Photographic Proof

Cliff-face flower

There hasn’t been a lot of work done on the house lately.  Mostly we’ve been saving money to get the tree removed.  We’ve made it through the permit process, now we just need to get the people out to get it out.  Our neighbor wants to work some sort of deal with his friend that will mill the wood.  Not sure how that will work out.  It will be about $8000 to get the tree removed, so we’ve been cutting spending in other areas.

To get us out and about, Eli and I have started geocaching.  It’s like a treasure hunt-hidden object game-achievement system all rolled into one.  I’ve been enjoying it thoroughly.  So far it has led us to some very beautiful areas that I never knew existed.  I can already tell my future vacations are going to have some geocaching worked into them…

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I was at conferences all last week, so I didn’t get a chance to post this earlier.  We were able to finish up the painting in the living room right before I had to leave, which was exciting!  It was nice to come home to a functional living room, that’s for sure.  I still need to paint all the trim at some point, but that’s not a very high priority at the moment.

As a visual reminder, I’m re-posting some of the images from early on, so you can see how much nicer it is now!  Up first is a back to back comparison of then and now.

Ugly carpet, bad color, half-completed moulding

Pretty hardwood, pretty color, happy kitties

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The cats have been living in the house for 2 weeks now. They are mostly getting along, and they seem to be thoroughly enjoying the house. Renovating around them can be somewhat challenging. When we painted the living room, we ended up putting them in their separate rooms and painting to a chorus of upset yowls coming from their respective rooms. However, when we had let them out, Kita ended up with a yellow paw and a splotch of yellow on her flank, so the yowls seemed safer.

Their favorite perch for looking at how much laundry there is to do

I’ll have a post up later with before and after pictures of the living room, but you’ll see a sneak peak if you follow the read more link.

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On the last weekend of February, Eli and I headed to New York City for his grandmother’s birthday. Every year it is a great excuse for his side of the family to get together for a large party. It’s always chaotic, and an excellent time!

Me in front of World of Disney

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This Saturday was a gorgeous day in Santa Cruz.  After all the rain we’ve had, when the sun came out, you could almost see the flowers blooming as you watched.

I snapped some pictures of some of the blossoms in our garden.  Help identifying the plants would be welcome!

Camellia?

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It’s taken way longer than it should have, but I’ve finally finished painting the “master” bedroom. I put this in quotes because it’s as small as the other bedroom, it just has a french door to the back deck.

When we bought the house, the color was a very dark blue. When you’d turn on the light, it felt like the light was being swallowed up.

Dark room

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I spent part of this weekend pruning. I ended up filling the entire green waste can and didn’t get close to finishing. I took a picture of the bushes in the front. It cracks me up. At least half our house looks lived in!

Half-pruned

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Patching - Early stages

In the living room, we had a few places that needed patching.  Millou (our agent) recommended Peter as the master texture/patching guy.  He came by on Thursday, and I showed him what needed to be done.

On Friday I left him in the house and when I came back, I found a lot more patching than I realized was required.  (Our sheet rock is starting to buckle and seperate, and these places needed to be scraped and patched.)

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I haven’t been updating because I’ve been so tired after getting all the work done that I just haven’t had the energy. And now I have a backlog of photos so I’m going to try to break it up.

My parents came to visit this weekend which was great! I was in the middle of TSP-ing the walls in the back bedroom, and I was more than happy to take a break. I was really happy they’d taken the time to come visit and it was fun showing them the house. I’m pretty sure they think we’re insane now that they’ve seen it, but I’m also pretty sure my insanity is not news.

Small paint swatches

So I’ll start off with the quickest updates. We’re trying more paint colors on the exterior of the house. The house is starting to look pretty patchwork at this point.  However, we narrowed it down to three colors from there and tried them in bigger swatches. And now it’s narrowed down to two!  Which is your favorite, the deep blue at the bottom middle (Benjamin Moore - van deusen blue), the blue green on the left side under the window (Sherwin Williams - Studio Blue Green), or the olive green on the right(Fuller O’Brein - custom color)?

Large paint swatches

I realize I never updated everyone on the law suit thing. We talked to a lawyer who said that we could ignore their threats as they were being silly. He also said he would be happy to represent us if it went to litigation.

The bank was talking to the title company to see how they could reverse the recording process, and in the end we decided this just wasn’t worth the time, so we signed their stupid paper. I suppose if it comes down to it, and we gave up some right we needed, we can say we signed under duress.

Eli was gone from Thursday to Sunday due to his grandmother’s funeral.

Friday, the washer and dryer were delivered. The installer took a look at where we wanted the washer and dryer and pointed out that there was nowhere for the washer drain hose to connect to. Oops. I also removed the old carpet from the garage add-on. No staples to remove, thank goodness!

Saturday, our agent and her husband came over to help a bit with stuff around the house. Her husband is a contractor, so he was able to quickly take care of some of the little things. He shaved the bottom of the bathroom door so it would close easily (it was scraping against the tile before), fixed a bit of roofing above the addition in the garage, and took a look at the washer drainage problem. We noticed a place on the wall that was patched, and when we cut it out, we found the drainage pipe. Phew. He also hauled away the rest of our gross carpet.

After that I went to a Do-It-Herself workshop at Home Depot. It wasn’t much new information for me (although they did talk about how you could use a Dremel to carve a pumpkin which seemed to excite most everyone there) but I did get to try using a jigsaw and an impact driver.

Sunday, Eli came back, yay! It was hard doing things around the house without him.

Monday we met with the mudding guy who is going to fix up some of the holes in our wall. I’m hoping to be there when he does the work so I can learn how to do it myself. He said he would stop by Tuesday to fix up things. The plumber who was supposed to fix our drainage pipe for the washer didn’t show up.

Tuesday (yesterday), the mudding guy didn’t show up, although he did call and let me know he wouldn’t be able to make it until today. It was Eli’s birthday, so I took him out to dinner and he said he wanted to work on the house. Wow, how times change! I pulled off the 1/4 round base moulding that was only installed in half the living room (what IS it about the previous owners and moulding??) Then we started cleaning every surface we could reach in hopes we could finally conquer the leftover animal smell in the house. I left at around 10p, and Eli was still cleaning.

I apologize for the lack of pictures, I’ll try to make it up next post!