to you:

Happy Birthday to you:

Happy Birthday dear Husband:

Happy Birthday to You!

Andy many More!

It’s been a year since we moved in!  Here’s a quick list of the major projects we’ve tackled in the last year:

Safety:

• Upgrade electrical service/ replace panel
• Remove weed tree/stump growing over chimney (in order to get insurance)
• Add GFI’s/Outlet covers where needed
• Fix receptacles with reverse polarity
• Add spark arrester to chimney
• Replace water pressure regulator
• Remove excess coaxial cable
• Remove faulty wiring in atrium
• Added stickers to all sliders to prevent walking-into-glass injuries (a minor upgrade from this:

• Add “frosting” to front windows (so you can’t see into the house from the street)

Garage:

• Remove moldy drywall
• Add work lights to interior of garage
• Add Outlets to garage
• Replace beam
• Install new garage door with opener
• Add shelving
• Add workbench
• Add peg board

Landscaping/Exterior:

• Buy/Use lawn mower
• Remove/sell fountains & statues
• Lower planters/dirt against siding of house (makes house less accessible to termites)

• Remove palm trees in front and back yard (ugly) and try to get grass to grow in their place
• Remove white marble rocks from planters/ palm trees
• Remove tree stumps in front yard
• Remove atrium covering
• Add lights to atrium
• Add tomato/herb garden to atrium
• Remove (ok, kill) plants in atrium, replace with new ones
• Paint trim on back of house

• Remove concrete pad in middle of back yard

• Remove side deck and sidewalk
• Remove oak tree and stump in back yard (too close to house)

Kitchen:

• Buy new refrigerator
• Fix Dishwasher
• Replace plumbing under kitchen sink
• Professionally snake drains
• Replace lighting
• Replace garbage disposal
• Install gas line to stove (with T’s for beer brewing, fireplace, bbq grill)

• Buy/Install new gas range
• Fix outlet by dog door
• Add outlet to end of peninsula
• Replace Dishwasher

Office:

• Replace beam

• Ground outlets
• Add insulation to walls
• Replace drywall
• Add molding and baseboards
• Paint
• Add overhead light Fixture

Other:

• Patch Roof (many many times!)
• Buy/Install new washer and dryer
• Open up dryer vent that was drywalled over
• Install dog door
• Fix leak in hot water heater
• Install Thermostat
• Buy/Install screens on sliding doors
• Replace living room window after unfortunate rock+lawn mower accident
• Make/hang drapes and shade in master bedroom
• Replace hallway light fixtures with original Eichler fixtures
• Add expansion tank to hot water heater
• Install New Door Knobs
• Add work area (table and shelf) to laundry room
• Replace dining room light
• Replace fireplace insert
• Major boiler service (conversion from pilot light to piezo-electric ignition)
• Add bedroom light fixture

So… what’s next?  Here’s a hint: there was another unfortunate rock+lawn mower accident this past weekend 🙁

People who live in glass houses (like us Eichler-owners) should seriously consider investing in window coverings.  As we’ve mentioned, one of the features we like very much about our house is the amount of natural light thanks to the rear south-facing wall of windows, enhancing the “indoor/outdoor” feel of the house.

Master bedroom windows- there's another floor-to-ceiling window immediately to the right of this view.

This luxury, however, comes with a price.

• Heat exchange.  While a few (<50%) of our windows have been replaced with dual pane insulated glass, most are the original single pane glass which is not a great insulator.  In the summer, the windows make our house like a green house (even the dual-paned ones) and in the winter it’s noticeably cooler next to the windows.  I recently caulked around all of the windows to avoid drafts, but they still do a poor job at insulating.
• Light.  One wall of our master bedroom is said south-facing window wall.  In the summer, the sun rises around 6:30am.  Not a good combination for a sleeper-inner.
• Privacy.  We do have a solidly-fenced back yard with a 5′ stretch of trees between the fence and the road behind our house- so it wouldn’t seem that privacy is too big of a deal.  We weren’t concerned until we had a (less than fully clothed) 7am run-in with a PG&E (gas company) worker randomly inspecting for gas leaks IN OUR BACK YARD.  Apparently they do that (as I found out by calling PG&E) and there’s nothing that can be done to prevent it short of locking all of our gates, I suppose.  Hopefully that was an isolated incident, but nonetheless, considering the number of house guests we have, a diorama-esque bedroom is less than desirable

So with these factors in mind, we decided that at least our master bedroom needs window coverings.  After some extensive research (trips to Ikea and internet browsing) I opted to fabricate my own “ripplefold” drapes.  They’re hung from a track system on the ceiling and have a hidden wand-draw- sort of like traditional pleated drapes that you would find in a hotel room.  I like them because of their structured “ripple” appearance when they’re closed (which is 99% of the time for us).  Initially Andy and I endured a  multi-week decisioning process after which we decided on a solid dark gray fabric (poly blend silk shantung).  However, by the time I had a 50% off coupon and went to JoAnn’s fabric to make the purchase, I discovered they had slightly less of the fabric than I needed within a 100 mile radius and were discontinuing it.  I did some quick re-calculations and decided to insert a stripe of contrasting fabric at the bottom rather than starting from the drawing board on the fabric choice.  This allowed me to get most of the fabric at a clearance price BUT it was a pain in the butt to make (we don’t have a single room in our house that’s as big as one of those drapery panels which made measuring and cutting and lining up the stripe very very difficult).  In the end, we both love how they came out and they were worth the cost (even with clearance and coupons the quantity of fabric needed for the finished side and lining is huge… plus the hardware is pricey as well) and time involved in designing and fabricating (about 50 hours).

(The picture at the bottom of this post is much more true to the color).  When open, they still allow lots of natural light.  When closed, they block almost all light (they are fully lined with black-out fabric).  We’ve also found that when it’s hot outside our bedroom is the coolest place in the house and we are toasty warm in the winter (we even had to down-grade the thickness of our winter blankets because our room stays so warm!).

I know the color may be a bit controversial (the woman at JoAnn’s thinks I’m crazy for choosing such a “serious” color). Personally, we like the “cave” feel.  Plus, other than the almost perfectly-matching Crate and Barrel shag rug under the bed (which offers  a nice place to land your feet when waking up) that Andy scored at a garage sale in our old neighborhood for a steal, everything else in the room should be much more colorful (like the bright yellow quilt!) once we’re finished.

For the other window in our bedroom I found a couple yards of a nice orange fabric which I used to cover a $7 home-depot black-out roller shade (with spray adhesive).  To make it a little more dressed up looking, Andy helped me make the white cornice (wood thing on top of the window) out of a left-over piece of 4×4 we had:

Other than replacing the closet light fixture (which I broke while trying to dig out my winter coat at 4am before I left for my flight to NY last month), that summarizes all of the changes we’ve made in the master bedroom so far.  Here’s our wish list for our master bedroom:

• Paint and drywall repairs (the drywall throughout the house was installed very poorly over the original paneling.  We’re debating between repairing the existing drywall and replacing it.  Our current level of ambition and speculation concerning insulation is pointing towards repair.)  Our My plan for wall color is a nice colorful shade of teal:

• Trim (simple white crown molding and baseboards).  Like the drywall, the trim was poorly installed and doesn’t span the whole width of the wall in many places.
• Add wall sconces above the bed for reading light and to free up night stand space
• New Furniture- bed, dresser(s), night stands.   Our current furniture is “Country Bumpkin-Themed” (Andy’s words, not mine) … some day we hope to replace it, maybe with some vintage or modern pieces.  I’m a huge fan of teak furniture with clean lines.
• Maybe another light fixture in the center of the room?  As you can tell by the photos (mostly taken at night) it’s a bit dark in there, but maybe that’s ok for a bedroom.
• Sound-Proofing.  I know this seems like overkill, but the dining/kitchen area is on the other side of the (un-insulated) wall and sound travels very very well in our house.  It’s nearly impossible for us to sleep if there’s someone else awake in the house- we can hear every sound that is made.  Andy has some ideas for adding sound proofing to the wall that the bedroom shares with the dining room, plus we may get a heavier door.
• New flooring- TBD, probably consistent with the rest of the house (polished concrete maybe?) and not done until we do the rest of the house.
• New roof.  I know this is not directly related to the bedroom, but for some reason, every time the roof leaks the leak is in our bedroom!  Sleeping in a room with a dripping roof is a form of torture, so I consider a new roof a huge improvement to our bedroom!

Since nothing on the list is easy and cheap, I doubt much of it will happen very soon, so our bedroom is likely to stay as-is for quite a while.  At least we’re not lacking in the privacy department now though!

P.S. Andy loves our bedroom drapes so much that he convinced me to make drapes for the living room.  The good news is that the fabric has already been chosen (Andy said I could get whatever I wanted as long as it was a solid color) and purchased.

P.P.S. I know you can buy Ripplefold drapes already made… but they are REALLY expensive (>$1000 for our sized windows) and don’t come in a good selection of fabric.  And hanging/ironing them is still about a day’s work.

we’ve been focusing on the bad and the ugly- our kitchen is definitely one of the good parts of our house!  The previous owners did some serious upgrades to the 1958 original kitchen and although it’s still not my dream kitchen, it’s pretty darn nice:

Among it’s best features are:

• Lots of counter space- There are 3-4 solid “work stations” around the kitchen which is very luxurious
• Granite Counters- they’re great work surfaces and hide dirt/crumbs amazingly well (probably too well)
• Lots of Drawers- our last house had one kitchen drawer and I think this one has 10… we actually had to get creative in finding things to put in drawers (we have a tupperware drawer, a paper/plastic-ware drawer, TWO utensil drawers…)
• Nice and Sturdy cabinets that are not white (I HATE white cabinets- they are impossible to keep clean for people who use their kitchen and don’t have house keepers!)
• Big enough for 2 people to cook in at once (if those 2 people get along well enough to cook together… Andy and I are working on that!)
• Under-mount sink with one large/deep basin and one small/deep basin.  I love that we can fit our biggest pots and cutting boards completely in the sink and Andy loves that it’s easy to clean around the sink.
• Work space next to the stove.  Our last house didn’t have that and I really missed being able to set things down next to the stove/oven as well as having a utensil container, salt and pepper within arms reach.
• The step-up bar.  Provides extra dining space (it’s where we have breakfasts) and also a good place for someone to sit (like Andy in the picture above) while someone else is cooking.  While I like the step-up feature because it keeps the non-cooker(s) from eating the food being prepared on the counter belowAndy thinks it would be nicer to have a single level for more continuous workspace.

While the kitchen was probably the nicest part of the house on move in day (almost 4 months ago now!), we have made a few tweaks since then:

First off, the house didn’t come with a refrigerator (or washer and dryer).  We contemplated living out of our three chest freezers in the garage (frozen food, beer and the lager fridge/mug freezer)- but we quickly decided that we’d like to have the luxury of a refrigerator/freezer in the kitchen… plus there was only a single outlet in the garage so that option probably wasn’t all too feasible.  We ended up purchasing a stainless steel Samsung side-by side from Sears.  It was delivered on move-in-day without a hitch.  Because of itsposition next to the peninsula, there isn’t enough clearance for a swing-door or french door style fridge- hence our choice of a side-by-side.  We also like that the magnetic sides are exposed so we didn’t lose the “central hub” of our house (not shown so as to maintain the image that we are neat-freaks).  The positioning of the fridge creates a bit of a “nook” between the left side of the fridge and the back wall of the kitchen:

It’s perfect for storing our pots (whose bottoms aren’t exactly all that shiny and clean… so it’s nice that they’re only seen if you’re IN the kitchen) and ikea step stool.  This side of the fridge also has a magnetic rack which holds aprons and lunch bags.

Working our way counter-clock-wise around the kitchen, we get to probably the easiest improvement we’ve done:

The $10 Ikea wine rack above the microwave!  It holds 4 bottles hich is perfect for the 2 of us (I won’t mention how often we have to refill it).

Next up, the biggest change we made in the kitchen so far.  We went from this:

To This:

We were a little uneasy about the wiring job seen in the first photo, but it turned out that the kitchen was wired for two fixtures (whereas they were previously using one giant one and had spackled over the other wires coming out of the ceiling).  Coincidentally we purchased two track light fixtures (from Lowes, $50 each) that worked out perfectly!  After Andy’s pro installation, I just had to prime and paint where the old fixture was and we were all set.  We also installed a dimmer but find ourselves using full power when we’re working in the kitchen- it’s still nice to have options though. I love the lights now- because they can be angled we don’t have to worry about the beam blocking the light.  They also cast a nice glow on the cabinets.

The last upgrade we made was turning half of the closet into a pantry:

All it took was a $35 adjustable Costco metal shelf.  Our kitchen doesn’t have as much storage as I’d like (I am to kitchen equipment what Andy is to Beer equipment)- so adding shelving for pantry items and cleaning products, along with the pot racks, has really helped.  In a perfect world I would love to have a walk-in pantry- or even a slide-out pantry- but that’s not very realistic.  This setup actually works out quite nicely!

Thus ends the upgrades we’ve made so far.  Since a complete kitchen re-model isn’t exactly in the budget (nor needed) we’ve narrowed down our to-dol ist to a few things that would make our kitchen even more functional:

• A gas range.  Not only do I prefer gas to electric, the electric range doesn’t have enough electricity to run the oven plus a burner on high at the same time- which makes for lots of frustration and many trips to the electrical panel to reset the tripped breakers.  Our goal is to get this done by Thanksgiving so I can cook Thanksgiving dinner with the new range- we’ll see if that happens or if we have a microwaved feast!
• A new faucet.  Ours actually LOOKS pretty neat and we really like the CONCEPT of it (pull out sprayer, single handle, goose neck)

but the problem is, most of the time it looks like this:

The mechanism that holds the head in place is broken.  Also, there’s no logic to what handle position gets the hottest water and what position gets the coldest water (hint: NOT all the way to the left/right or even right/left).

• A new dishwasher.  Our house actually came with a brand new hot point dishwasher (bottom of the line), but its major draw backs are that dishes don’t come out clean and the racks are in terrible positions.  I wish we could have paid $300 more for the house to get a dishwasher that worked.  Oh Well.
• A range hood.  We currently have a ceiling exhaust fan (like you’d find in a 50-year-old bathroom-as  seen above next to the track lighting) that is a couple feet away from the stove (separated by a 12″ beam) which does not cut it.  If bacon is made for breakfast you can still smell it at dinner time.  I’m not sure if this should trump a new dishwasher or not… both are pretty annoying- but not as annoying as the range.
• Back to the step-up bar area… the construction is a bit wonky so people with long legs (a.k.a. Andy) tend to bang their knees on sharp corners.  I personally don’t know what they are talking about.

• Lowest on our wish list (because it’s only aesthetic and not functional) is re-facing the cabinet doors.  HGTV tells us it’s “MUCH CHEAPER” to get new doors than totally new cabinets- and our cabinets are great- we just don’t fully appreciate the door style.  The “style” (or “Theme” as Andy would say) doesn’t match the house nor our vision for it.  It’s more “Italian Villa” than “Mid-Century Modern”)

All in all, it’s probably the nicest kitchen I’ve ever had- which makes cooking more fun (unless you plan to use the oven and stove).

Before it became casa Krone, our house was…

Mirabelle’s home for the elderly (or Mirabelle’s Place for short).

!!!Disclaimer: everything from here on is based solely on rumor and hypothesis!!!

Mirabelle’s home for the elderly was a sort of nursing home for elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease… and yes, there was a sign above the garage that said “Mirabelle’s Place.”  Apparently the neighbors complained (our neighborhood is 100% residential and not at all zoned for nursing homes…) and Mirabelle (the lady to ran it/ previous owner of our house) had to take it down.  The lasting affect of that sign, however, is that our neighbors still refer to our house as “Mirabelle’s Place” (we overheard or neighbor telling his landscaping contractor last weekend: “yeah… they’re the people who bought Mirabelle’s place.”).  Knowing this explains SOOO much about our house:

• The handicap accessibility (ramps off the side deck, hand rails in the bathrooms, zero-clearance showers, the buzzer)
• The “security” (security cameras,  fire alarm, the “fire extinguisher inside” sign, the 10 smoke detectors)
• The exceptionally high number of bedrooms (6 total: the 3 intended bedrooms, the office/bedroom, the “beer room” plus about 25% of the garage was made into a room (complete with a sliding door to the atrium, white paint and a textured ceiling)
• Every single “room” listed above has a sliding door to either the outside or the atrium- so our house has 9 exterior doors (including the dog door) plus 3 doors into the atrium.
• The mail man was shocked to find out there are only 2 people living here… we still get mail for about 10 different people.
• The laundry room didn’t have a dryer exhaust vent (we added one into the garage which apparently is a big no-no that we’ll have to fix some day but works for now- as long one of the garage doors is open)
• There IS a dryer exhaust vent in the living room… apparently that was the “laundry room”
• The copious statues and fountains… elderly people like that sort of thing and their eyesight is generally not good enough to tell that, up-close, they were hideously ugly (or even from far away…  you can see more than one fountain if you Google Earth our house!)
• The many many many plants that require hand-watering (there is no in-ground sprinkler system… or there was but someone decided to concrete around it).  We recently learned that one of Mirabelle’s patients used gardening as her therapy and spent ALL DAY EVERY DAY tending to the plants.  We learned this when we confirmed our neighbor’s suspicion that we were discarding two green waste bins full of tree/shrub/plant every week (she said “my son asked if that was a tree he saw in your garbage can”).  Our plan is to “simplify” the landscaping… and my theory is that some time in 2012 we’ll have it down to just the stuff we want (e.g. grass).  Yeah, we have no intentions of renting a dumpster if we can discard stuff for free every week in our green waste bins (yeah, we have 2… it was a happy misunderstanding when we started garbage collection service).  On that note- if anyone is interested in any type of plant life (and we pretty much have the whole spectrum)- it’s yours for the digging.
• Mirabelle’s husband was the resident handy man… so a lot of our house was “DIY” (not in the “wow, your DIY wedding details were so personal” way, but more in the “uh, are you sure you’re qualified to DIY electrical work?” way).  Sadly, I think he had some medical problems (I heard he fell off the roof)… so perhaps that had something to do with the quality of his work.  I also think it had something to do with the eventual closing of Mirabelle’s place / foreclosure of our house (which, by the way, we bought from the same back that owned it… which worked out magnificently for us… not so well for Mirabelle).

So, now you have the full history of Mirabelle’s Place (as told through rumor and hypothesis)!