Daily Knick Knacks

A Whole New World!

2020-03-22T10:07:00.002-07:00

I am obviously not very good at keeping this blog up to date. Since the Coronavirus is putting our lives in a holding pattern, I am trying to use this time to nurture my creativity and keep my mind occupied.

Where do I start? So much has happened in the last couple of weeks in the world I really don't know where to begin. The work on our house started to pick up in February, we were just getting near the mid point when it all came to a halt this last week. We had planned on moving in April and then it got pushed back to May due to one of the companies scheduling. And now with shelter in place ordered by the CA governor, not sure when we can start again or when we'll actually move. In the mean time, I will catch up on what we've done with the house so far.

On the second day of the new year, we started the first of many projects on the house. We removed trees around the property to let in more natural light in all the rooms. One thing about the house was that the interior was very dark, the wood paneling on the walls didn't help (which we are keeping), and all the trees surrounding the house blocked out a lot of light. The bottle brushes blocked out natural light in the bedrooms and they get messy so they had to go. On the opposites of the yard, we had 5 redwood trees in varying sizes growing closely together, also blocking out a lot of natural light in the dining room/kitchen area. In addition to more light, I wanted more open and usable space in the yard. With 2 of the 5 redwoods gone, letting sunlight reach our house, it also benefits the solar panels we will be installing on the roof.

This is a google earth view of our house. Top of the picture is the front of the house. On the left was where the redwoods were. There is also a valley oak tree in the middle of all the redwoods. It has a wide canopy and the leaves will provide shade in the hot Walnut Creek summers but still let in filtered light. On the right was the bottle brushes with the squiggly red line. That side of the house is only about 4 feet away from the neighbor's house separated by a fence, limiting the amount of natural light this narrow area receives. You can practically see into the neighbor's windows on this side of the house although I haven't tried. We met the neighbor already, she's an elderly lady, every sweet and got a great sense of humor. They are one of the OGs, they bought the house in the late 60s/early 70s to raise their family and never left.

The tree removal company came out for 2 or 3 days, first to remove the trees, and then grind down all the stumps around the property. The root grinder was obnoxiously loud. I hope it didn't disturb our neighbors too much in this peaceful and quiet suburban oasis. We ended up with a mountain of wood chips in our front yard wondering how many weekends it would take us to spread out all the mulch around the yard. Luckily our contractor loaned out one of his guys to help us spread the mulch for a nominal fee. With the over crowding trees gone, the house already feel lighter and brighter, wait until you see the new dining room skylights, "A whole new world...."!

I think they had already cut down one of the redwoods by the time I got to the house. These guys started early.

I wish I had saved a few of the tree stumps. Maybe I could've used them to make some furniture?

The redwood wood chips smelled heavenly. They dumped the whole truck load in my front yard.

I think this was after we had already moved a lot of wheel barrel loads of mulch around the yard. After a whole morning of work, it barely made a dent. That pile of wood chip was probably 6 feet tall by 8 or 9 feet wide.

Heath for the Win!

2019-12-16T07:34:00.000-08:00

It's been over a month since we closed on the Eichler. Not much has happened on the renovation front yet. But I've been meeting with what seem to be endless number of contractors for floor, roofing, electrical, tree removal, asbestos abatement...I've lost track.

We are also checking out flooring materials, fixtures, cabinets, there are so many options it's hard to narrow down what we want. We actually bought some kitchen backsplash tiles already, on a whim. After learning about the overstock Heath Ceramic tiles for sale at their Sausalito store, we went on an exploratory trip to check out what they have in stock.

I immediately fell in love with these hexagonal tiles so I picked out our kitchen backsplash tiles on the spot. We got a great deal at 50% off their retail price and since we only needed 16 sq. ft, it was a lot less than what we had budgeted for. Win, win!

Our Journey Begins!

2019-11-24T22:36:00.000-08:00

Now that we are officially owners of an Eichler built in 1958, I can talk more in depth about the house.

Like most people who gravitate toward Eichlers, we've always been fans of Mid-Century designs.

What made us fall in love with this particular house?

It has 4 bedrooms, it's mostly original so it hasn't been butchered with "updates". It's in a quiet neighborhood with tree lined streets and friendly neighbors. The neighborhood public schools are highly rated from K-12. And most importably it's within our price range ( I am not saying it was a bargain but we did get the cheapest house in the best neighborhood we can afford.)

Without further ado, here are some photos of the house. These are not my photos, they were taken from the realtor's listing.

The front yard will definitely be getting a make over in the coming years.

We will repaint the exterior once we repair some of the rotted siding.

Looking down the hallway toward the front door. Kitchen and an "all purpose room" or dining room, to the left.

Everything on the left of this photo is original except for the 24" wall oven.

The counter and sink on the right were replaced at some point by the previous owners.

We plan to paint the wood burning fireplace white. During the home inspection, a crack was discovered inside the chimney. Instead of fixing the crack, we will put a gas insert in place.

This is the hallway bathroom, one of two in the house. None of the original fixtures remained except for the bathtub. This room will be getting a total refresh.

This is the ensuite bedroom. It gets flooded with light throughout the day with a whole wall of glass. It has access to the back yard through the sliding glass door. Unfortunately this is the only bedroom in the house that gets good amount of light.

This is one of 4 bedrooms in the house. All the bedrooms are pretty much the same with one window, a closet, and total lack of light except for the ensuite bedroom in the back of the house.

This is the ensuite bathroom. The cabinet is original but the sink and fixtures are not. The shower and toilet are placed very closely to one another. The shower is much smaller than the one in our current house. There is no way to make the space larger without taking away space from the bedroom behind it. So for now we are keeping the same foot print but updating everything.

After much internet sleuthing, we were able to find this original floor plan for our house! We think our house is the model in the middle. The overall layouts for all three houses are the same, the difference is in the window and sliding glass door placements.

In my next post, I will talk about what we are planning to do to the house and some of the challenges of updating our Eichler. Follow me on instagram 👉 @willyoubemyeichler

Will You be My Eichler?

2019-10-16T23:39:00.001-07:00

In what seem like a blink of an eye, we've lived in our current home for over 9 years. Our little family has doubled in numbers since the day we laid eyes on our Queen Anne Victorian in the North Oakland flats. Over the years we've done what seem like an endless list projects to update, maintain, and improve our home. But we always knew that we would leave one day because we need more space for our growing family.

I had kind of given up hope on finding a home that fits all our criteria in the budget that we had set for ourselves. The Bay Area real estate market is notorious for being one of the most competitive and expensive in the country so finding something that fit our budget would mean a fixer-upper. Something that most home buyers don't want to deal with. We are not really phased by renovation because this is not my first rodeo as they say.

A few weeks ago, as I was browsing through the Multiple Listing Service, a house in a neighborhood that we've always liked caught my eye. The asking price was high enough for a fixer that I didn't pay much attention to it but I did mark it to keep track of the sales trend. The house quickly went pending which I wasn't too surprised because it was an Eichler home and they usually command a premium over homes of similar size due to the its' association with the Mid-Century-Modernism.

Much to my surprise, the house came back on the market a few days later with a slight price reduction. I sent the listing to my husband as I often do without expecting to hear back from him. But he asked if we could go see it. I said sure, we can see it the next day. We decided to make an offer on the house immediately after seeing the house, with the help of my friend, a fellow real estate agent.

The offer was submitted on a Friday night, the agent had scheduled 2 open houses for that weekend and said they will mostly likely accept our offer but not until after the Sunday open house. Saturday and Sunday, we were in a holding pattern, cautiously optimistic about our offer. I didn't want to fall in love with the house and have someone come in at the last minute to submit a higher offer. When we finally received the seller signed contract on Sunday night, we were kind of in shock and couldn't believe we are in escrow for an Eichler! I love MCM and to be able to live in Modernist architecture is like a dream come true!!

The house will need a lot of TLC to bring it back to its' former glory but I am positive that we'll do it justice by updating the house without comprising its' Modernist aesthetic.

New Walkway!

2019-10-16T22:50:00.001-07:00

I thought I should share this post that's been sitting in my draft folder for the last 4 (make that 5!) years...finally publishing it.

Like most of the projects around our house, this garden is not quite 100 percent done yet. The stones are set but now I have to start planting to fill in all the exposed dirt area. Luckily this time of the year is the best time to put new plants in the ground.

I don't have a master plan for the soft scape per se. My style of gardening is find plants that interest me then try to match the area to the type of plants that might do well there. I will also have to install an irrigation system to stream line the watering process since everything is done by hand right now by moi.

So the final cost of the walkway installation including materials and labor came out to around $11,500 which is a little over our initial budget of $10,000. I was able to negotiate the rough estimate from $11,000 down to $6,500 with the stone installer but after all the material and disposal cost the total ballooned to almost doubling the installer's initial quote.

The first estimate we got from the professional landscape designer was over $20k which included all the planting and irrigation. I also got a second estimate that was $6,000 for just installing the walkway but who knows what additional cost for all the extra stuff such as trash disposal would've cost in the end. The contractor who gave me the 2nd estimate really took his time to get back to me otherwise I would've given him the job. The guy I ended up using was very responsive to my questions and needs even though his estimates came in higher. They say that early bird gets the worm, there is some truth to that.

So we shall see how much more we still have to spend for the remainder of the project. Justin has said he could install the drip irrigation to save us some money from hiring out. I am so excited for this next phase of the project! (We never got to this phase of the project unfortunately :-( )

Helllllo!

2019-03-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been almost 4 years since my last blog post, if you can call it a post...

A lot has happened in our lives in the Oakland flats. We redid our yard once, added a sunroom to our cozy home. Little D is already in 2nd grade, and little N will be entering kindergarten this Fall.

I had a career change last year! Yay! After 20 years in the Fashion Design industry and 10 years as a part-time real estate investor, I am now a full-time real estate agent/investor. I could no longer deny myself the urge to devote my waking hours to pouring over every home listings within a 50 mile radius. I am fortunate to live in an area with so much interesting architecture and local history.

I am starting to blog again, thanks for visiting and see you again soon!

2014/2015

2014-12-31T21:08:00.000-08:00

Good bye 2014 and Hello 2015!

Garden/Walkway Planning

2014-07-07T23:11:00.002-07:00

Yay, my blog got a facelift! I sat down one day and just started messing around with the blog template. After few hours of tinkering, it finally came together. I am pretty happy with the new look.

We are going on our fourth year living in this house and we are finally going to get our yard done this year. At least that's what we are hoping to accomplish before the end of the year. So far I've gotten one estimate and waiting to meet with two other landscaping companies. I had some idea of what it costs to redo our yard from talking to a neighbor couple of years ago who has a landscaping business. Our first estimate came in at over $21,000, more than doubled what we wanted to spend.

This is not a project that we can easily do it ourselves especially with two small children but the bulk of the cost is in labor. Get this, the estimate does not include demolition of the old walkway and disposal, that's another $3000-$5000. So it looks like we might have to do the project in phases to save up for each stage. Getting a new walkway is our priority so we'll get that done first.

I am super excited to get the work started but am also hating the fact that it's going to cost so much money!

Here are some inspirations I've thinking we could use in our garden make-over. I am such a sucker for the cottage garden look, with flowers, textures, colors, basically I want plants all over in every nook and cranny. It's funny because I prefer my interior surroundings to be minimalistic but when it comes to the outdoors, I am such a maximalist.

This walkway is done by using broken up concrete. I am looking for ideas to save money on the concrete disposal and cost of material. Flagstones maybe be natural but they don't come cheap.

Here is a patio built with repurposed concrete, also known as urbanite.

Before and after of a path made with urbanite.

It's Good to be Back!

2014-05-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

I took a hiatus from blogging due to a busy life...work, a new family member, and general lack of time. Anything new with the house reno? Why yes! We had mouldings and baseboards put in finally, but that's kind of old news because that happened almost a year ago. Without further ado, here are some before and after pictures. We feel relieved to have this project out of the way, next up on the agenda is the hardscape in our yard. But who knows how long it will take us to get around to break ground in the yard.

That's a lot of priming. Two coats on both sides, window & door trims, baseboard for living room and the master bed room.

Got my painting outfit on. About 3 months pregnant so not showing yet.

Rosettes for the doors.

We live with the unfinished windows and doors for close to 3 years! You kind of learn to not pay attention after a while.

Talked to several carpenters and this window was the trickiest to make the trims work. It was partly due to the improvisational nature of how it was "fixed" by the carpenter who worked on this house during our big renovation.

Finished but before I patched the nail holes and gave it a coat of Benjamin Moore's Simply White to finish it off.

Looking much more presentable.

The "carpenter" who put this door in was kind of in over his head and left gaping holes on top on half of our doors. I felt embarrassed to have people over to our unfinished house.

Yay! The bedroom door looks almost finished. It even closes properly now, all that's left to do is get the doors refinished. I tried to do that myself before but the layers of paint from the past 100 years are on there pretty good. Still deciding on how or where to get them refinished and what to do about not having doors while they are being refinished. It just never seems to end right?

The window had cracks that let in ants during rainy seasons. So happy to not see the raw drywall edge and insulations sticking out.

Another look at the unfinished windows that I tried to hide with the curtains

Bam! finished windows. I got rid of the curtains and put up roller blinds from Ikea. It looks much better now.

With the roller blind installed the look is cleaner lines and diffused light. The blinds were very inexpensive and were easy to cut to the right length, perfect DIY project for a novice.

Weird window in the front.

Before caulking and painting.

After caulk and paint.

Patio door before.

Patio door after.

Nice view of a loquat tree out the window

No baseboard but who notices anymore.

I took on the job of caulking the gaps, patching nails, sanding all the patches and painting all the trims. Well, I did get some help from the husband. It was not so easy when your stomach is growing by the minute and super tired all the time. Why don't I just sit down and nod off for a minute or two hours.

Goodbye 2013

2014-01-27T13:52:00.000-08:00

So the triplex behind our house finally sold. It came on the market last October with an asking price of $549k, we were a little shocked by the price. This house was sold for $250k two years ago. We went to the open house and saw that this place needed major work so there was no way it would get the asking price. After two priced reductions later it sold for $400k last December.

I haven't seen the new owner yet and the current tenants are still around a month after closing. About a week ago, we saw a big dumpster dropped off in front of the building and it was filled to the rim with trash within 3 days. The past several days, the previous owner, who lived on the property was seen packing and moving his stuff with the help of movers. We chatted with him briefly and found out he bought another house in East Oakland with more room for him and his son to live in. I saw the unit he and his son lived in and it was super cramped and cavernous due to the bad layout.

I wonder if the new owner will remodel the place, keep it as a rental or will they actually move in. And more importantly whether the new owner is an investor looking to do a flip which I wouldn't be opposed to because it would take a lot of money to bring the house back to life.

Speaking of new neighbors, the warehouse across the street from our house is finally being put to use again. The owners of the warehouse have been fixing the place up and putting in offices many of which have already been rented. Our street is seeing a lot more traffic now a days and I haven't seen any illegal dumping at least on the block where this warehouse sits. They even planted some trees along the side of the building.

There has been talk of building condos on the vacant land across from our house but the architect fell ill, so the plan has been postponed. We are just hoping if the condo plans gets the go ahead we can negotiate with the developers to put in some sidewalk on our side of the road. It's a long shot but one can dream...

Oh and by the way, we welcomed a new addition to the family last November! Little D is now a big brother. Tiny "N" was born on November 9th at a healthy 7lb. 9oz and 19 inches long, just one ounce lighter than her older brother when he was born. She's been a pretty good sleeper so far, knock on wood. Besides a little bit of the sniffles she's been getting bigger by the day. She's so sweet and cuddly sometimes I find it hard to put her down. Little D has been a great big brother and he just can't stop kissing and hugging her all the time. I can't wait until she's old enough so the two of them can play together.

Born at the same hospital as her brother, Alta Bates medical center, Berkeley, CA.

Here she is at 2 months old. Look at those cheeks!

Long Weekend Getaway

2013-10-28T14:50:00.001-07:00

I started to write this post 3 months ago about a trip we took back at the end of May. So yes, I am super behind on blogging as usual...

Every since we got married last December, we've been thinking about taking a honeymoon/family trip to Hawaii. Justin has never been and I was only there for a few days years ago. After doing some price checking, I realized a trip to Hawaii is just out of our reach right now. So instead of spending thousands of dollars and taking a week long vacation in a tropical paradise, we opted to do a 3 hour drive north of San Francisco and spend a long weekend on the Mendocino Coast. I don't know where I got the idea that it's a place that I've wanted to visit for a while now. I bring it up on such a regular basis that it's turned into a running joke between us. So we finally bit the bullet and made the trip happened. We ended up spending over 600 dollars for the trip, with a biggest portion of the budget spent on lodging and then food. I was hoping to spend under $500 but I didn't know about the tourist premium one has to pay in a place like Mendocino.

It's not the easiest to take a trip with a toddler but I guess I have to adjust my expectations when I travel as a parent. Trying to keep a nap schedule and making sure the kid has enough room to run around and burn off excess energy definitely puts some restraints on what we can do and when we can do it. I am still trying to figure out a good rhythm when it comes to going on trips with the little man.

The drive to Fort Bragg took us through Anderson Valley and a quaint little town called Boonville. We stretched out our legs there, got some snacks and checked out the general store. It's quite a sophisticated little town in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

We stayed at the Beachcomber Inn which is pretty much right on the beach. Our patio opened out onto the road leading to the beach below it. I will never get sick of watching the sunset over the pacific ocean for as long as I live. I wish we spent more time on the beach but for such a short trip we didn't have a lot of down time to just lay out in the sun.

We stayed in one of the suites in the building pictured. Fantastic location on the beach.

One thing I didn't expect was how expensive everything was. We took the Skunk Train, which is an old fashion steam train that goes through the redwoods. But the train ride was shortened due to a collapsed section in the tunnel along the route. The train ride was enjoyable nonetheless. There was music entertainment and lots of steam which was pretty much all that's needed to keep the little one engaged.

We had dinner at North Coast brewery. Justin ordered the beer sampler and I unfortunately only had couple of sips of his because I was 3 months pregnant. The food was not bad but the best part was the beer samplers!

We did lots of sightseeing around town. Went to the Mendocino Botanical garden to see all the beautiful plants in bloom. Saw a set of whale bones along the way and checked out tide pools at a nearby beach.

Someday when I win the lottery I would definitely buy a vacation home in this part of California for mini family get aways to relax and unwind. But for now I will have to settle for driving along highway 1 to take in the breathtaking views.

What's for Dinner?

2013-07-17T22:09:00.002-07:00

I have been the cook of the family ever since moving in together with Justin. The only dishes he can make are BBQ tofu and french toast. I never took the time to learn to cook while living at home or living on my own in my 20s. It also didn't help that I never cooked meat in my life due to being a vegetarian for over a decade. Not a strict vegetarian, I occasionally ate seafood when eating out.

My cooking philosophy have always been just throwing a protein, usually tofu or fake meat and some vegetables in a pan, cook, season and a side of rice, dinner is served. I would try to make something different when the mood strikes me. But I never planned our meals in advance, it's usually cobbled together right before dinner time depending on what we have in the fridge. That's how I would shop for groceries too, just buy whatever produce appealed to me and get the usual proteins for the week.

A few months ago, I had an epiphany while fretting about what to prepare for dinner for the husband and child. I was attending a twice a week night class and wanted to have dinner ready for the two of them before I leave home in the afternoon. So I got organized and put together a grocery list, which was something I've never used before. It helped to know what ingredients I was going to need for the week if there was a dinner menu. Having a list also helps to keep me from buying unnecessary food items.

I used to enjoy taking my time at the grocery store wandering all the aisles and picking out things that catches my eye. After having a child, I can no longer afford the luxury of time to do that. Plus I don't have the brain power to remember everything, there are just too many things to keep track of, so making a list is the only way to go.

Anyway, since I started making a weekly menu, I've been trying out new recipes and making the occasional meat dishes too. Our dinners are more varied now than ever, Chinese, Italian, Thai, Mexican, and American, all in one week.

I had hoped that by shopping in a more systematic way our grocery bill would go down, but that's not the case at all. Our grocery bill hovers around $600 a month, so when I read online about other people's grocery bill of $200-$300 a month, I didn't know what to cut back on. But what I've realized is that having a healthy diet is worth the money. I don't buy fancy food, not even organic, and try to get stuff in bulk when available. It's just that we live in an expensive part of the country and everything cost more here.

Here are some of the meals from these past few months and they all came out pretty tasty.

Black bean Enchiladas.

I started to make granola because Justin eats a ton of cereal. Box cereals are expensive and the packagings are bad for the environment.

I was buying pizza dough from Trader Joe's but hated how hard it was to roll out the dough which always end up in weird shapes. I discovered that pita bread is perfect for a personal sized pizza and it comes out as a crispy crust.

Sadly, I still haven't perfected the roast chicken after couple of tries. I am taking a break from it for a while to regain my confidence.

Lazy taco night. Canned black beans, homemade pico de gallo, Trader Joe's breaded fish and taco shells, mexican cheese and avocado.

I usually buy frozen pot stickers from Asian supermarkets but you can't beat the fresh made potstickers. The wrappers were store bought.

This was an ambitious brunch. The hollandaise sauce too forever to make but it sure was delicious and full of calories. Next time I would probably make the sauce the night before to save time.

This was an indulgent night. Canned refried beans, homemade pico de gallo, Trader Joe's guacamole, cheese and big dollops of greek yogurt in place of sour cream.

Meatless ground, pico de gallo, sliced radishes, lettuce, and mexican cheese.

This chicken parmesan came out so good. It's not super healthy so I can't make this too often.

Shepherd's pie with meatless ground. I prefer to use meatless ground as a substitute in my dishes even though we are not vegetarians.

Indian coconut curry with cauliflower, chick peas and carrots.

For the soup, I used broccoli stalks I saved from other recipes, celery and carrot and homemade lentil leftover from another meal. Sandwich is sautéed mushrooms and cheddar on rye bread.

I totally lucked out on getting 2 giant bags of blueberries on sale for 99 cents each. The berries were super ripe so I froze one bag and used the other one for this pie. Pie crust was store bought because making pastry is not my cup of tea. I recently saw homemade pies for sale at a farm stand we visited. The pies were selling for $25 each, granted all the ingredients were organic and handmade. Even with the cost of the frozen pie crust, my pie only cost $6.

Another staple that Justin cannot live without is peanut butter. We used to buy giant jars of organic peanut butter online. We don't like peanut butter like Jif because it's too processed. I've been buying pint size fresh made honey peanut butter from Berkeley Bowl, but I have to get one every week. I looked online and found out how easy it was to make it at home. Bought peanuts in bulk and made some the other day, so easy and delicious and cheap!

Black bean and corn enchiladas with fresh avocado and tomatoes. I was trying to make some guacamole, but the avocados were not quite ripe yet, so it came out more like pico de gallo instead, still tasty though.

Used the avocado pico de gallo on my eggs this morning. Yum!

New Mortgage

2013-07-01T14:03:00.002-07:00

Last December I wrote about our refinancing saga. We finally closed on the refi this April but not after some unexpected road blocks and the saga continues.

The house was both owned by Justin and my mom. During the refi we wanted to take my mom's name off and put my name on the deed instead, thinking it was just a simple signing of paperwork. Well we thought wrong. For some reason the name transfer was recorded by the city as a sale of 50% of the ownership of the house from my mom to me. The sale triggered a city and county transfer tax as would in a real estate transaction even though no money changed hands in our case. We had to pay several thousand dollars extra in closing cost. We were reluctant to pay the transfer tax at first since it was totally unexpected. But the refi couldn't close unless it's recorded by the city. After many phone calls with the city and county, I was told to pay the fee and then fill out some forms to appeal the fees.

So I filed the forms a few weeks ago just found out we are getting a refund from the county processing fee, about 100 dollars, yay! I almost didn't send in the appeal forms because I didn't think a city so strapped for money would refund money from its resident. There's one more form to mail in before the city would decide whether we get a refund or not on the thousands of the dollars we paid. This is obviously the part of the fees we really want back. :) Keeping my fingers crossed.

Catching Up

2013-06-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

I realized it's been four months since my last entry. I am so lazy with keeping this blog going. Life has been hectic in our household.

We found out that little D is going to be a big brother come this November to a little sister. The first trimester was no picnic. This was very different from my last pregnancy. Morning sickness is really a misnomer because the nausea came in waves all day long. Anyway I feel normal again after the first trimester but I do still get tired easily just not as bad as those first 3 months. We haven't decided on a name yet. I think it's one of the hardest things about having a child.

This is the little girl at 20 weeks.

Besides the exciting news of the baby, I also took a twice a week night class to learn some new computer skills that would hopefully help with my career change in the near future. The class went on for 10 weeks and during that time I finally realized I had to get organized about my dinner prep. My old way was to just buy whatever looks good at the store and quickly run it through my head for possible recipes. Every evening I would look in the fridge and feel exasperated about what to make and just whip up the same stuff week after week. My class coincided with my first trimester nausea so the usual stuff I cooked was not appealing to me. I wanted to try out some new recipes to satisfy those cravings. I started to make a weekly menu before going grocery shopping and try to stick to the items on the list. This has made my nightly dinner cooking so much less stressful! One of the lessons I've learned since becoming as a parent is that organization helps to bring some sanity to our chaotic lives.

Driving

2013-02-07T10:41:00.002-08:00

Up until 3 or 4 years ago I didn't have a driver's license. For someone who's in her 30s it's kind of unusual not to have one. I grew up in San Francisco where there is a very good public transportation system and you never have to go far for work or school. I walked to my elementary, middle, and high schools because they were never more than 15 minutes away from where we lived. Then I got a bicycle in my early 20s and rode it everywhere. My whole world existed within the 7 square miles of the San Francisco city limit. There is absolutely no need to have a car in the city. But that all changed when Justin and I moved to the other side of the bay.

The first couple of years we lived in Oakland we still rode around on our bikes but got a membership to City CarShare for those occasional trips to other parts of the bay area. The Easy Bay is a lot more spread out and vast than the city and having a car makes life easier. The monthly cost of City CarShare was starting to add up once we started driving more and when Justin finally got a steady job and we had a bit of savings in the bank we decided to buy a car.

Long story short, I wanted an automatic because I've only practiced driving a few times on my parents' automatic car and didn't have a clue about driving manual transmissions. But because Justin insisted on a brand new car instead of a used one like we originally planned, we ended up buying a new manual transmission VW Rabbit with two doors to keep the cost down. It was the antithesis of what I wanted in a car. I had envisioned a used, four door, automatic car with practicality and low budget in mind. But I gave in for the sake of relationship harmony. I still regret not standing my ground on the car because I would've been driving a lot sooner had we not bought a car with stick shift.

Anyway, I got my license using a rented automatic car shortly after our car purchase with the intension of learning to drive stick shift which didn't happen as life got in the way. I've practiced driving our car in an empty parking lot a few times but the shifting and paying attention on the road at the same time was/is hard for a new driver like me. I was also super nervous about damaging our brand new car which made me even more hesitant to drive it. So I haven't done any real world driving at all in the almost 4 years since the car was purchased.

That all changed this morning. I usually walk Desmond to his daycare about 1/2 away. It was drizzling hard enough this morning that I had to decide how to get him there without getting him soaked in the rain. So I decided to drive and let me tell you, it's been quite awhile since I've even been behind the wheel. I had to sit in the driver's seat for a few minutes to remember which peddles were which and how to shift.

Luckily we live on a small street and there was hardly any traffic. We didn't have to go on any big roads with fast traffic. It was all neighborhood driving. I barely kept the car moving in first gear all the way to the daycare. There were only 2 stop signs and no traffic lights on the way. I was so nervous but I did it and am really glad I did. I know I have to slowly build up my confidence driving and getting used to the manual transmission. I know lots of people who drive manual and they all love it, so I should be able to as well and learn to love it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2012-12-25T14:33:00.001-08:00

Early Christmas gift to myself. Got a Stelton Vacuum flask to replace our previous utilitarian hot water thermos.

Got this new toy for my Canon dslr camera.

Justin's mom made her holiday cookies for us. I got the recipe from her to carry on the tradition.

I baked some pumpkin spice cupcakes for the little man with what I had on hand. Nothing fancy, but they were pretty yummy.

Little D turned 2 this month. How time flies.
We celebrated Justin's birthday too but sadly without a cake.

We picked out a real tree with Justin's mom while she was visiting earlier this month. She helped decorated our tree.

A fake wreath with added ornaments adorn our door this year.

Since the 2 men in the house both have birthdays in December, we get cards for holidays and birthdays.

Christmas morning, opening presents. Little D got a lot of cars this year, little ones and big ones. Thank you Santa aka grandparents!

Refinancing Rant

2012-12-21T21:53:00.000-08:00

Yes this is a long rant but it is also a glimpse of what I've keeping busy with for the last several months. We wanted to do another refinance a little over a year after our first cash out for the house because rates came down and Justin's credit scores improved albeit not by much. In September we started talking to several mortgage brokers I found online and also the lender we worked with last time. At first I was really gung-ho about working with the lender with the lowest interest rate but once we started signing papers and I dug a little deeper, I discovered a lot of negative reviews about the lender the mortgage broker was working with. I got cold feet and backed out of that deal.

The rate we got from our current lender was not the lowest but we have had a good experience with them so it was worth paying a little extra for a peace of mind. Everything was going swimmingly until we got our appraisal back. Our appraisal came in at almost $80,000 less than the appraisal from a year ago. This came as a huge surprise to us because all the houses in our neighborhood are selling like hot cakes. Housing prices in our area are going up. Single family homes with 3 - 4 bedrooms are selling for almost half million dollars here! Our triplex wouldn't get as much as a single family home with similar square footage but certainly would get close if not more that what it was appraised for from the last appraisal.

The new appraisal amount is not enough to refinance the house with our current loan amount. A lot of the details in the appraisal report were, in our opinion, inaccurate. And the comparable houses used in the report were so off base that we immediately wrote to the lender complaining about those mistakes. After many emails with the lender trying to appeal our appraisal and a month later, our appeal was denied. It really stung because we've already paid almost $600 for the appraisal fee. The fee would've been refunded if we went through with the refinance. Yikes, that's a lot of money flushed down the drain.

The mortgage lender also felt our appraisal came in too low and did all he could to appeal the appraisal. In a last ditch effort to help, he recommended a former colleague with a different lender to work with us if we wanted to keep trying. The upside with the new lender is that the appraisal fee will be waived even if the appraisal came in too low again. We started the whole process again with this new lender, signing and submitting what seemed like an endless list of documents and finally met with the new appraiser last week.

After almost four months from the start of the whole refinancing saga, our appraisal finally came in $150,000 higher then the other appraisal. WTF?! This is great news but also boggles my mind how two appraisers can come up with such different results within the span of 2 months? I plan to do a detail comparison of the two reports when I get the new report from the lender. I still believe that the other appraiser was unfamiliar with our neighborhood and used poor comparable sold houses in his report. According to this new appraisal, we'll have over 40% in equity with our current loan amount! Not too bad for three years of very sweaty equity.

The new loan will save us about $200 a month. It's a 30 year fixed with 1.25% lower than our current rate. The blessing of the failed refinance is that the closing cost with the new lender is almost 50% less than the other lender. I know this sounds silly but I feel like we have a guardian angel looking over us. It helped us avoided the expensive lender by giving us the low appraisal. Take that mega multinational bank! Our refinance will take another three months to close due to the high volume of refi the lender is dealing with right now. I am keeping my fingers double crossed in the mean time until we sign those papers and close the deal in the new year!

Winter is Coming

2012-10-25T16:18:00.002-07:00

Okay it's not quite winter yet and being in the Bay Area, the winters here are pretty mild. But the first rain of the season arrived this week. I took the opportunity to put a bunch of seedlings in the ground because letting Mother Nature water my plants is better than hand watering all the plants myself.

I deadheaded the spent flowers and made room for a lot more new stuff. It's always exciting to learn which new additions to the garden will thrive and which ones won't make it. And it makes me so happy when ones that I thought were dead comes back to life.

A new indoor plant I got from Big Longs recently. I forget the name but I love the waxy looking leave with the light color veins.

More indoor plants from Big Longs. They are not looking too happy at the moment, kind of droopy.

Also from Big Longs. Although their nursery is a ghost of its former self, their prices just can't be beat. According to a couple of professional plant people I talked to, their sell plants at close to whole sale prices. The plant's name escapes me right now.

Echeveria setosa, "Firecracker plant". Got this little guy from where else? Annie's annuals.

I think this is Oxalis griffithii. This kind of looks like the weedy sour grass that's currently popping up all over our lawn and garden. So I am not sure what I was thinking when I bought it.

I think this is a Oxalis corniculata, "Creeping Woodsorrel". I just really like the reddish purple leaves and tiny yellow flowers.

This was another find at Big Long. I don't know the name of this shrub. But I love the pale purple flowers .

Pretty sure this is a Lavandula lanata "Wooly lavender". I just love the furry leaves, it will go well with the Lamps Ear that grows wildly in my yard.

This was a Alcea rosea 'Nigra' "Black Hollyhock" I planted last year. It didn't flower last year, died back last winter and popped up this summer and have been flowering ever since. I just love how productive and gorgeous these flowers are.

This is Anagallis monellii "Blue Pimpernel". I am constantly amazed by how hardy and beautiful this plant is. I planted this in the spring and it just took off with hardly any water and care.

Abutilon from Big Longs. It seems to be doing ok. The resident squirrels tried to dig the roots up a few times, but it's hanging in there.

Salvia leucantha "Mexican Sage Bush" from Big Longs. I love the velvety flowers on the plant. Can't wait to see it bloom.

I got this gal at the farmer's market. The name is written on the wooden stick but I don't know the name off the top of my head. It had a single long stem with a flower at the end when I bought it which has fallen off. I usually keep my succulents in containers but trying to see if I can make it work in the ground

I've been told that this is a Euphorbia. It came out of nowhere in a different part of the yard and I transplanted it's current location. Upon further research, it turn out to be a Euphorbia lathyris. It's a weird looking plant for sure. Apparently all parts of the plant are poisonous if ingested.

Setcreasea purpurea, "Purple Heart". After killing two ferns in this spot, I giving it a go with this plant. Have I mentioned that I am cursed when it comes to ferns? I have not been able to keep one alive for longer than a year.

The little green vine in the middle of the picture is a passion flower vine I bought online in the spring. It died shortly after I put it in the ground but seemed to have came back to life in the last couple of months. It's supposed to be an easy vine and grows fast. It hasn't grown much for me though.

I bought the tall planter of pre-arranged plants a while back to add some colors to the landing. I have since moved all the succulents from our back deck to the landing too because it gets super hot and dry there on the south facing deck. I am surprised the succulents lasted as long as they did with such neglect. I may have only watered them 3 times this whole summer. I must say that I've had pretty good luck with succulents, about 90% survival rate versus 60% for the rest of the plants.

It is October after all. We went to a pumpkin patch and picked out some pumpkins for the munchkin.

Happy Halloween!

August Recap

2012-09-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

Did I just let the whole month of August go by without a post? It's gotten really hard to find the motivation to sit down, upload photos an blog about what's happening in my life lately. Here are some photos of what we've been up to this past month. I will be back with another post soon, I promise!

My first attempt at baking bread. It came out a little dense but still edible!

Saw a little humming bird perched on the wire in my garden. It's the first one I've seen since living here.

Randomly picked a park on the map to visit and discovered this little gem hidden in Grand Lake area. Morcom Rose Garden, built under the WPA era.

Caught a funny look on little D's face during the rose garden walk.

Cliché picture of roses but I can't help it.

Cherry tomatoes finally ripening in my garden. Little D ate them all right after I picked them.

Baby potatoes from the garden.

Beets from the garden.

The petting zoo was the most popular attractions at our neighborhood National Night Out.

The fire department made an appearance at our National Night Out party.

Justin being inter viewed by local news station about the recovery of his bicycle after 6 long years. Here is the link to the news story.

Albino alligator at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.

On board the USS Hornet Museum aircraft carrier.

Finally bit the bullet and bought a refurbished Macbook Air. The is my second computer purchase in 10 years. I love my new computer and no more fear of computer crashing anymore.

Visit to the Sacramento Railroad Museum.

Visit to the Heath Ceramics factory/store in Sausalito. I hope to own some of their beautiful pottery someday.

Game of Trones

2012-08-15T16:22:00.000-07:00

When we first moved into the house we stored the shoes we wear everyday on an old Ikea shoe rack. Then I got rid of the two tiered rack when Desmond started pulling shoes off the rack and putting them in his mouth. For the past year there's always a pile of shoes at the entry way and it drives me nuts.

Who knew that finding the right shoe storage was so hard. I finally made up my mind over the weekend and brought home Ikea's Trones shoe cabinet. I had been going back and forth with the Trones cabinet. On the one hand, I love the compact design because our entry is so small, there's no room for a big bulky thing. But on the other hand I am not crazy about the plastic that it's made of. After a year of not finding the right shoe cabinet, I gave up the search and settled on the Trones.

I had intended to get the Trones in white, but only the red ones were available so I bought the red ones. Although I am still not sure if the red cabinets work with the room. The great thing about Ikea stuff is that they are so DIYfriendly. So if I get sick of looking at the red, I can always get a can of spray paint and give them a face lift. Only took me about 30 minutes to put them up. The shoe free entry looks so much better I wonder why I didn't do this sooner?

Please ignore the missing base board, that's our next big project. There are usually a lot more shoes strewn about, it's impossible to keep the shoes neatly lined up.

The shoes on the floor are the first things you see when the door opens.

Another view of the entry way. Not much room to work with.

Cabinets up and shoes hidden and off the floor!

The cabinets are a perfect fit behind the door.

This is where I've been keeping some of the extra toiletries due to our lack of storage. I am am still planning on making shelves in this narrow space someday for even more storage space.

The Trones cabinets came in a set of 3. Since I could only fit 2 of them behind the front door, the left over cabinet came in the master bath for a little extra storage.

Everything's off the floor and fit perfectly in the cabinet.

July

2012-08-07T14:08:00.002-07:00

My freelance work and house guests took up most of June and July leaving me no time to blog. I want to share with you the projects we did managed to get done with the help of Justin's dad.

I wanted a real raised vegetable bed this year, an upgrade from last year's hole in the ground. We built two rectangle frames out of 2x6 redwood planks. After planting the first bed, we decided to turn the second frame into a sandbox for Desmond and his little buddy Cian who was staying with us.

From earlier this year.

After installing the sod, I realized the old PG&E incinerator has got to go. I wanted to keep it as a part of the history of our house but it was barely standing. The incinerator was probably placed in that location for easy access from the old staircase in the back of the house.

Dismantling the incinerator was a lot easier than expected. It was being held together by two pieces of metal ties. Once those were cut, it just came down. Bye bye.

Prepping the area for the raised bed. Toys belong to Desmond's little buddy.

We put up the plastic fence to keep little hands and cats out of the fresh dirt. I think we only succeed in keeping out the cats.

The weather has been gorgeous in Oakland and we have been spending a lot of time out in our new back yard. We even had our first 4th of July BBQ on our new lawn.

A small get together on the 4th July. My parents, aunt and uncle.

Karilyn, cian's mom, made this lovely, patriotic fruit salad.

The little tikes playing in the new sandbox.

It was really nice to have Justin's dad and stepmom here for 2 weeks. Not only did little D get to spent some quality time with the grandparents, Justin's dad helped us finished the gates and built a work bench in the garage.

Since the front is pretty wide and we wanted to save money by getting the 8ft long planks, there was very little over hang on the ends of the posts.

I am so happy with how it turned out. The four 2x8 redwood planks cost around $150 plus extra for screws. So we didn't really save that much by doing it ourselves.

Side gate is finally done.

We got this play structure for free from a friend of a friend.

Justin's dad also cleaned up all the dead weeds in the side yard. He got it done in a couple of hour, it would've taken me all day.

This photo was taken from last year, our yard has definitely come a long way...

Hung some peg boards to the wall for all the tools so we can finally find everything we need when we need them.

This area used to be a major disaster zone. Things were scattered around took up a lot of valuable floor space. A new work bench made with 2x4s added much needed storage and work space. Made room for new hooks on the wall to hang all my gardening tools too.

New Gate Part Deux

2012-06-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

I am happy to say that we are one giant step closer to finish the fence. The side gate was on its last legs and we just had to get it replaced while it's still barely standing. I got an estimate from a carpenter/contractor that lives in our neighborhood and he quoted me almost $1900 for the side gate plus 20 feet of fence. I really wanted to use the guy, he had nice workmanship judging by the gate/fence he built for his own house. His bid was unfortunately twice as much as the company we used for the front gate. So we signed the contract with Borg Fence and was able to scheduled them to come out two weeks later due to a cancellation on their end.

I meant to take a before picture of the old fence which was obstructed by three Bottle Brush shrubs but never got around to it.

I dug up this photo from our last fence project. You can kind of see the fence leaning one way and the gate leaning in the opposite direction.

The workers had already broken down parts of the fence when I got home from dropping the little D at daycare.

The workers constructing the rails for the fence and the gate.

The job took about 5 hours and I am very happy none of my hostas were harmed.

They wanted an additional $125 for the trellis so I requested to have the posts be left uncut so we can do it ourselves later to save some money.

Lawn update...

2012-06-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

I've been called in to do some freelance work for the months of June and July. That's why this blog is not seeing much activities lately.

A quick update on our lawn. It's been a month and a half since we installed it. We watered it diligently for 2 weeks to make sure the grass take root. We finally bought a manual push lawnmower after 4 weeks to give the grass a haircut. The mower is a little hard to push due to the self sharpening blades, but it's done a pretty good job so far. The mower we ended with was the Gilmour RM30 20-Inch Reel Mower with Grass Catcher. There was a really detailed and excellent review of how this mower compared to all the other ones on Amazon that sold me on this particular mower.

There were surprisingly few used mowers for sale on Craigslist so I ordered one from Amazon and saved $50 in shipping and promotion discount. Not a bad deal.

A comparison of pre and post mowed grass. It really does look like the grass was getting a haircut.

Justin had to mow the grass twice to get it to the desired length.

Another go at it to trim down the grass.

Let There Be Sod!

2012-05-25T11:15:00.004-07:00

After paying off our credit card debts last month we were going to tackle our next big project, mouldings! But now that's been put on hold for a bit. We just couldn't wait any longer to get the at least part of our yard in working order.

It's been so warm lately and we just really wanted to be able let the little D run around in the yard without tripping and falling into the weeds. The final catalyst was when I found out that we'll be hosting couple of friends and their toddler boy next month in the downstairs apartment. I thought it would be nice to have a grassy yard for the boys to play in. So the die was cast, we need grass now, mouldings can wait, they are purely an aesthetic issue. We've been so used to living moulding-less that a few more months wouldn't hurt.

I did my usual research on Yelp to find landscape companies with good reviews to get some bids. I didn't have the slightest idea how much it would cost to get some sod installed. The bid I got from one company to clean our yard and install about 500sq ft of sod with basic irrigation was $1400. It was a lot more than I would like to pay, because I am a cheapskate. After watching some instruction videos on Youtube, we decided to do it ourselves. Installing sod does not require a lot of skill, it's just hard physical labor.

Like always, prepping the ground for sod is the important part and takes the most time. The dirt in our yard consists of a lot of clay and little pieces of rocks and construction debris and broken glass bits. The ground is also very uneven and super compacted and dry at this time of the year. It took us two days with help from my parents to finish prepping the backyard. We pulled out and clean up the over-grown weeds and filled five 30-Gallon paper lawn bags and two green bins on the first day. The next day, Justin rented an U-Haul truck to pick up a tiller at the Home Depot tool rental department. Justin and my dad took turns breaking up the dirt with a pick axe then used the tiller to break up the big clumps. Using a rake, we did the best we could to level out the ground and mixed in some soil amendment and starter fertilizer.

I ordered our sod from The Sod Shop because not only are they local but their price beat the big box stores. A big portion of our backyard is shaded half the year by two giant walnut trees that grow near the back fence. So I chose a variety called Mellow Jade, it's the most shade tolerant sod they carry. Once the sod is delivered, it has to be used the same day. The 550 sq ft that I ordered turned out to be about 60 sq ft too much for the backyard area. Not wanting to let the sod go to waste, we quickly prep an area of the side yard and laid the remaining sod there. Then we water the grass for what seemed like forever to help the grass take root. Now we have to water the new lawn several times a day and wait two weeks before walking on it. I can't wait to relax on the grass back there with a cold drink on a hot Oakland day!

U-Haul - $60
Tiller - $68
Water-Roller - $18
Sod plus delivery - $231
Soil amendment, sprinkler, fertilizer, water timer ~ $100
Total = $477

So we saved almost a thousand dollars by doing it ourselves. It's a good thing because will be going toward a new side gate and fence. We are using the same company that did our front gate, Borg Fence, to replace the old gate and fence that are about to fall over.

The wilderness that was our backyard. We went on a California native plant garden tour recently and we joked that our garden is a 100% native garden.

Some of the weeds that grew over six feet tall. Most of them got chopped down by the tree trimmers because they were in the way. The people in the apartment behind us sometimes use the back fence to hang dry bed sheets and laundry.

The whole family pitched in to clear up the yard including little D. Justin supervising my parents. haha...

The backyard looked like this at the end of the first day.

Little D rolling around in the dirt. He's gonna love it when we get the grass in.

Five bags of yard waste and one and a half buckets of rocks and broken glass.

Justin used the rented tiller to break up the dirt. The soil was so nice looking that I almost felt like ditching the sod and turn to farming in the yard instead. We can grow so much food in this yard.

I covered up the freshly tilled soil with added amendments to keep it from drying out too much and from being turn into a giant cat litter box.

Sorry for the blurry iphone photo. The delivery were showed up 30 minutes early. We were caught off guard and had to hussel to get the yard ready. Two pallets of sod delivered to our fron door. This stuff is so heavy, I couldn't lift one up by myself. Justin was the laborer for the day moving all 62 rolls to the back and laying them out with my help.

First row of sod down, seemed like an easy enough job.

About one thirds of the way through.

Not wanting to let the 60 sq ft of sod go to waste, we used it on the side yard. It's an instant improvement.

Here is a before shot of the backyard from 3 weeks ago. Notice the walnut tree branches were still bare.

The sod project all done after three days of hard work! Now we just need to water the heck out of it for the next two weeks.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

2012-05-17T14:15:00.001-07:00

There is a little boy who lives with his mom in an apartment behind our house. We called him "the menace", like Dennis the Menace. Last year one of the pickets on our back fence fell off partly due to the neighbor's son constantly pushing it open to retrieve his ball in our yard. Then he started to invite himself over to play even after we told him no. We finally thought we had put a stop to it after replacing the missing picket on the fence.

Few weeks ago, I looked out the window and saw Justin and D playing ball with "the menace" in our yard and they seemed to be having a good time. Then things quickly reverted back to the boy coming over everyday begging to come into our house. I also noticed that someone was leaving our garden faucet on all night. One day last week we came home to find "the menace" running in our yard with a wet shirt on, so we asked if he's been playing with the faucets but he denied it. Then we caught him red-handed playing with the faucet the next day spraying water everywhere. We tried to seal up the only access point in our year but putting up obstacles in the way, but he just pushed them aside and sneaked in again.

Unfortunately, since becoming homeowners we've turn into these "Get off my lawn kid!" shaking our fists at the sky kind of people! But something had to be done quickly and cheaply. We came came up with a solution to temporarily seal off the entry point and add a little extra privacy. The whole thing cost about 60 bucks for two rolls of 6 feet tall by 6 feet long bamboo reed fencing and a box of electrical staples and some hammering. We still have to figure out a way to attach the fencing to our garage with stucco siding, it was too hard to hammer the staples in. We'll probably have to get a cement drill bit to drill two pilot holes for the staples to go in. This is not a fool proof solution to keep uninvited people out, but it'll do for now.

I forgot to take a proper before picture but managed to find this one I took to show the yard and the fence.

The bamboo reed fencing is pretty see through but it gave the old fence a little face lift, cleaned it up a little.

A closer look of the new fence.

There is about a foot of space/dirt between the garage and the neighbor's fence. The boy was sneaking in through this opening, so let's hope he doesn't try to come in this way again. I found him inside our gate yesterday trying to retrieve his "shoe". Argh!