Tile Death Do Us Part

A long time ago, we put in new kitchen counters (laminate, none of that granite that every flipped house in San Diego has).  It was such an improvement over the old counters (and sink) that we wanted to start using it immediately, and never stop. So 6 months passed before we got around to finishing it, by adding a tile back-splash. Meanwhile, it looks like we got a little water damage - oops! The thing is, neither Jymm nor I had ever worked with tile. It looked scary. Easy to mess up. Technical. Perhaps Best Left to Professionals. 

The first few tiles have been placed. Jymm puts them on, and Alan uses a Sharpie to color the edges black. 

We were crazy. It turns out Jymm's baking skills really came in handy- spreading that stuff you use to attach the tiles to the wall was just like spreading icing on a cake (Note: it doesn't taste like icing). Laying the first course of tiles across the one wall took maybe thirty minutes. The grout (really silicon caulk in this case) took another 45 minutes. Then we were done!

Done! (Except for 90% of the grouting. And the other wall).

We had such a fun time doing this we've decided to tile the whole house- walls, ceiling, everything. Pretty soon the whole place will look like you've walked into a Tetris game- awesome! Of course, we haven't yet finished the kitchen. And we still have to tile the shower in the master bath. So...we'll see how we feel about it after all of that.

The little details count

One day I (Alan) awoke to find a kitty sleeping on the island - bad kitty, you are not allowed there! Well technically he wasn't "on" the island. I'm pretty sure he thought that made it OK because as soon as he saw me he started purring. This is one of those times I told Jymm I was pretty sure the cats take after her side of the family.

Many days later I wanted to blog about how we were finally finishing off the paint job and decoration in our living room, but wouldn't you know it - I couldn't find any good pictures of the un-decorated state. But if you ignore the cute kitty (hard, I know) you can probably see some of the disarray in the background. Our open Ikea bookshelves were great in our old apartment, but didn't make such a good centerpiece in our new living room - plus they were a "junk magnet". After swearing to never buy another new piece of furniture again, we finally broke down and bought a nice Ikea solid wood bookshelf to replace it (don't worry, it was on sale).

Nothing is ever that simple, at least when I'm around - I pointed out that it would be silly to put up the bookshelf just to move it later to finish the paintjob behind it. So first, we painted the walls to cover up the construction done way back before we even moved in, which opened up the kitchen into the living-room. We've been living with bare Sheetrock ever since - sometimes cleverly covered up, as in the bookshelf example above.

So painting a wall - simple right? But our real choice was to paint the entire room, or try to find the matching paint color. It was painted just before we bought the home, so it seemed silly to redo the room, and that gave me the idea we might be able to find the same color at our local Home Depot. Jymm loves looking at paint chips, so this was the perfect job for her. She brought home a whole bunch of samples - one of which was a perfect match - yay!

So once again we pulled out the painting clothes, threw some drop cloths down, and got to it. When we finished painting this part of the wall we were so excited with how it looked that we kept going! The header the contractors put in to replace the wall was still bare, and there was another section of wall they'd had to replace. In actuality we probably spent about two hours of our weekend on this project, but it made a huge difference in how finished the room feels, as does the new bookshelf.

Asbestos We Can - no wait, we can do better: From Asbestos to the Best-os

This was our family room, as photographed by the listing agent way before we bought the house. Style: 70s. Maybe even 60s. It even came with a matching painting, which you can just barely see to the left. Jymm was never a fan (painting, or room). Alan didn't mind the style. Maybe it even secretly grew on him. 

Wasting no time, we immediately renovated. 

Pleased with the results, we kept it this way for several months. Sometimes we carefully moved a pile of things from one corner to another, then moved it back. Sometimes we even cleared some space on the floor to add more stuff. But mostly it just looked like this from the day we started moving in until just before the next renovation began.

During Christmas vacation, while Howard and Barbara were visiting, Jymm got the bright idea to rip off some of the paneling in the room to get to the wiring beneath. In the process some of the popcorn, which we suspected contained asbestos, was knocked off of the ceiling. Several weeks later we confirmed that there was asbestos now floating in the atmosphere of our house and decided that sealing the room off would somehow help. At least it made us feel better. Then we hired some professionals to take care of the rest.

We figured while they were in there they might as well make it prettier. So along with encasing the ceiling in dry wall, they tore down the paneling, and the layer of paneling under the paneling, added a window and a door and a cat door (long story).  They also replaced the carpet, since it was contaminated with asbestos. To the left you can see the new door being installed. Quite a gap there, eh? I filled it with some fiberglass when they weren't looking.











It took them a little over a week to do the whole job, except for the carpet which was left for after we did our part. To save costs, we did the cosmetic stuff- painting, molding, lamps, all the while laughing at the cats while they tried to figure out how to use the cat door.

We took a full week just to do 90% of the painting. I expect the contractor would have done it in a day. Meanwhile, the only real drama of the project occurred: the stucco around the newly installed doors and windows started to crack. A lot. At first the contractor said it was normal. Alan did not agree. After about 2 weeks, the contractor came around to Alan's point of view, and had the worst parts patched.






Then today, finally, a week and a half after the carpet guy had come and gone (to be fair, we were pretty sick last weekend) we unsealed the room! Of course, the first thing we did was hook up the video game systems. Yep, we did all of that work in order to have an entire room to play video games in. And it is awesome.

Fun fact: If you stand in a particular place in our red kitchen and gaze toward the yellow wall in the family room you can imagine that you are in McDonald's. All we need now is a ball pit.

Our Own Private Island, Part 1: IKEA Gets Our Money

Our first major project was to build an island for our kitchen. We wanted to add some counter space and a lot more storage. Little did we realize the time and effort this would require (you will see this sentence repeated often)! First we mocked up the island with a bunch of boxes and a bookshelf to get an idea of what size would work in the space. The kittens really loved playing in the boxes (I don't think they like the finished island half as much). Then we used IKEA's 'AutoCad lite' to figure out what kind of design we could fit in the allotted space.

On the big day we went to IKEA and gave them more money than we ever have spent there before (still, quite cheap for kitchen hardware) and (just barely) stuffed it all into our Camry.  Jymm's tetris skills come in handy! That evening we assembled the base cabinets.  It went rather quickly and we were feeling quite impressed with ourselves. How much longer could this really take?

           To be continued...

The Story So Far...

This summer, after returning from our adventures in Europe, we decided to brave the real estate market. What we ended up with is what my boss succinctly calls a "fixer". Here are some pictures of the house at the time that we bought it and some pictures of it's present state. We'll try to update here once a week on our ongoing progress.

This is the enclosed patio, before we moved in. A nice, open space, with a nice view.

Now, after living here a month, the space is entirely different. The 'nice view' is now inside. Aren't they cute? Jymm dreams of some day cleaning out the box pile in the patio, so that we'll have TWO views.

See the line that goes across the ceiling and down the far wall? There were walls there- our first act as homeowners was to demolish two of the walls in the house to open up the kitchen into the living/dining room.

Here's what that space looks like now. You can see we have not yet put floor in where the walls came out. We have big plans for this kitchen. Check back before the year is over!

 And, finally, here's a photo taken from the bottom of the back yard

So, as you can see, we've got our work cut out for us. Redoing this area is part of our "5 year plan".

And now the award for...

Well, it's over. Really, really over. We have been home for exactly one month. We've been home so long that our home is about to be ours no longer. Today we move from North Mesa Apartments, where I  (Alan) have lived for 9 years, and Jymm 5, to a complex down the street. Neither of us are students any longer, so we couldn't stay in super cheap student only housing any longer. Now we live in moderately cheap UCSD staff housing. Not for long though: we put in a bid for a house in San Diego, and hope to close and move there in 2-3 weeks. Very exciting times, and a very exciting end to our time in Europe.

Looking back now, there are a few things that stand out. And so I give you the best and worst awards for Alan And Jymm's great European adventure of 2011:

Best food item (uncooked): Bread and butter. Combines Alan’s favorite food with Jymm’s favorite condiment.

Best drink: carbonated apple juice

First runner up (Jymm): Instant coffee from Germany

Best eating out experience: Indian food in west byfleet, great Briton

            First runner up: full Irish breakfast, Ennis

Best make-you-want-to-puke: Ireland bus on small back roads, going 100km/hour

Biggest letdown: tower of London

Best attraction we found completely by accident: Oslo fortress

Best grocery store: LiDL

Worst grocery store: doolin café/grocery store, 30 feet from our hostel. The refregierated section had 3 items. Total. The only bread they had was factory-baked white bread.

Thing we used most that we almost didn’t buy: rain jackets from REI

            Runner up: REI short-sleeved nylon sun shirt for Alan

Most comfy bed: Guest bed in Sue and Jeff’s house

            Runner up: twin mattresses at Rowen Tree Hostle (after you get over the loanlyness of having to sleep alone)

Worst food: ‘home made’ macaroni and cheese on our last day in Germany when we were trying to use up everything we had in the fridge. The cheese melted into one giant lump, and after cooling had the consistency of a rubber tarp.

Least useful clothing item: Jymm’s high heels (never worn, shipped back to the US at a price of ~5 euro).

Most challenging item to find in Europe: anti-bacterial wet wipes, individually packaged

 Worst at host for remembering to give you proper change: Rainbow hostel, Doolin (on two separate occasions! first they forgot to give us 10 euro back, and then later 16 euro back).

Best place to find tics: Black forest, Germany. Alan estimates he picked up about 1 tic every 20 minutes.

Worst place to go off trail: Black forest, Germany. A five minute shortcut resulted in 1 bee-sting for Alan and one large hole in some poor underground wasp nest.

Best museum: tate modern. Another accidental find, actually.

Favorite easy breakfast food: Fruit musle (from LiDL), swerved with orange juice instead of milk.

Favorite city: Freiburgh (could be due to the host we stayed with, though)

Worst airline to fly if you forget to print your own bording pass: RyanAir (they charge 40 euros to print it for you at the airport).

Best electronic gadget we brought: Android smart phone (without service) which we used as a GPS unit and trail guide

Worst electronic gadget we brought: Same, because it kept on failing in new, unexpected ways, and at very inopportune moments.

Best tourist attraction: the riechstag. Great views, great architecture, free, and no line (because you had to make an apporintment).

 Best friends and relatives (in Europe!): the people who let us stay at their houses and homes while we were in Europe. Our experience was 10 times better for your generosity. 

Thank you all for reading! We'll see you again at this very same blog in 10 years when we decide to do it all over again, though perhaps this time with a different set of countries!

Edinburgh

First off, I'm going to apologize for the fact that our posts have been so sporadic lately. As we get close to going home we've been thinking more about houses and less about blogging. Edinburgh really deserves more than the short post I'm going to give it. Edinburgh was everything I'd hoped London would be. It was great and if you come to Europe you should spend at least a couple of days there.

We visited the National Museum of Scotland which is cool if you like history and old stuff. They have lots of it. We also visited Holyrood House- it was awesome. It looks a lot like it did back in the 1600's, which was really cool to see. And there was a free audio tour guide thingy, which I liked a lot. It was especially cool to hang out in Mary, Queen of Scots bedroom.

We also hiked up Arthur's Seat, which is basically an oversized hill. Some great views at the top, and it was a reasonably nice hike. We walked the Royal Mile, which is mostly lined with shops called things like "The Real Scotland" that sell all kinds of stuff that says Scotland on it. We visited a cathedral and it was beautiful on the inside. It's really cool to think about how they built those things before math or engineering were at all understood.

I found out that there was a Marshall clan. Also a street called Marshall street, and a street called Gifford park.

In any case, now we're headed home. We spent half of yesterday here in Glasgow, but there's not much here. The food is good.

Falkirk Wheel

While in Falkirk we went to visit their major attraction: The Falkirk Wheel. What the wheel is, essentially, is a modern day canal lock. It is challenging to describe how it works- there's a sort of boat shaped part filled with water that the boat sits in. This part has wheels on the bottom and sits inside of a circle that is in turn set into a larger mechanism. When the boat wants to go up the boat goes into the boat shaped part and then the larger mechanism flips over while the boat part remains upright because it's on wheels inside of a circle. Got that? Good. (If you look at the picture it will be easier to see what I'm talking about.)

In any case, it was pretty cool to watch happen, and it really is an ingenious mechanism. I overheard a tour guide saying that it replaced 11 locks. So instead of taking almost a full day to get through that part of the canal it takes about 15 minutes.

The funny thing is that they've turned it into an amusement park. There are food vendors and you can take a boat tour that goes up the lock and there is a children's playground and a gift shop and lots of walking trails. I would definitely recommend it if you're in the area.

Falkirk canal hike

Yesterday we walked around Falkirk, Scottland. To stay away from busy streets I routed us through a park, where we happened upon the Callandar house, which apparently was the site of a lot of Scottish history, dating back to 1000AD. The interesting part to me was that they showed how the house changed over time. It wasn't until the 1800s that it looked anything like the fancy, old building that we saw, before that it was more or less a rectangle of ever increasing size.

From the park we tried to find an old canal and towpath which had been converted into a hiking and biking trail. I had seen it from google satalight views, so I knew there was a trail, though at the time I didn't realize it was a canal - I though it was a small river next to a hiking trail. Perhaps that is why I was confused when my smart  "phone" showed that we were getting close, but it was nowhere in sight. Eventually we were standing right on top of the river, and all we could see were gently rolling hills. The map software is sometimes hard to interpret, but this was pretty strange. I concluded there must be a tunnel, though at the time I had no idea if it was open to foot traffic, nor was it clear why it would even be there, since I didn't know about the canal.

Some more wandering, however, brought us to a valley through which the canal and trail were routed. We almost turned back, however, because the sign for the trail leading into the valley said it was closed due to landslide. After some discussion, we decided to take a look, anyway, which revealed no such landslide. Silly sign.

Indeed, the canal did pass though a tunnel. As did the hiking trail. The canal was constructed around 1812, and though the tunnel itself was not labeled, I assume it too dated to the same time,as otherwise the canal would have been pretty useless. It was a little intimidating to enter a 200 year old tunnel, at least in part because it was leaking very badly - along several points inside a large amount of water fell in torrents from the ceiling, sometimes into the canal, sometimes onto the trail (yuck!). The tunnel was quite long - around 1800 feet long, with the occasional light to keep it from being pitch black.  It felt very much like a movie set, especially because of the all the noise from the falling water. I'm quite impressed they build something so large so long ago, and that it lasted so long.

At points it was quite like being in a cave, including some stalagmites hanging from the ceiling, and in a few places, huge limestone deposits covering the old brick walls - perhaps a few inches think in places! I was a little worried that jymm might feel claustrophobic, but it seems she enjoyed it almost as much as I did.

Ireland Hike, Day Three: Ireland Redeems Itself Spectacularly

We set off on our final hiking leg with some reservations. We even considered just skipping the hike and taking the bus straight to Ennis. But in the end we went through with it- and boy were we glad we did! We hiked from Doolin to the Cliffs of Moher, then grabbed a bus from the cliffs to Ennis. Words cannot really do this hike justice, plus I noticed that our last few posts are super wordy. So, here are some lovely pictures taken along the way.

               We walked along an old road that is now only used by farmers to reach their cattle.

                                          Out on the horizon you can see the Islands of Aran

                                         We took a break to eat some fudge with chili

                                                  Looking back at where we'd come from

                                           Better find a different way to go!

                                           One view of the Cliffs of Moher- it was pretty spectacular

Once we were done hiking we flagged down a bus (literally, we stood in the road and waved at it until it stopped and picked us up) and rode down to Ennis. This day, with it's beautiful sun and lovely vistas really made up for the struggle on the second day of hiking. We're really glad we didn't wimp out and skip it.