In our fair city of Oakland, homeowners are allowed to own up to four hens (no roosters!) as long as the chickens’ enclosure is twenty feet from any residence. Here’s my fabulous Garden Coop. It’s about 6′ x 10′, and please note the salvaged tree guard as welcome mat.

This was my first foray into building any sort of structure, and it was nice to practice on something that could go slowly and didn’t have to be fit for humans. The design was really easy to follow, and Merideth ended up being jealous of the chickens as it went up. There may have been some attempted bargaining to make the structure her new office. I only made a few modifications to the design, the main one being that our door swings out instead of in. I was a little concerned about one sweet dog who has been known to push doors open with her dome head.

Here’s inside the coop with their sleeping perch. (The larger structure with the sand bottom is called a run, and the little house where the chickens sleep and lay eggs is the coop.)

Another shot inside the coop. This shows the egg door so that we can reach into the coop without going into the run to collect eggs.

Alright. I know why you’re really here. Here are the babies. From left to right, Violet, Doralee, and Judy. (Named for the women of “9 to 5.”) They’re about ten weeks now and their voices are just starting to change from peeps to clucks. They’ll start laying two to eight weeks from now. Happily, they don’t object TOO much to being held and loved a little as long as the holder is not the dog.

A close-up of chicken eyes (Violet and Judy). If they weren’t the dumbest animals ever, one would think they’re plotting something. Merideth jokes that the three of them together have half the smarts of the cat. And our cat’s not that bright. Sweet, though.

As all animals are in our home, the chickens are mutts. They’re a cross-breed called “Red Star” or “Red Sex-Link” because the females and males have distinctive coloring when hatched which makes it easier to separate and sell them with a certainty your little hen won’t grow into a rooster. Here’s a picture of Violet when they arrived three weeks ago. I can’t believe how much they’ve grown in just that short time.

But enough about them. Here’s one more shot of the run with the new berm that was created by digging out their run. It’s possible this whole project was a ruse so that I could have another bed to plant.

Over the break between Christmas and New Year’s, Merideth and I put in the picture rail in both bedrooms. I also took the opportunity to paint the rooms. The picture rails went up in no time at all. And normally, painting is a task that takes one or two days. For me, it took five for each room. (In my defense, there could be almost no taping because the plaster is so wonky on the edges where it meets the old trim, many of the lines have to be creatively applied. In not-so-much my defense, I tend to be overly weird about having perfect lines.)

Just by looking at the walls, we could see that there used to be picture rails there, so it was easy to figure out where to put them. This is the master bedroom. We found that the picture rail doesn’t make the room look bigger or smaller, as previously hoped-for and feared, but it does make the room look righter. We decided not to use the picture rail as it was strictly intended (y’know, to hang pictures), but I do like the architectural feature it adds to both rooms.

This is the guest room. While painting, I considered putting on purposeful gloppy drips on the new picture rail in order to make them match the rest of the room, but just couldn’t make myself do it. I guess everyone will just have to know by the lack of caked-up paint that the picture rails are not the originals.

So we’ve been saving up to get the driveway repoured in lovely, spanking new concrete. Oh why bother? Because it used to look like this:

When the guys went to tear it out, in addition to finding that there was no rebar (not suprising in an old house) they also tore out several tree-trunk size roots including one that was easily 12 inches across and 7 feet long. (Sadly my camera picked that day to crap out for good so my photos of it turned out as a test-pattern of green pixels. Fie!) Demolition done, the guys doing the work laid down a lovely modern mesh of rebar and poured the crack free, un-paint-spilled-on, properly reinforced driveway. Now all the concrete on the front of our property is new and gorgeous.

As an added bonus, they poured a couple of piers in front of our retaining walls (again, old walls, no rebar, no modern drainage) for a little extra stability. When digging the holes, our foreman showed me the rebar he was going to use to support the piers: 4 inch rebar that was leftover from the new Bay Bridge! Yep, our house is reinforced with bridge materials. Rad. Of course I still need to paint.

However.

We are thrilled that our nation overcame a history of racism to elect a man who will be a fantastic President.

We are excited about the progress that California has made in gay rights. As Jono, our brother-in-law pointed out this morning:

In 2000, Prop22 [a ballot initiative that prevented California from recognizing same-sex marriages] passed 61% to 38%. In 2008, Prop8 passed by only 52% to 48%. In 8 years 10% of California changed their minds, and on issues like this that’s a huge change, and something to be happy about.

You know this is gonna be on the ballot again in another 8 years, and you know the trend will continue and next time we win.

We only need another 2%.

We have discovered, as one does in times of trouble, who our friends are. And they are unparalleled. Thank you so much to those who have written or called with condolences.

We have noted that counties that have a high gay population had higher numbers of voting against Proposition 8, which just goes to show that people who know and love gay people have a much harder time voting to restrict their rights, as the gay population alone could not have produced those numbers.

We’re going to make a ton of money on the diet book I’m going to write entitled, “Eat All You Want and Don’t Exercise — Lose Weight By Maintaining a Constant State of Stress and Anxiety Coupled With Periodic Breakdowns!”

It’s time to put on my granny glasses and discuss how things were in the olden days, back when there were about ten house blogs, and Merideth and I updated this blog regularly because we spent every weekend covered in spackle.

During those halcyon days of 2004, Merideth became friends with Scott, who wrote about his family’s adventures with their own abode. As happy circumstance would have it, Scott and his wife Brit came to BlogHer in 2006, and we got to have them over for dinner, which turned out to be a huge mistake as we’ve been lamenting the fact that they don’t live nearby ever since.

Here’s how it goes.

Merideth: You know what would be fun?
Beth: Yes. Hanging out with Scott and Brit tonight.
M: Yeah.
B: Why don’t they live closer?
M: Whyyyyyyyyyy?

And then comes the gnashing of teeth and wailing.

There’s a point to this. I swear.

Somewhere along the way in all this house madness, I decided I wanted to make a quilt out of all of our old work jeans. And I collected all of these work jeans, and the collection grew, and finally I had enough.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how to quilt. But! Brit knew! The jeans happily traveled up north, and when Brit and Scott came for BlogHer 2008, they brought a lovely, lovely quilt with them. (Picture blatantly stolen from Brit’s flickr account. Brit, don’t hate me.)

House blogs rule. Because even when you never update, you still get to make friends and find great quilt makers.

Beth here.

Things have been slow on the house renovation at the casa, and we’re finding that we’re kind of liking that pace. Also, our bank account seems to have this mysterious “money” in it now. It’s weird.

I’ve been taking on little projects here and there, including under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen. This picture is of the expanded light switch box I put in to accommodate the new switch. While it is not a terribly exciting picture, you can almost see how I have put in lighted switches on the middle switches that turn on lights and a regular ol’ plain switch on the one that runs the garbage disposal. This has very much reduced my dinner clean-up anxiety about whether or not I’m turning on the garbage disposal as I can never, ever remember which switch it is otherwise, and it scares me when I turn it on accidentally.

I realize there are bigger problems in the world, but not being on edge about the garbage disposal helps me to better tackle those problems. See how Light Switch UI makes the world a better place?

Beth planted iris largely for me. They are my favorites. I was so charmed when two or three bearded blooms popped up that first year. Well hellooooo little flowers! Having no bulb experience, I had no idea that they would all mass reproduce every year! Okay, exciting! You plant one, you get like five back!! Everything should work that way. Flora dividends.

So it’s been good and springy for the past two weeks and we’ve been rewarded with CLUMPS of iris. Tall, slender, vibrant, somewhat leany thanks to a lounging neighborhood cat called “Duchess,” and cheerful. That’s what I want from my flowers. Cheerful. I would like to have one of the following reactions to flowers: 1. Oooooooh (interesting, huge, or smells awesome) or 2. Awwwww (charming, sweet, homey). Both of those should be subcategories of the aforementioned “cheerful.”

Thank goodness I went out and snapped a few photos of my lovely iris because this weekend we had unseasonably warm (mid 80s) days and mythical (in the Bay Area) warm nights. While I love the warmth, it took a toll on our delicate iris. Today is a bit crisper so perhaps they’ll bounce back. If not, though, I have this pic to remember them by.

House Made got hacked. Again. We’ve been working double-time to get everything on the site cleaned up and fortified and such, which is annoying. Some hacker must get immense satisfaction from stopping our moms from reading about our scintillating home improvement projects.

The site did have a minor trojan, so if you came here in the past week or so, you may want to run a virus check. Google has flagged the site as dangerous, which makes me feel all tattooed and pierced.

Let us know if you run into further issues. Thanks for reading.

Shout-out from Merideth:
And mad props, wait, I mean MaDD ProPZ, to Mike for being a great source of humor and encouragement as we tried to solve the problem.

At House Made, we are very protective of our tomatoes.  If other vegetables encroach upon the Designated Tomato Area, they are ruthlessly chopped back, or, in extreme cases, yanked out altogether.  During the summer, the dog is put on squirrel and mouse patrol to keep them out of the garden (a job she has taken to with vigor and a surprising amount of understanding).  And now, due to some scrap lumber, remedial carpentry skills, and a few nice weekend afternoons, our tomatoes have some cold frames to get them off to a great start.

This is my first real building project.  Usually I am the brawn and measuring behind a project and Merideth does all the cutting and putting together.  This is because she has difficulty with anything approaching math, and I have difficulty with all saws outside of the reciprocating family.  But for this project, I did it all as I figured straight lines weren’t imperative.  While the tomatoes like to be protected from cold, they are not as concerned with aesthetics.

A key goal for me in this project was minimal storage.  We have a one-car garage for storage, and Christmas takes up half of it.  Now, we could cut down on the ornaments, but who’s going to tell Tiny Tim?  Is it you? Later in the summer, I’m not going to want these cold frames in the garden anymore and I needed to get them out without damaging plants, so all four sides separate from one another and will be able to be stacked flat against a wall.

I used all wood from other projects around the house, only needing to buy hardware to get these up.  Note my use of a gate lock to hold up the lid when I need to get to the plants.  I’m especially proud of that.

My tomato seedlings ship at the end of March.  I can’t wait.