtor and more: 888-747-8485
Jeremy Beck, Real Estate Finance Consultant 858-273-3639
You can also find them and their blog at http://greenmeansgrow.com

They're amazing. And they can help out if you're having trouble with the house you already own, too. If you are, check out www.HopeagainstHOPEnow.org or call them.

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Back to the blog. So Pat and Jenny stopped by with beer and pizza and we had a lovely time eating and playing Pictionary. Jesse did his presentation again, taking them through the 3-D version of our futurehouse (it looks so much like a first-person-shooter that every time Jesse opened a door, Pat was waiting for the zombies to attack...)

Sunday it's back to work. We have much to do and spring break is ticking down...it's going to be hard with these very pretty margarita glasses looking sad and empty...maybe if I just fill it half-way...