Friday, January 24, 2014

NorCal beachy cabinet trees (post by Tocco)



This is the situation we have to tackle. A nice Frankenstein green, it even glows in the dark.

Before
Even though you may think one can get used to it while it's daylight...


don't turn the light on, or it starts glowing again.





These are the old hinges, but they are original and still work, so we decided to throw them into a crockpot to loosen the 10 layers of paint, strip them and reuse them, quite a bit of work, but definitely worth it.





Step 1: Select a part of the cabinet tree you want to tackle first, we've choosen the drawers, thinking there is not much surface to sand and paint, but that was around the time where the cabinet tree started to fight us.






Step Two:
Put you warrior outfit on and fight back!




Step Three:
Fight back! The whole frame wants to be sanded and painted. Of course, 10 layers of old paint takes a long time, and if you think you can avoid sanding by hand, forget about it. These old paint layers simply start melting under every sander you'd like to try, just hang in there, and sand it by hand, I swear, it's less hassle after all.



Step Four:
After it seems the cabinet tree won a battle by neglecting to be sanded, we decided it may be enough sanding for now and we pulled out the paint.




Step Five:
Put it back together and get excited!





Step Six:

Overlook you imperfections and enjoy the moment and be a little bit proud of yourself, and prepare to get scared, there are five more cabinet trees waiting to receive the same procedure, and they will beat the heck out of you. But as I said, just hang in there and fight back, one day they will be all done ... ;-) We'll keep you posted and let you know who won the battle, the cabinets or us ...






Weekend





Last weekend at Mavericks- one of those incredible beach weekends where you keep saying how perfect the weather feels and you want to share it with everyone.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Mavericks, Half Moon Bay

Friday is Mavericks. Mavericks is the surfing competition where the waves get HUGE- 40+ feet. The water is sharky (great whites), kelpy, and freeeeezing cold. I don't know how they do it. Those waves are like towers. The surfers have to get towed far out and then dropped off where the waves are so they can ride them. The huge rocks where they biggest waves lurk make it especially dangerous. That said, if we have any kids in California we're signing them up for lessons. 

This is Mavericks Beach without a huge wave. I count 3 sharks

Our friend Tocco, always studying

and Mavericks International last year. Once the competition starts this is as close as they'll let you get. A little less thrilling, but it's still pretty fun to watch.

Design Inspo



Color scheme inspiration from Patrick Baty I like that it looks like the ocean and sun. I feel like we need a lot more of the four blues in the lower left. :)

The Dining Room

When we bought the house the dining room looked like this:


Yikes! It looks like a dollhouse.



The carpet from hell. 


We ripped out the carpet, and spent hours of pulling out nails, staples and carpet bits....


But when we had the floors sanded, it was worth it. Perfect floors! It was like the boards were preserved under that carpet for decades. 



The chandelier was left behind by the previous owner, as you can see above. When the room was empty and we we were painting and working on the space, we kept bumping into all those crystals. It was almost comical how we kept making it swing. It was like we just couldn't see it! I could not wait to replace it. But then! We added our own stuff, more of a midcentury vibe, and somehow the chandelier started to make more sense, and now we love it. 



Got very ambitious and had our first dinner party the week we moved in...


And here it is on a regular work/mail day. The process of homeownership documentation/ bill paying/ loan paperwork is scary business. We're a little terrified we'll screw it up. 

Basement Blues

This week has really been all about the basement-- and it's been awesome. We decided to let someone else do some of the work!

 Aside from having the hardwood floors sanded (the week before we moved in) this is the only place where we did the demo, looked around, and said, "You know what? No. We don't wanna. Let's hire somebody." It was kind of weird to leave our home in someone's hands, but also incredibly gratifying to come home to work completed.  

Before: 


So charming.

After we ripped everything out:





The previous owners updated the electric in the basement (yay) but didn't repair the walls and just plastered the wood paneling on top of the holes (boo). This made the basement very chilly and in need of a lot more work. Calling in the contractors.

This week we came home to this: 

Holes gone, walls patched!

T admires the work. He can spend an hour looking at I don't even know what down there.  :) 


It's so much warmer down there! Huge difference already. Now, we finish it up ourselves and get the floors leveled and carpeted. 


Wednesday, January 22, 2014

New for Spring

I am all over these limited edition pieces at Ikea for spring. Clean lines... wood and white... that sweet color palette. Count me in. I hope Tocco likes that desk because I'm going to put her right up next to his. Buddies.






I have so much catching up to do on our renovation progress (thankfully we are not at the very beginning anymore), so I'm just going to add a lot of before and after pictures, and hopefully a few stories here and there on the process so far. There is still pleeeenty of work ahead of us. 


I can't wait to get up to date and start posting regularly. 





Photography by Marcus Buck showing imprints of demolished houses left on other houses. Wild.

We bought a home!


The evening of the day we got our keys! It was late, after work, but we had to go over there and make sure they really worked (and have some champagne :)