Parlez Vous French Doors?

Pardon my absense over the last couple of days. The strain of working a full day at work and then going directly to the house and working til 10 is starting to wear on Mark and I. We're keeping it up, but it makes blogging a little harder.

Yesterday was a day filled with great things. Our friend Rick came over and helped us prime the guest room. He did an awesome job and the room is ready for me to paint today after work. I decided to give Lowe's Valspar paint a shot, and will be painting the room Ancient Olive and an accent wall of Brown Buzz. Very soothing and neutral.
Our friends Adrienne and Brian brought over some Z Pizza and enjoyed a meal with us at the big dining table that Brian helped Mark transport the other day. Mark and Brian also schlepped to Lowe's to pick up the eight foot french door that I had purchased earlier in the evening. It was so nice of them to lend a helping hand (and truck!). The door was maaaaassive and weighed a ton. It took the four of us to get it off the bed of Brian's truck.

The door will be replacing the horrible aluminum glass sliding door in the living room. It has a huge crack that spans the width of one of the panels. If you are shopping for an 8' french door, I recommend Lowe's. We shopped around. The door was $675 at Home Depot and originally $654 at Lowe's, but recently reduced to $599. We also had a 10% off coupon which made the deal even sweeter. The installation at both stores costs about the same as the door itself, so if you know someone who is handy enough to help you do it, you'll save a big chunk. It comes pre-framed, so it's more a matter of fitting it perfectly to the opening and making sure there are no gaps and all is sealed. The installation will happen early next week. The frame has two 3' doors and then two flanking 1' windows that are screened and swing open. It will be so nice to enjoy the evening breeze in our living room, sans bugs.

The tiling in the master will begin today and our bathroom should be finished tomorrow. Woohoo!!!!

Nothing says home improvement like...

pizza n' beer

Edward Scissorhomes

This weekend was filled with fumes, namely tar. The bathroom was hot-mopped on Saturday at 7:30am. The process was quick, but the shower base was left filled with water to ensure a water tight seal. The workers came in with a bucket of steaming hot tar and literally mopped it all over the base of the shower and about one foot up the sides. They wore gas masks. We did not... We went the day without A/C so that we could properly vent with windows and doors open. We also used an industrial fan to waft the fumes outside.The rest of the fumes were from paint and primer. I finished the office walls and ceiling. Three of the walls were painted in Glidden's Classic Key Lime and the accent wall is Glidden's Soothing Green Tea. Mark thinks it looks too much like split pea soup, so we may re-evaluate the colors once the room is put together.
Following the completion of the office, Mark and I took on the living room. We decided to go lighter than we had originally planned, with Glidden's Eloquent Ivory. It's a really nice clean color that's off-whiteish, but with the light that hits the room, two of the walls look as though they're painted with a slightly darker color.

As far as paint brands go, we've bought all of our paints at Home Depot and are using both Behr and Glidden. I'm starting to prefer Glidden over Behr. Both are great, but Glidden is cheaper and I find that it spreads easier. This may be because it is thinner, but we are painting at least two coats in every room, so a little thinner is fine. If you are planning on only going with one coat, Behr may be your best bet.

We had our security system installed on Saturday as well, so don't be tryin' to break into our house or nothin'. I was surprised at how long it takes to install. The Brinks, sorry, Broadview, (they changed the name to "establish a separate identity from the armored transport division",) guy arrived at 8am and did not leave until around 2pm.

I also tried painting the closet cabinets this weekend, but even with the special primer for semi-gloss, the paint is not holding on very well. Mark purchased a paint removing solvent that we will try on them today to get rid of the 50 or so years of paint. Has anyone worked with this before? Any tips or suggestions?

After all of our hard work this weekend, Mark and I took our first bike ride around the neighborhood last night. I love where we live! It's such a nice, quiet pocket, filled with houses that probably looked identical back in the 60's but have slowly gained their own identities over the years. I told Mark that our neighborhood reminds me of the movie Edward Scissorhands. It's not all pastelly or filled with topiaries, but that's how I picture it looked back in the day.

Today's Progress...

It's been a long day... I got to the house at 8 this morning and immediately started painting the office. I got through two walls before I decided that I wasn't down with the broken window sill and decided to pry it off. Construction David helped me re-frame the window with drywall and then I gooped it up with patching compound.
David was tasked with reframing the base of the shower because we decided we wanted to "hot-mop" the shower base instead of going with a pvc liner to water-proof it. "Hot-mopping" is when you coat the base of the shower with tar. That will be completed tomorrow morning and David will commence with the tiling on Sunday.

The appliances arrived around noon. The fridge is up and running, but the water and ice aren't connected because we have to replace a leaky water valve. We're still enjoying the fridge in all her glory -blue protective shield and all... Mark joined us in the afternoon. He helped me take apart the closets and prep them for painting and then headed to the backyard for some treed erradication. He chopped "them weeds" up good!

A couple more photos from the day.

David saved us a pink tile from the shower that was.

I strike a pose mid-mudding.

The Giving Treed

No, that's not a typo. What is a treed you ask? Well the other day Mark and I were in the backyard with Construction David, thinking about all of the work ahead of us, when we got to talking about the existing foliage.

"You know what that is, don't you?," said David as we looked at a less than beautiful flowering tree to the right of our sliding door. I fumbled through my knowledge of California native trees, and came up a little short.

"Uh, no?"

"That right there is a weed!"

Yep, we have weeds that have trunks and have grown upwards of 12 feet tall. I call them treeds. I'm sure it's going to be uber fun digging those babies up. I feel a lot better knowing that they are weeds, because I wanted to dig them up and felt a little bad uprooting trees, but they're treeds, so it's okay.
That backyard is going to be some undertaking. We've got a giant palm tree stump that will need to be drilled or dug out, a pond-like thing (not entirely sure what it is/was) that has been filled with dirt, and a do-it-yourself built in grill/smoker that was not very well thought out. That's a burnt wood door flanking the side of the smoker, and an interestingly placed bungee cord on top...

This project will definitely wait until we're settled in and everything on the inside is fully functional. We're taking ideas, so if you have some good suggestions on what we can do in this space, we'll take em!

Octo-dot

We picked out the tile for the guest bath! We're going with Daltile octagon dot in matte white. I saw it on sale at the West Hills Lowe's last night for $2.57 per sqft! Unfortunately someone had already cleaned them out, leaving only a couple of broken sheets. Luckily, we were able to find the 45 sqft we need at the Burbank location. Just to give you an idea, this tile retails for $3.99 at Home Depot, so imagine my excitement to see it at such a great price! -Plus I think it's just what that bathroom needs.
We still haven't decided on grout color yet. I know it will look best in white, but I'm not really thrilled at the thought of cleaning it, so maybe a light grey. Do you think grey grout will just look like dirty white? I think the grout shown below is a little too dark, but it gives a good idea.

My goal is to pick up the tile and prime at least one room tonight. I have Friday off, at which time our appliances will be delivered and phone line installed, so I'll have some solid time to paint. I'm super-psyched about our appliances! Well really just our fridge. The washer and dryer are pretty vanilla, but they'll be in the garage and out of sight. But our fridge! She's a beaut, aint she?

I can almost guarantee you will never find upright celery sticks or a lemon cake on a pedestal in our new fridge, but I may be a little inspired once it's sitting in our totally dated kitchen, so all bets are off!

***UPDATE*** I was at Home Depot over the weekend and discovered that they sell the same Octo-dot tile for $2.57, regular price, not on sale. I now can't find where I saw that it was $3.99 per sqft. Anyhow, I'm not sure if you have a preference between Lowe's and Home Depot, but lately I've had better luck with customer service and finding what I need at the 'Depot. My sister, Tali, mentioned that she went to Home Depot looking for the same tile and they only had it with white octogons with black dots; however, they offered to special order the one she wanted for the same price. Talk about service.

Time Wasted and Time Enjoyed

I'll keep this short because I'm about to head to the house to work with Mark. As I mentioned yesterday, the paint in the bathroom is just not sticking -mainly on two walls. We're going to have to peel/scrape it off and re-prime with a special primer that is designed for semi and high gloss paint. Kind of sucks that I spent so much time on that this weekend. Lesson learned.

Yesterday after work, I met Mark at the house. We checked out Construction David's progress on the framing (looking good so far,) and we peeled some of the paint off the bathroom wall.

We also enjoyed a romantic dinner over our toilet. Classy, huh? It's amazing how much fun you can have enjoying a meal with someone you love over a toilet...