Picardy Project

From Dark to Light

2016-02-17T09:53:00.000-08:00

First: Update on the house...

We have little to update you all with. This week the sellers are supposed to sign. I think we're all in agreement that that probably won't happen this week. The zero demand letter from the last lender has been submitted and now it's just up to the sellers to sign. We've learned it's a bit of a messy divorce scenario, which is unfortunate for them. I've been lucky to have extremely amicable divorces in my family, but I have friends and family who were not so lucky. So I know how troublesome that can be. They've requested separate signings. Everything has just gone so slowly that I just really think things will get delayed. We're supposed to sign on Monday - I don't think that will happen. I'm just trying to prepare myself for delays. If it happens - I won't be as disappointed. If we have to wait 1 week or 1 month longer to get this house, it will be worth it. Frustrating because I want it so bad, but worth it nonetheless.

So that's the house...

Now on to this house! :)

And first off, something really weird is happening with some of my photos I'm uploading, so I appologize for the annoyance. Hopefully the new blog design and Wordpress platform go live this week (finishing touches between LOTS of work I have going on).

We're still moving forward here as if we're going to be moving out in early March. That means repainting a couple rooms. Painting is not my favorite task (because I've done way too fucking much of it). I can enjoy painting more when I am transforming a space because I want to. But needing to repaint because a large majority of buyers probably won't like your color selections can be aggravating. I understand it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

The first room that needed to get repainted was the bathroom. I totally understood this: it's dark brown. The tile is an aqua/green color

Chris and I love the contrast and I love dark colors. But it's not everyone's preference.

I needed to pick a lighter color. And through this process I realize how SHITTY I am at picking colors when I don't want to repaint. I thought I picked a good color (Constellation by Benjamin Moore). On it's own it's a pretty color

But, I have to say - I HATED IT WHEN I WAS PAINTING IT IN THE BATHROOM.

Part of the problem was that we were painting a light blue color over BROWN. We should have primed first. That would have done a lot to help. But instead the brown undertone was not only tough to cover up, but it also just didn't look great under the now cooler blue

Here it is all done after 3 coats

I literally could not walk into the bathroom without being disgusted for about 2 days. Chris hated it too. We both thought about repainting AGAIN. But out of sheer laziness we decided to sit with it and see how we felt. The good news is that after about 2 or 3 days I didn't despise it. I was okay with it. I understood that it looked "light and airy" or some bullshit like that. We just really liked the brown. It helped that my mom said she really liked it. That made me be able to live with it. Oh well. Hopefully someone likes it.

Next rooms: Zoe's room and my office.

These two spaces will get staged as a bedroom (my office) and a playroom (Zoe's room). So we wanted the rooms painted the same color. We could do it all Zoe's color, but that room has to get touched up and we literally do not have a DROP of that paint left. In fact, we had to buy a sample of the same color to do some touch ups a little while ago and the colors don't match (this is why it's ALWAYS important to box paint when you get it because we bought the same EXACT color paint on two separate occasions and they don't match).

I took the opportunity to pick a new color for the whole space to be unified. Because it's going to be a kid's room and we want it gender neutral, I went even lighter. I picked Sky by Jeff Lewis Paint

here

Holy shit I love this paint deck. I've actually been wanting to write a post about my favorite paint decks (because I have quite a few by this time), but that's for another day.

For Zoe's room I just moved things away from the walls

I want her room to stay intact until we leave. So I just took paintings off the wall but didn't patch the holes. After moving day we have a day before staging to patch and repair things. We'll do final touch ups that day.

I have to say, the SECOND this color went on the walls - I LOVED IT. Oh my god I loved it. It looks so light and airy and beautiful

It's basically the same color it was before, but just a notch lighter. I think it's a super great color for the base of a colorful kid's room. It's got enough color in it that it doesn't feel vacant, but provides a great, simple backdrop for bright, colorful, fun kids to populate.

The office area was a little tougher than Zoe's room. We had to clear a lot more stuff this time

We're keeping the giant shelving unit as temporary shelving in our future office till we redo that space in a couple of years. Moving things all around the room to make it still my functioning office but also allow me to repaint was a little annoying. The one thing I couldn't move was the filing cabinet. I was too lazy (and pressed for time) to take everything out. So that will get moved on moving day, and then that wall will get touched up on patch/repaint day.

We were smart this time and primed

But, let me tell you, thank GOD Chris came home early that day to help me (he's lightening fast with a roller), because cut-ins on 3 doors and 2 windows (not to mention base and picture molding), don't go quickly when there are 3 coats to do. But the good news is, we got it done in a day!

I don't love the color as much in here. The room feels so empty now. But again, I loved the deep blue. I know it will look great as a kid's room, but I still miss my navy blue office. Sigh

It's weird to get used to these rooms being painted different colors than I'm so used to. Zoe asks about what's going on and likes to help

It's pretty adorable actually. She's doing A LOT better with all the changes than I thought she would be. As long as we talk to her about what's going on along the way she seems pretty good about it. And she really likes to help out. It's really fun to get to see her get excited and want to do projects with us. Hopefully that transfers to the **NEW** house because there will be lots of projects :)

**hopefully

And the Revisit Round 2

2016-02-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

We're finally in contract (and we're hoping from an update from our agent tomorrow as to whether or not the seller's are actually going to be signing this week - otherwise things will get delayed), but I thought it would be cool to do another revisit of some of the houses we checked out on our way to putting an offer in on this one. I did the first round back in OCTOBER. So clearly it's been a while.

1. The first is one we ALMOST put an offer on. We didn't because we were pretty sure it was going to go for well over asking and we didn't even think it was worth asking

here

When I drove by the house in January I could not help but be super disappointed in the color scheme they chose for the exterior

That barfy beige. Sigh. I get SO EXCITED about exterior paint. This one definitely leaves a lot to be desired. It definitely makes me curious for the finishes inside. The bathroom and kitchen were in desperate need of being redone

I hope they didn't go all barfy beige on the inside also. There wasn't a ton of original charm in this one, but it definitely had potential (and was one block from a majorly awesome commercial area - Grand/Lakeshore for locals)

2. There was this one that needed a TON of work

here

This house had CRAZY potential. It was really cool. Kind of Victorian/Gothic on the inside

It was in an awesome location right off the lake and had some pretty great views. The lot was generous, but not too big. It definitely photographed pretty cool. But shit it needed a lot of work. There were plants that were growing from the outside in. And the front steps were separating from the house.

Ummm, yes, it needed a lot of work

The nice thing was seeing that it looked like they were actually doing the work to repair it properly. I hate it when people buy a place like that and stick a band-aid on it. That house really needed some serious love and construction, and it was nice to see. It definitely made me want to drive by in another 6 months. That was only where they were at 12+ months after closing. So it should be a little while.

3. This house looks like basically nothing was done

here

This house actually set a record the quarter it was sold for the amount over listing it went (over $200k). I have no idea how it went that far over. It needed some pretty significant structural work (like tens of thousands) as it was built into a pretty steep hill. On top of that it was horrendously outdated and also needed the exterior decks rebuilt as well. At the end of the day if you were doing everything with licensed contractors (not saving money and doing things yourself), you could easily spend maybe $200k? This is what it looks like 14 months after sale

4. The triplet houses

There were 3 houses in a row that were all for sale (owned by one person and put for sale as a trustee's sale). These houses had some pretty awesome architecture

The first

here

This one was REALLY depressing

Yes, that's the AFTER

The house actually looks worse than it did before. Ugh, it was so depressing. I drove by in a rainstorm and there was water POURING from the gutters with little or no downspouts

The awful thing about a market like this is that people get greedy for rental income. So someone saw this house, snatched it up, did little to nothing to "fix it up," and then turned it over as a rental property. There were about 6 mailboxes on the outside for various tenants. It made me so depressed. If the outside was falling apart, I could only imagine what the inside was looking like. Soooooo much original amazing woodwork

I hate when people don't treat old, gems of homes with love. Sigh.

The second house

And today

Pretty much the same. Hopefully not falling apart too much. And it looked like whoever bought it hadn't turned it over quickly as a rental.

The last one was flipped. Here it was when we saw it

here

And here it is when they sold it about 6 months later

here

Honestly, not too bad for a flip. They bought it for $775 and 6 months later sold it for $1.3 (offered at $899. So they correctly assumed the lower listing would result in a bidding war). This house really was a gem though. It's wonderful to see that they didn't rip out a bunch of original details and even brought back the trim work on the exterior.

Now for the rest of the house...

The dining room before

The dining room after

I love that they kept the built in and coffered ceiling. So often with flips those great original details get removed.

The kitchen before

And the kitchen after

View down to those double windows, but opposite wall. Honestly, nothing really to write home about for the kitchen, but still pretty. I know all white kitchens are really on trend, but I don't really like the WHITE cabinets, WHITE counters and WHITE backsplash. For me there's got to be a little something that sets things off.

The living room before

The living room after

I really love that the fireplace curves at the top where it meets the ceiling. And I LOVE the tile they used. Hilariously I thought about using a similar tile for the backsplash at my brother's place. But I thought it was too dark across too wide of a span. This is gorgeous. I love it.

The bathroom before

The bathroom after

These do not look like corresponding bathrooms, but the home has 3 and each listing only has 1 bathroom photographed. I LOVE the vanity. The trim work on the door and drawer fronts looks really nice. And I love the color. I used a similar, if not identical, faucet in the bathroom at my brother's place - so obviously this designer has GREAT taste :)

Whoopsie, I think I might have found the corresponding after

I love the vanity lights. And the oversized glass subway tile. And the vanity. Though I'm not sure of the vanity color.

The backyard before

And after

I LOVE when people spend the money to terrace a yard like this. There was a ton of space because the lot was large for the area, but it was really sloped. Personally I like cleaner lines with pavers than a flagstone path like this, but that's just my personal preference. Clearly they put in the time and money to make this a super usable yard.

What do you think? I was really pleasantly surprised when it comes to a flip. So often they're stripped bare of their original character, so it was nice to see that this place was pretty well respected.

Zoe Girl's Wonderously Fun Bedroom

2016-02-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I think it's wonderously fun at least :)

I cannot begin to explain to you the delight I have had in planning Zoe's room. Something about a kid's room just makes me so fucking excited. It gives me a chance to have FUN. And since I really want to not take myself too seriously in this house (***hopefully***) and make it really feel like US, I feel like this room is an amazing place to start. It gives me a chance to really jump into it.

I'm excited, can you tell?

Okay, where to start??? Pinterest of course. And let me tell you, I have been Pinning the SHIT out of stuff. Thanks to Nikki I decided to nix a loft bed. Or shall I say, 86 it? bahahaha :)

Anyway :) I still wanted a fun bed and Pinned some other ideas

here

I really liked these ideas and thought about how we could make them quickly (we're going to have a lot of projects going). Ultimately, I decided that with time and Zoe it might be easier just to have her bed on the ground. She'll switch to a double bed when we move (my parent's have one they don't need anymore - score!) And I figured with so much other change it would actually be best to maybe just have her bed still be one the ground like it is here - something familiar for her to rely on.

But I still want her bed area to be fun and exciting. I thought about a canopy

here

I debated if I should make the fabric a bright color, or ombre, or with trim... But then I remembered a project we did for our wedding that I LOVED - paper chains!

here

What color will they be? Well, I've actually been talking a lot about Zoe's new "BIG GIRL ROOM." I talk about it with her at night and ask questions about what she would like. I asked her what color she wanted her new room to be and she said, "Purple. And pink. And green" So that's what we're going with :)

I'm liking the idea of a light color on the walls and then great pops of color throughout the space. Kind of like this

here

I don't want the walls white. I actually really don't like white rooms. I know it's incredibly popular right now. But it actually makes me anxious to be in rooms that are white. I don't know why. However, while I love dark colors, Zoe's room is definitely going to be bright and colorful (a reflection of her wild personality), so I don't want the wall color to overwhelm the space.

How will it be colorful? Well, Zoe has helped me pick curtains. Yup, she helped :) I took her color suggestions and searched Fabric.com (love them) and found 4 that I thought would be cool and fit her color selections. Then I asked which two she liked the best (one for her curtains, and one for extra stuff). She picked some pretty good ones

This one

here

And this one

here

Luckily the second one I actually FORGOT I already had. Lol. I had picked it as one I liked that I thought she might like and it was the fabric for the curtains in my office 3 years ago and I had saved the fabric. Saved money and I still have the same taste. I thought that was pretty hilarious.

For a rug I wanted to keep things basic. But still have a little bit of a pop. I found this AWESOME one on Joss & Main (it's not available anymore)

The color differentiation is very subtle. but a really nice touch. I love it.

Of course Zoe must have a gallery wall. Because gallery walls are the best :) And there is never enough wall space for everything I want to hang up. There are a couple that will go from her current room to her new room. But I also wanted to get her some new, fun things that are reflective of the things she is interested in. I bought several on Etsy, but I also made 2.

Zoe's first word she was OBSESSED with was, "CAR!" and so, naturally I had to make a car print that had a picture of a red VW bug (because that's Chris's beloved car)

The other one I made is a song from The Beatles, Revolver

Zoe LOVES music and loves to sing. One time when she was much younger she wasn't feeling well and was snuggled with Chris on his lap. We were listening to Revolver and every time a song was over, she would ask for more. It went on like that for almost 45 minutes. I'll always remember that.

The ones I bought on Etsy (mostly digital downloads)...

To go along with the singing theme: Twinkle was the first song she could sing by herself

here

And she still sings it. All the time. Especially to Merritt.

What kid doesn't like Old MacDonald?

here

Zoe does. We sing that one ALL THE TIME in the car.

And of course, to go with her budding love of movies I picked a couple prints from her favorites. Her first obsession was Willy Wonka

here

And, DUH!, we had to have a Mary Poppins print

here

And a current love is Alice in Wonderland

here

Zoe's middle name is Rose, so I thought a print with roses would be nice. She also loved flowers when she was younger. It's been winter and rainy, so I haven't been able to see if that love continues (we desperately had to talk her out of picking every flower she saw when we went on walks last summer and fall)

here

And lastly....if you follow me on Instagram you'd see my frequent photos of Zoe helping cook in the kitchen.

She LOVES to cook. We let her bring her stool to the counter to help us and she really enjoys it (she's very good at mixing things on the stove). We recently inherited a play kitchen from friends of ours and she plays with it ALL. THE. TIME. It's pretty cute. And if you ask her what she's cooking, about 50% of the time it's cupcakes

here

There's also a little nook to figure out what to do with, a seating area where she can color, etc. to plan, and a bookshelf and dresser for toy storage to purchase.

I am SO EXCITED to get this all figured out. And I hope so much that she likes it. It definitely also makes me excited to see what kind of little lady Merritt develops into - another fun room to plan in a year or two! :) God damn kid's rooms are fun :)

Chaos

2016-02-08T07:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, let's just start this all with this....

ALL LOANS HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED AND THE SCHEDULED CLOSE OF ESCROW IS 2/22!!!!!!

Holy shit that's right.

We got the news about 2 weeks ago. Just like with posting about the offer we put on the short sale, I didn't know when we should spill the beans. But after about a week, I thought, fuck it, let's DO THIS! Ummm, but then life got COMPLETELY INSANE. Our living room looks like this

I didn't want to write a post that was just, "Hi, offer accepted, bye." But it's been a supreme challenge to get the necessary 45 minutes it usually takes me to write a post.

So, now that I am FINALLY getting to it, let's get to the details....

If you follow us on Facebook you'd know that I'm still somewhat terrified that this sale will not go through (I shared the news last Thursday there). The credit unions have accepted the first loan, the second loan and the loan for help with the seller's down payment will be forgiven in about a week. That was a feat. Getting 3 loans accepted for a short sale. Oy. However, much like the process of our offer and inspections, things have not been easy going.

I could go into crazy detail, but I'm just so fucking exhausted and pissed off by it all. There are 2 sides to this: 1) this is a distressed property so usually the sellers aren't exactly forthcoming. However 2) we are in contract and we have an inspections clause and fucking crap Jesus I would like to go in to take measurements. Especially because that was in the contract.

We let the listing agent know that we wanted to take measurements JUST of Zoe's room. We asked for literally 5 minutes for me to run inside to take measurements so I can sew curtains for her (2 very tall windows) and know the size of furniture to get for her. Zoe has a hard time with change and so I want her room DONE when we move in to make her transition as smooth as possible. They agreed at first. But then "there was a death in the family," so it had to be postponed. Then "someone in the family was sick." So it had to be postponed again. Then we were supposed to be able to do it on Friday but the listing agent couldn't even come up with a reason - but the conclusion was we couldn't do it then either.

I was pissed. I know this might sound like something stupid to get upset about. But we had 2 inspections done earlier (structural, pest) before the offers were accepted. Per the contract we are able to get 5 days of additional inspections. We don't need any, so I felt like it wasn't asking a lot to just get literally 5 minutes to run inside and measure for what size dresser I could get for my kiddo. As a mom, I'm just annoyed. I know I sound like a fucking brat, but if this whole process with them hadn't been a headache from the start I'm sure I wouldn't be as annoyed.

Ooh, and then they told us they were going to refuse the final walk through. Also in the contract. Well, you can go fuck yourself on that one. I have no idea what this agent is thinking.

Oy.

Needless to say, I think you can understand why Chris and I say, "if we get the house..." when we talk about it with each other. Lol. There still really is a small chance everything might fall through (again, I don't want to go into details because I don't want to jinx myself). But we're still keeping lots of things crossed in the hopes that everything goes as planned. Or as close to planned as possible.

What does this mean for our lives? Well it means that over the last 2 weeks we've been packing. We're packing the things throughout the house that we know we won't need for the next 4-6 weeks. We've actually made good progress.

We've also talked with our agent about what will happen to Picardy: we're selling it.

Yes, that makes me sad. But I'm also really happy. Chris and I have poured a lot of blood, sweat and (so many) tears into this home. We took it from crumbling to beautiful. And I am so proud of that. But the chapter of this home is nearing completion, and I am totally okay with that. I am so happy to create a home for my WHOLE family. Not just find a way to make it work for our girls. I mean, Merritt's crib is in the laundry room for heaven's sake.

But that means there are some projects we have to finally get done and touch ups that need tending to.

We need to repaint the bathroom - our agent says it's too dark. I agree re appealing to buyers.

We need to repaint my office and Zoe's room - our agent says my office is too dark. I agree re appealing to buyers. But damn if I don't love a dark room. Zoe's room needs touch ups. We're going to have the office staged with twin beds and then have Zoe's room (off of the office) be staged as a play area. So we want those two rooms to be painted the same color to make them feel more seamless.

We need to do touch ups everywhere because of all our artwork that has been hung up.

We need to finally FINISH the laundry room (though hilariously I organized the cabinets about 4 days before we heard our offer was accepted).

We need to repair the ceiling and paint the ceiling in Chris' office (we are in the midst of this work).

We need to clean up the yards, weed, do minor planting of annuals to make things look pretty.

I think that's the GENERAL checklist.

Of course there is all the packing. Getting pest and structural reports prepared for when our house goes on the market (standard in this area that seller's have those inspection reports done unless you're a distressed sale).

So what's the timeline?

COE is scheduled for 2/22. We're planning on moving 3/7 (that's if everything goes as planned with the scheduled COE). Staging and photographs that same week, and then we're on the market to sell. Then the future house will have LOTS of work we'll be getting to. As soon as it's ours we'll work on getting the exterior repainted, replacing the furnace, installing a washer and dryer, rebuilding the main deck across the back and getting the garage and basement storage squared away (necessary for making work at home easier, and for making our business run successfully).

What does this mean for Picardy Project? A whole lot of fucking fun that's what. I'M GOING TO BE ABLE TO POST ABOUT WORKING ON STUFF AGAIN!!!

That also means things will be a little messy and disorganized on here for a while. I'm currently working on a blog redesign and transferring over to WordPress. But also, I usually like to keep posts organized by project. That will still hold mostly true, but there will be some posts where it's just going to be, "Look at all the madness going on everywhere around the house right now." :) I want to make sure to keep everyone in the loop as much as timing will allow. We'll be supremely busy over the next couple of weeks, so please be patient!

But it's exciting. Something new. Something different. I love projects. And it's always fun to be busy :)

Just a Quick Note

2016-02-01T12:07:00.001-08:00

Hola!

Well, I'm finally making the switch from Blogger to Wordpress. It's been on my to do list for the last, ohhh, like 3 years. And I decided to finally get my shit together and do it. In addition I'm switching my hosting company from GoDaddy (because they're assholes) to a local company in Berkeley that Chris has been using for about 10 years. I don't know why I didn't just use them in the first place...

Also, in the next month or so I'll be getting a WHOLE brand spanking new blog redesign thanks to Sarah over at Ugly Duckling. Keeping it in the blogging family. I always like paying people I like instead of complete strangers.

But I wanted just to drop in and let you know that if the site goes completely bonkers or disappears or is very strange for an hour or day or week, that's what's happening. A LOT has been going on around here the last 2 weeks or so, so I gotta collect myself and blog about it. But first I need to catch my breath a little. Hope to have some updates for you tomorrow!

In the meantime, baby and child adorableness

Merritt: 7 months

2016-01-28T06:29:00.005-08:00

"Baby Merritt" hit 7 months last Friday

I say "Baby Merritt" because that is her official name according to Zoe. Although sometimes she just calls her "baby." Or my favorite - when the baby is messing with something of Zoe's or doing something funny Zoe will call her "bay-ba." That one cracks me up.

The comparison shot

This month food and wiggles reigned supreme.

Food. Food. Food. So much love for food that she would probably rather eat food than nurse. Nursing was a challenge this month because she has just been completely distracted by the world around her. Wants to sit up, lean back, wiggle around - anything besides sit still for nursing. I've started wearing a necklace for her to play with while she nurses to distract her enough that she almost forgets she's nursing, so that she actually does.

But back to food. The girl loves to eat and will basically try anything. Apples and applesauce are king. Applesauce with anything else mixed with it will be consumed immediately. She has one pouch that is applesauce with mango, carrot and orange. She knows what that pouch looks like and the second she sees it she starts wiggling all over the place. It's hilarious.

She likes to try to feed herself and will sometimes literally yell at me if I dare try to hold the pouch while she's feeding herself. Heaven forbid she squirt the entire contents of said pouch all over herself. That's a small price to pay for getting to hold the pouch and squirt it into your mouth yourself. Feeding herself with the spoon: fantastic. Picking up finger food: amazing. The girl likes to do things herself. I can't blame her.

The wiggles. Ooh the wiggles. She definitely has become very interested in how the world works and participating in figuring it out. She used to be content to just BE. Now she wants to know what's going on. She's definitely still relaxed and chill and go with the flow, but she clearly observes and discovers.

Chief among discovery is FEELING and BITING. She loves to feel things. Just absolutely loves texture. I'm sure a lot of babies are like this, but I don't remember Zoe being so completely transfixed on feeling all over things. Merritt just gets completely engrossed in feeling things.

She also gets absolutely obsessed with certain objects. The two most important in her life: the mobile above her changing table and the bike helmets in the laundry room. Merritt MUST be allowed to grab, fling, and chew the objects hanging from her mobile every time you change her diaper. She also much be allowed to shove, pull and smile at the helmets hanging from our bike handlebars every time she sees them. Completely obsessed with these things.

Another obsession? Still the feet. Still flinging them everywhere. She's always chewing them and grabbing at them. And it's ALWAYS the left one. Still no point in socks ever being put on her feet. Ripped off immediately.

The feet fly all over the place whenever she gets excited. I've had complete strangers tell me as they're passing me in a store, "That little boy [because girls apparently always have to wear pink for people to think they're a girl] is on the move!" I'll be standing in the grocery aisle and something gets her excited and those feet just fling themselves all the place. If she sees a toy that she particularly likes (a remote for example - LOVES remotes) feet fly everywhere.

She's starting to giggle more. Hooray! I love baby giggles. She's pretty ticklish, so that's a good way to get a good laugh fest going. Honestly a baby laughing is one of the greatest sounds in life.

How is sleep going? Night sleep has improved. We actually moved her into the laundry room. Yes, the laundry room. We didn't have another room in the house that was easy to mask Zoe-noise and we were hoping that moving her out of our room would maybe help her sleep better. The thought is that maybe she just associated sleeping in there with us, and so whenever she woke up she would want to nurse/have snuggles. The good news is that since moving into the laundry room about 3 weeks or so ago she has not had a crying fit. Not one. She used to have at least one about every 3 - 4 days where she would cry for 1-2 hours between nursings. That hasn't happened at all. HOORAY! It's a little annoying for me because I have to walk to the laundry room to get her, feed her, then take her back. I don't feed her in the laundry room (I could move a chair in there) because I don't want her to associate that room with ANYTHING but sleeping. So far it has helped her.

Naps are another question. She's about 50/50 on those. If she's had enough stimulation she's great about naps. But if she's decided that she hasn't gotten to play enough she'll fight it for sometimes an hour. I can tell if she's just trying to get herself to sleep and is frustrated or if there's just really no chance of her falling asleep. In those cases I give her a little bit to see if she'll go down, but usually pick her up after about 15 minutes (only when I can tell from her noises that she's just fucking setting) and she'll only take 1 nap that day. She's actually generally okay with that. I'm curious if she'll make the switch to 1 nap earlier than Zoe did (about 14 months).

Zoe is still her favorite

these girls just love each other, and it melts my heart

Although Chris is right up there as her favorite too. I can't let her see him while she's nursing. If she does she spends the next 10 minutes twisting all around trying to figure out where he is and how she can get his attention. It's adorable.

I'm curious to see how much more wiggly she'll get this coming month. I know crawling will come in another month or two. I'm looking forward to seeing her learn to understand how to move her body around more.

Happy 7 months you little curious cutie!

SF Project: We're ALMOST Done!

2016-01-21T10:13:00.000-08:00

It's been about 2 months or so since we last checked in on this project. So let's get to it...

In October I was shaking my fist at the SF Building Department. I may have even called someone an idiot. Thank GOD my time with the building department is almost done. THANK GOD. I did have to make 3 more visits out, as well as a visit to the accessor's office. Why did I have to do that? Ummm, because when my brother bought the unit they only updated the contact info for the new owner in their system, but didn't update the title of the new owner. OH MY GOD. So the city didn't actually think we owned the unit. Jesus. So I had to go down there with the Trustee's Deed that had a stamp from THEIR OFFICE on it from TWO YEARS AGO. This was apparently not enough information for them. They had to do their own "research." This involved many emails and phone calls between my brother, me and the accessor's office. The good news is that after a MONTH they finally figured out, oh yes, we do own the unit. Oy. Once the ownership info got updated I could finally - FINALLY - get the permit transferred over into our name. I scheduled the necessary inspections before we could start tiling the bathroom and the inspector showed up, walked through, and checked us off. HOORAY!!! That was in December. Yes, it took us TWO MONTHS from that post back in October to finally get back on track with the city. This is a prime example of why I absolutely hate dealing with the city. Especially a city like San Francisco. I made several friends with other people waiting to get permits approved. Including one guy who worked for a commercial fire sprinkler installation company. He said he goes at least once a week to various permit offices throughout the Bay Area, and particularly to SF twice a month (for years). That day the city was claiming he needed a document they had NEVER needed before in order to sign off on his permit. Dear SF Building Department: you are the worst.

Can you tell how exciting this all was by all the capitalization? :)

The wonderful news is that we are SO CLOSE to the finish line. We just need appliances installed, about 2 or 3 days days of finishing touches (touch ups, hardware installed, etc.), and then the glass enclosure for the shower installed. We do have to figure out the radiant heating situation. That's sort of the last headache item. Why someone decided to have the heating be done with radiators in San Francisco, I will never know, but we are left to figure out what to do with it. We shall see.

But, let's all get real, we want progress pictures, I know.

Surprise, surprise, I love gray

The ceilings are so tall we're using pendants instead of the recessed lights in this long entry hallway

We added tall baseboard and large crown because the ceilings are 10+ feet

And we had the base matched to a PVC base so that we could curve it around this wall in one of the bedrooms

The original doors look so fucking awesome

I LOVE the vertical oversized subway tile and black hex in the bathroom

Obviously some more trim needs to be installed. And the stackable washer/dryer needs to be installed in this nook in the bathroom as well

Not to mention a medicine cabinet

I like the modern fixtures with the classic tile

The office nook in the kitchen is looking yummy

We still need to cap off that gas and install a new exterior door. If you look closely on the far right of the picture you can see the 2x4 that's drilled perpendicular against the door. Yup, that's where the previous owner took a chainsaw to the door to break in. Sigh.

The hardware on all the cabinets is dreamy

And obviously the kitchen is missing a couple appliances :)

It was a fucking BITCH to try and find a 30" counter depth fridge that didn't cost $6k+. Literally. Ugh.

Well, there we have it. Progress! I've been going out at least once a week to drop off materials, meet with contractors, check on progress, etc. The awesome news is that my brother was in town over New Year's and saw the place for the first time in almost 18 months. I've done smaller projects with him before, but this has been the biggest project to date: a gutted unit and a budget handed to me with no desire to be involved in any decision making, just a desire from him for me to get it done. Nerve wracking, but also incredibly rewarding. And when he saw it earlier this month he LOVED it. Ohhhhhh it was so wonderful to see him like it so much :) :) :) He's actively looking for more projects like this now. Including some that would have walls ripped down and floor plans entirely reconfigured. EXCITING. He hasn't found one yet that entirely works, but I'm so excited about the prospect of another project like this. It's basically a dream job. Thanks Adam :)

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

2016-01-18T07:31:00.000-08:00

Movies are a big deal in our family. On all sides of our family. For Chris, his dad is pretty much constantly seeing everything that ever comes out in theaters. Which is great because he lives in LA, so he can literally see anything. One year he saw 400+ movies in the theater. Yes, you read that right. Over 400. Chris's maternal grandfather was a film historian. He wrote several books on movies and his film music reference book is pretty much considered the best there is. When he passed away years ago the Academy came and took some of his personal notes for their library.

My parents are movie nuts as well. Though they haven't written books, my mom is a feverish movie theater attendee and my dad rents just about anything. We always have great debates about movie tastes, what's great that's out and what each other has to see.

Chris and I love movies as well. Chris used to have a goal of seeing 300 movies a year. And I had a goal of seeing 100 movies in the theater every year. Neither of those is a goal now, because...ummm... KIDS. Lol. We still do love movies and family comes for night time monitor listening so that we can get to the movies for dates from time to time (hooray!)

So, like I said, movies are important to us.

There was a debate for a little while about what would be the first movie to have Zoe watch. She loved Seinfeld, and particularly liked a character named Mickey (a little person if you're not familiar.) Chris brilliantly thought of having her watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at about 20 months (the original, DUH. None of that Johnny Depp shit over here). She LOVED it. So we sprinkled in some others. She's got about 6-10 in the rotation that she loves.

My mom watches Zoe once a week. And naturally as a movie lover she was curious when we'd take Zoe to the theater. I knew she'd love that experience with her, but my mom told me that of course she wanted Chris and I to take her first. But that got us thinking: was Zoe ready for a movie in the theater? And what would it BE!? As movie buffs we obviously would prefer for it to be kind of special - not the latest Pixar or Disney (though many are great.)

One night I was fiddling around on my phone and some how - I have no idea, it must have been fate - saw that the Disney Museum in San Francisco just HAPPENED to be screening Mary Poppins for the month of January. I have never been to this museum, nor was I aware they screen a classic movie each month (I'm telling you, it was fate.)

Why was it fate? Well, Zoe fucking LOVES Mary Poppins. Loves to sing. Loves to dance. Loves to talk about the characters. She loves it so much we had gotten her a Mary Poppins shirt for Christmas.

And want to know what's even cooler? In planning our trip to see it (family watching of Miss Merritt was necessary) we found out it was the first movie that BOTH my mom and Chris's mom saw in the theater as well. Total fucking fate.

We were both a little nervous. From time to time Zoe will skip a nap (fucks around her room for the whole time instead of sleeping). Movie time would involve no nap (god PLEASE don't have a meltdown.) She'd never been to a movie, would the atmosphere make her nervous? (sometimes she doesn't like the dark). I was also nervous about her needing to be quiet. Obviously not SILENT as this was certainly a family friendly environment, but I didn't want her to be super loud. And lastly, the movie is LONG for a kid to sit through in one sitting (2 hours and 20 minutes). We resolved that we would try it, and if it didn't work out, we would just leave. No worries at all.

So that's just what we did yesterday, bah!!!!

We told Zoe over the course of the week what we were going to be doing. We explained that it was special and a really exciting thing to get to do. She definitely started to look forward to it and would ask me periodically when we were going to go to see it. I was definitely getting excited :)

Midday Sunday came around and Chris's mom came over to watch Merritt. We drove out to the city, made a pit stop for lunch and then arrived at the museum. We walked around for a bit (it definitely made me want to come back again when we had more time). Our plans were almost dashed when we nearly didn't get in - GASP. I bought general tickets earlier at home online and knew that movie tickets were comped in that price. But apparently you needed to tell the person at the counter when you first arrived that you needed your special ticket to get into the theater as well (even though by buying a ticket to get into the museum you were buying a movie ticket as well). So when we walked to the theater with our general museum tickets in hand, she turned us away and said we needed special tickets. And they still had only A FEW left. Gahhhh! By the time we got back to the front of the museum and waited in line they were sold out. Cryyyyyy. I didn't freak out yet, but the guy helping us I think sensed my disappointment and desperation (and the Mary Poppins shirt Zoe was wearing). He personally took us down to the theater and explained that sometimes people get their comp ticket when they arrive at the museum, but then don't go see it, so there's still room in the theater. Just our luck... THERE WAS ROOM! Hooray!

We got out our snacks and settled in.

I wasn't expecting it, but the SECOND the first musical note of the beginning credits hit, I started crying. It was a moment I'll remember forever: getting to share something so special to all of our family with her. And something that she likes so much too.

Zoe was mesmerized. She loved it. She pretended to pick up a drum that was just for her during Supercalifragilisticexpealidiscious and played along with the music. She was pretty good about whispering, but there were some very loud questions from time to time. She loved getting to have a tasty treat. She remarked several times how cool the "BIG TV" was.

She had one freak out a little more than halfway through. I took her outside and we talked and calmed down (she did not take well to being told she couldn't crawl on the floor). And she was great again. She danced wildly during "step in TIME!"

The experience was magical. I loved seeing her get excited. The funny parts were even funnier. The happy parts were even happier. And a group of people even sang, "Let's go fly a kite" at the end.

It made me remember the "magic of the movies." There is something so special about movies, and especially about GOING to the movies. Time stops. You don't know what's going on anywhere else but in that dark room with that bright screen and that great story. And there are so many others strangers there, sharing this moment with you. You'll share tears, laughter, smiles, laughter, frustration. You will always have that moment in time.

And I'm so happy to have gotten to share that first moment with Zoe.

My Decorating Pet Peeves

2016-01-12T07:34:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about writing this post for a long time. And I've just never done it. But as I've starting Pinning the shit out of stuff for the hope of one day getting to start the remodel adventure again, it's rekindled this post idea.

If you didn't know: I'm very opinionated. Shocker, right? And there are just things I really like, and things I really don't. And I'm usually a lot more opinionated about the things I really don't like, lol. It's not to the point where I don't like it if other people do it in their own home, but there are certainly things I'm really tired of seeing, or just don't like to see at all. Want to know what they are? Of course you do! :) And PLEASE tell me yours. I love hearing these things. They just make me happy. Is that deranged?

Shoe Molding

from here

I CANNOT express the disdain I have for shoe molding. I HATE it. To me, shoe molding covered up a mistake - or, worse - LAZINESS. When installing or redoing hardwood floors: PLEASE REMOVE BASEBOARDS AND INSTALL THEM AFTER. Shoe molding is a band-aid. And I can't stand it. Can you tell?

The same counters in the bathroom and kitchen

I have no idea why this bothers me so much, but it does. I guess the thought of getting to pick out different counters is exciting to me, so why would I bore myself with only one?! Also, can I tell you something that makes NO SENSE AT ALL? For some REALLY STRANGE reason, it feels unsanitary to me. Told you: really strange. I guess I just don't want to see the same counters in the bathroom - WHERE YOU SHIT, and in the kitchen - WHERE YOU EAT. Obviously this issue is very important to me because it involves a lot of capitalization.

Same material on the floors and walls

from here

Again, just not imaginative. I LOVE TILE. Floor and walls means TWO chances to pick out tile. It just feels so boring if it's the same. There is of coarse the argument that in a small space it would look bigger. Or if you have a wet bathroom it's easier. I can't really get behind those arguments. Tile that's different isn't going to make your bathroom look smaller. Especially if they're the same color.

Glass block

from here

GASP. I have no idea who invented glass block. But an angel loses her wings whenever I see it. I understand the point of it, I guess. But there are much better ways to go about doing things. Like, how about if you want privacy, just FROSTED GLASS? Of course, in 5 or 10 years I may hate frosted glass. Sometimes it's just a stupid little wall separating a shower area from the sinks - just use regular clear glass. It's so much prettier. But every time I see glass block. Seriously. I just can't stand it. It's so unattractive.

Designers not knowing the difference between chevron and herringbone

Okay people, I do not expect average homeowners to know this, but if you're a fucking designer, YOU SHOULD KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. I have watched so many renovating/design shows and the designers say "Herringbone" when they mean "Chevron." And the two are very different.

Chevron

from here

Herringbone

from here

Even Pinterest has no idea what's going on. When I typed in "Chevron tile pattern." More than half of what popped up was Herringbone. I have no idea why, but that aggravates me to no end. I think because Chevron is so trendy (although falling out of trend) and Herringbone is incredibly classic. I don't like Chevron trying to ride on Herringbone's coattails!

Completely ignoring a home's architecture

This one makes me cry. We watched an episode of House Hunters Renovation a couple months ago and the couple bought the cutest Tudor/Bungalow in LA. And the couple REMOVED the original diamond leaded glass windows and installed "regular" windows. This of course wouldn't be such an awful thing if there was something wrong with the windows and things needed to be upgraded. But no. The husband just flat out didn't like the home's architecture and look of them. WHY DID YOU BUY THAT HOME THEN!?

Barn doors

from here

If I see another renovation show where they ask, "Oh, what about barn doors for the closet?!" I may scream. I have seen enough of these. About 2 years ago.

The difference between a peninsula and an island

Again, designers, PLEASE know the difference between these general geographic terms.

THIS is a island

from here

And, please say it with me, this is a P-E-N-I-N-S-U-L-A

from here

Words and letters and quotes on the wall

from here

It just feels, so, I don't know, forced and stylized. I'm also a fan of having the things on the wall be personal, mementos, photos, personal paraphernalia. And words, quotes, etc. just feel so generic.

Now, I do have one place you're allowed to get away with this - and that's a kid's room. Because to me, the more letters the better to help them learn to read or know their name, etc. Otherwise, NOT ALLOWED ;)

No personality

I am so happy the "trend" of highly stylized pictures is going away. I hate it. I hate homes that are devoid of personality and look like every day they belong in Apartment Therapy. I don't like not seeing evidence that people live in a space. I actually stopped subscribing to every one of my shelter mags because I just got sick of seeing "perfect" spaces that didn't show any character of the humans that were living there. Honestly, every time I looked at them I just got depressed. No one lives like that. And no one should feel bad about themselves because there's dog hair on their floor.

The wrong height for artwork

People hang artwork WAY TOO HIGH all the time. This is a great source. As an art major this was beaten into my head. And it's something I have suggested to a couple clients. They're always pleased with how things look when they shift it to the "right" height.

Vessel sinks

from here

I remember 15 years ago when my dad and Wendy moved to Texas their master bath had a vessel sink. As a 15 year old I thought this was very cool. It was different. I now can't stand seeing them. It's not the aesthetics for me that frustrates me (though I also don't like the look as much anymore), it's that they're completely impractical: the counter is way too low to be useful (and I'm on the shorter end of average) AND when you inevitably get water all over the place it's annoying to clean because you can't just wipe it into the sink.

Fucking red porches and stairs

from here

Well, you already know how I feel about red doors :) But that's just the door. There's something I understand even less: painting your porch and stairs on the front of your house red. Just because, for some reason, people have decided that's the color you're "supposed" to. It makes no sense. You should stick with the color story of your house, or the style of your house, or something that looks good in that environment. But people have just arbitrarily decided that's the official porch and stair color. A home might be painted yellow, blue and beige (an example of a house down the street from us). You know what color screams, "I DON'T MAKE SENSE!" ??? Red. You know what color their porch and stairs are? Red. I just don't get it.

How much do you hate me now? How annoying am I?

Will you please share what you can't stand? Then I don't feel so bad about myself :)

Breastfeeding the Second Time Around

2016-01-07T07:51:00.001-08:00

I feel like I'm due for another post about boobies :)

Breastfeeding was certainly an adventure the first time around. I was determined to breastfeed with kiddo number two as well, and while I was hoping my nipples didn't hurt as bad this time, I knew there would be different challenges. And that was certainly the case. Merritt is very specific.

When Merritt popped out, she nursed for an hour. She was all about it. Even the nurses were like, "Jesus kid." It wasn't even suckles - she was nurse nursing. I was happy: a kiddo who had it down.

From the beginning she ate about every 3-4 hours. Even as a little newbie. When Zoe first came out she ate every two hours, and heaven fucking forbid you fed her every two hours and five minutes - she would let you know that was NOT okay. Merritt was pretty laid back about things. Even if I had to stretch her, she was okay with it, and that was awesome.

While her frequency of feeding was great, the length of them in the beginning was lllllooooonnngggg. She would sometimes take 30-40 minutes to eat. And that made getting Zoe to day care at 8:30 sometimes challenging in those beginning days. The good news was that she became much more efficient, and now usually nurses for about 10 minutes (15 at night cuz she's a quiet, sleepy baby).

Things seemed to be easy going, but she definitely was REALLY fussy when she was awake. Those first couple weeks were hard for her in terms of trying to make her happy. It just felt so awful: she was nursing and seemed to have a good, full belly, but she was just SO unhappy. She did this thing that I called "herky jerky" where she wriggled around jerking her body and she stopped nursing as well after another day or two. I called the advice nurse and explained her behavior and she thought Merritt had super bad gas. So we got gas drops and that helped.

We also burped the shit out of her.

And she spit up a lot. So much so that in those first few weeks I would have to hold her upright after I fed her (including the middle of the night) to help her digest so she wouldn't have as good of a chance of spitting up all over herself while she slept :(

But she still seemed unhappy. She dig a sort of gagging reflex from time to time and still had a hard time. So again, a call to the advice nurse: she had acid reflux. Poor kiddo.

The medicine seemed to help and she didn't gag anymore, but again, she was still unhappy. The part that made it hard was that we saw glimmers of her being a happy baby, so we knew it was inside there. We just had to figure out how to get it to come out. So we looked online, read some stuff, asked people. It seemed like dairy "allergies" are pretty common with littles. I put allergy in quotes because that's actually something that is legitimately a HUGE problem and dangerous, but in most little baby's cases, it's more of an uncomfortable intolerance. I like cheese. I like ice cream. And I drink milk occasionally. Upon eliminating dairy Merritt's happiness quadrupled. That made me SO HAPPY. She didn't have gas anymore. The acid reflux was being helped. And no more dairy meant no more crying all day. Hooray!

We finally got to the point of understanding how she could tolerate my milk. But there were still more adventures. Oh yes, more.

In the early months, Merritt would REFUSE to eat anywhere but our house or my car. The only reason why she was okay in the car was because she got used to having to do that after I dropped Zoe off at day care (we'd sit in the front dear together before we drove home.) But she WOULD NOT do it anywhere else. Not quiet. Not loud. Not dark. Not light. Not laying down. Not sitting up. She didn't care at all - she would not eat. There were several occasions that I had to leave people's houses or whatever I was doing to take her home so that she would eat.

Why didn't I just feed her those times when she refused in the car? Well, once she got really upset it took A LOT to get her to calm down. And she needed to be in a really comfortable place to relax and calm down enough.

Then there was the case that if she got TOO worked up, there was just no chance she would take the boob at all. If she was too tired or too hungry or too mad there was NO WAY a boob could be shoved in her face. She wanted a bottle instead. I've never encountered a baby who would PREFER a bottle over a boob when they were upset. It was definitely frustrating at times. But I learned to grit my teeth and sort of deal with it.

THEN there was the issue of having too much lipase in my milk. What the fuck does that mean? Good question. If I pump my milk and put it in the fridge to be consumed a couple days later or put it in the freezer to be eaten weeks or months later, it tastes like it has gone bad. Yes, my milk pretends it's gone bad. How fucking annoying is that? What happens is that my milk has too much lipase which gives it a taste and smell like it has soured. It is still okay to eat, there isn't anything wrong with it, but baby definitely seems to think there is. I mean, it tastes sour to her, so I can't blame her.

What do I do to fix this? Through online research when I was pregnant with Zoe (it happened with her too, but only at the end of nursing, this time it's been from the start) we found out that every time I pump I have to scald my milk on the stove before it's put into the fridge or freezer. Yup, that's annoying.

How often do I pump? At one point, before Merritt started this business of waking up between 9:30-10:30PM, I would pump every evening at that time before we went to bed. I did this for two reasons...

1) I wanted to keep my milk supply up. Early on I didn't want to essentially eliminate a feeding when she could sleep for a longer stretch of time. So I wanted the boobs to still think they were being needed a lot.

2) I nursed Zoe for 10 months. It was a combined effort to be done at that time. I wasn't as into it anymore (tired if being bitten ALL THE TIME despite about every theory to get them not to do it) and Zoe was so into food that she wasn't into the boob as much anymore and sort of weaned herself then rejected it all together. I really want to nurse Merritt the same amount of time. I'm a second kid and a Libra - my obsession about being fair is a little ridiculous. And with all the dietary and location restrictions I didn't know how thrilled I would be not getting to eat ice cream for a long time, always nursing at home, scalding whenever I pump, etc. My idea was that if I had pumped up a good stockpile in the freezer, I could stop around 8 months or so and then have another two or so months of milk in the freezer to give her. This reaching the same milestone. I know, I'm a bit crazy.

But a couple things happened...

Merritt still hates dairy, but I've gotten used to it. I can eat a little bit at a time - a slice of cheese won't kill her. But one time I ate pizza (with cheese) and she WAS NOT happy about it. I've gotten used to it now. But I still really miss ice cream.

The thing that's more important is that she's not nearly as particular about where and how she nurses. If she's tired it's best to give her a calm environment. But at least I can go in a quiet room at my dad and Wendy's house and she'll actually eat. That has made life a lot easier.

I also can't really pump anymore. For the last 3 or so months she's been waking up about the time I had been pumping. So instead of pumping, I feed her. I could add a time during the day to pump, but because I feed her at the beginning and end of every wake cycle I wouldn't really get too much. And it wouldn't be worth the trouble of scalding. That gets pretty annoying.

The good news is that with her not being as particular, my getting used to no dairy, no not bad gas and medicine for acid reflux working our breastfeeding relationship has greatly improved.

If you would have asked me before I would have thought the second time around would have been a lot easier. In a way it is because my nipples were more ready (TMI?) and I was aware of all the different kinds of holds, etc. That part was a walk in the park. But she had such a sensitive little belly to start. That was the challenge. And in a way it was more difficult. There was a lot to try to figure out. And she was just so sad. It was heartbreaking because she just cried and fussed so much. The part that's great is that now she is SUCH a happy baby. It took us a little while to get there to figure out what she needed, but now that we have, it's wonderful to see her enjoy her little baby life. She's efficient with nursing and more able to do it in other places. It makes things a lot easier now that we're a family of four.

I think this experience was a great example that even just the second time around there are still challenges. I know that's completely obvious in theory, but like touching a stove, it was something I had to experience. I'm glad we've figured out this challenge for our lady - it's rewarding to see the payoff the difference has made. She's just a smiler who is so happy to come along for the ride. And I'm happy her little belly now let's her enjoy life :)

2015: A Year in Pictures

2016-01-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

I always love this post. It makes me feel like something got done. Actually looking back on this year we did more than I THOUGHT, but still not a lot. You know, running a business, being pregnant and having a second kiddo, having a house that's almost done. I guess it makes sense :) But let's look at SOMETHING from each month.

January

The beginning of the year was heavily focused on working on my parent's house

At this point in time there was a lot of painting going on, built-ins getting installed and even tile. What crazy pictures to look back on.

Zoe also decided that she loved the impact driver

She's even got a couple of drills to her name.

February

Of course there was more work on my parents house

More paint and tile. And children's toys apparently.

Zoe also assisted in insulating under the addition of our house

Super helpful. Obviously.

March

Very exciting this month because my dad and Wendy officially moved to Oakland as the house neared completion

The house wasn't done yet. But it was definitely getting close.

We spent a shit ton of time in the back cleaning things up. And as always Zoe made herself useful

April

I actually worked on the house and painted the built-ins in Chris' office

And the exterior paint at my dad and Wendy's began as well. Which was good because everyone was happy to see the electric yellow and turquoise go

May

My parent's house is pretty giant, so there was still a lot of work to go on the exterior paint job. But it was definitely looking pretty :)

And Chris and I actually took some time to ourselves and went on a vacation together! We celebrated being together 10 years, being married 1 and the imminent arrival of kiddo 2

June

June was full of love for our kiddos. We celebrated Zoe turning 2

I made some original artwork with the help of fabulous women for our little girl #2

And OF COURSE we welcomed Merritt into our family

Oh yeah, and I finally got my shit together and wrote the Before & After post for my parent's house

July

We weren't super productive this month - SHOCKER - brand new baby and all. But I did finally complete a height chart for our family. I LOVE it. And that still is not hung up in our house...

Don't judge me. :)

And even though I painted it at 39 weeks pregnant (oyyyyyy), I revealed in July that we had FINALLY painted Chris' office

August

Woo-hoo! We revealed the exterior paint at my dad and Wendy's was done!

Those orange doors...love them.

And Chris took it upon himself to put the drawer fronts on our bed!

GREAT cell phone pic :)

Yeah, we're still not done with that project. Not that it's been more than two years or anything...

September

We didn't have that much going on this month. But I did finally start work again on a big project for my brother in SF that was stalled due to an insane previous owner

oh, hi adorable baby

October

Work slowly moved along for my brother

But not much else that was at all house related.

November

Apparently we didn't really do anything in September, October or November. I mean, we did just have a baby. And Chris was SO damn busy with work. But I did bribe him into writing a post about tools he was thankful for

Not sponsored or anything. Just that man's love for his tools :)

December

Oh my GOD, those cabinets that sat in the living room for, oh, 7 months finally got installed!

I still have to organize them...

And we revealed, GASP, we put an offer in on a house! Sadly there is not much to report here. We've had a couple additional inspections, found more wrong with it. But not more than we really knew or thought there would be. We knew it was a fixer and had already done some thurough inspections of our own. Honestly, the more that is wrong with the house, the better - it will look worse for the credit union and hopefully they will be more eager to just get it off their books. One can hope, right?

I'm looking forward to a super productive 2016! And hopefully a new house to sink our teeth into!!! :)

Merritt: 6 months

2015-12-31T07:37:00.000-08:00

Cutie Cutes was 6 months old last week

she always sucks these two fingers. It's the quintessential Merritt pose at this age

Of course, the 6 month comparison

Merritt continues to just be a very smiley, happy go lucky baby. We get the comment all the time still that she is very laid back and chill. In fact, my friend came over yesterday to hang out and visit and commented while she was sitting on the couch that she couldn't remember the last time she'd held a baby for as long as she did and the baby didn't fuss or whine (maybe 30-40 minutes?) She used to be a nanny and is a teacher now, so I felt pretty proud of Merritt :) Of course it is none of my doing, she came out like that, but it's a nice little feature of hers. We always like to say: she's content to be with you. She just wants to be around. Wants to hang out. Wants to feel part of the party. And she is so happy with that.

This month was definitely the advent of "the baby." She is really a little baby now and not a teeny infant - interested in lots of things, engaged, wanting to eat food, etc. She's becoming a little person and it's fun to see more of her personality take shape.

There are 3 things that are most important in Merritt's life.

1) Food. She loves it. No surprise here as food is very important to me as well. I make sure to nurse her before she eats food because I don't want her to lose interest in that TOO much, but food is definitely very exciting. We started feeding her shortly after she hit 5 months (a little early) because - like Zoe was - she was just dive bombing anything we were putting in our mouths. So we started feeding her little bits of what we were eating and she was just all about it. She thought it was great. So I got a bunch of baby food and we started trying all sorts of stuff. She loves applesauce, pears, carrots, squash, beans, blueberries...I haven't found much that she doesn't like yet. The one thing is that she DOES NOT like it when the food is cold. She spits it out and looks at you like, "What the fuck was that mom?" She also likes trying to feed herself. Finger food not so much (can't grab it very well yet), but when I feed her with a spoon she LOVES to grab the spoon and put it in her mouth. She's actually pretty good at it and it's fun to watch her discover trying to feed herself.

2) Textures. LOVES to try to feel the texture of everything she is sitting or laying near. Especially when things are rough or make noise when she feels them. We have a wreath hanging on the front door and she will literally try to fling herself out of my arms almost every time we walk through the door just so she can get one little feel of it.

3) The absolute best thing about life: feet and kicking. I have seriously never seen a kid so absolutely obsessed with her feet. I remember Zoe grabbing them and putting them in her mouth for a while, but it was a phase that came and went fairly quickly. This lady just LOVES them. There is no point in ever putting socks on her because they will be ripped off within 3 minutes of them going on her feet. She is constantly grabbing at them, chewing them, talking to them. And the kicking. Oh myyyyy the kicking. When she gets all worked up or excited about something the kicking just gets crazy. When she rolls onto her back in the crib when she wakes up and she sees you come to get her: kick kick kick kick. When she's getting her diaper changed and she sees the mobile move around: kick kick kick kick. When you put her in a swing at the park: kick kick kick kick. The SECOND she hits water in the bath: kick kick kick kick. It hilarious. The bath is the funniest. It literally is within about 4 seconds of hitting the water she just starts those legs FLYING around kicking all the water. And she gets this look on her face of supreme concentration while she's doing it. And when she finishes a round of it she looks up at you like, "Wasn't that FABULOUS!?" It's quite adorable.

She still likes to spit and blow raspberries. Much like kiddos at this age. Zoe always thinks that's quite hilarious.

She still smiles more than any damn kid there is. Just such a joy to see. She's starting to laugh more now which is fun. She used to hardly EVER laugh, and now we know a couple tricks to get some really good giggles out of her. I don't think there is a sound quite as good as a baby's giggle

The good news this month is the sleep has improved, hooray! I'm not sure what really clicked for her, but she's not taking as long to get back to bed at night (for the time being, I hope it sticks!!!) And that is a life changer. She still wakes at (approximately) 10:30pm, 2:30am, 6am to feed. Ideally I wouldn't have to wake up this much, but you know, she's so much better about getting herself back to sleep, so for the next couple months I can take it. Some people say if you just let them fuss for a couple minutes they'll put themselves back to sleep. Merritt is definitely NOT that way. She just really wants to eat and will cry and wail for a LONG time. And the longer you take to get to her to feed her, the harder time she has getting back to sleep when I'm done feeding her. So I just quickly scoop her up, feed her, and she's back down to sleep pretty quickly. I'm getting on average 6+ hours of sleep a night now, which is a vast improvement over the 5 hours if I was lucky, but usually more like 3-4 that I had been getting. So I'm a happy camper with that.

She has finally understood again that there is a benefit in rolling over. I always found that so funny. She rolled over so long ago and just never did it (unless in the crib) again. But now she sees it's purpose and does it a lot while we're all playing together.

She does roll over ALL THE TIME in her crib and gets real pissed about it. She wants to sleep on her tummy but gets herself on her back as she's making herself comfortable (still extremely physical in bed getting herself to sleep). And then she gets really mad. She knows how to roll back over, but I think she almost confuses herself as to how she got herself in that predicament because she's tired and just wants to go to bed and so she WAILS and we have to go in and help her. It's like a little turtle that got onto its back, lol. Poor kid :)

We took a roadtrip down to LA and SD this month. LA to visit Chris' family and SD to visit my brother and sister-in-law and baby Avery. Zoe struggled with all the change and her schedule being thrown off (I felt bad for her, she's just like me and really doesn't like change). Merritt was a trooper and just didn't like that she had to take so many naps in the car. She only ever sleeps for EXACTLY 30 minutes in the car. Hardly ever makes it longer than that. So she didn't get as much sleep as she would have liked. But other than that she just got to hang out with people and get held all the time, so obviously she was eating that up.

We've all been SUPER sick this month also which has fucking suuuuuucked. We got the norovirus and EVERYONE in the house was sick at least once. Merritt was a trooper and only got a bad cough and threw up a couple times. Zoe got hit with the bug TWICE and did not like throwing up. Poor kiddo. Chris threw up for the first time in 19 years and I was sick for 6 days. I have never done so much laundry in my life.

Merritt continues to LOVE and ADORE Zoe more than anything. Just loves her to be around and stares at her, smiles at her, tries to grab her. The good thing is Zoe loves her just as much

We're working on sitting up. She's great in her high chair or little seat for eating and can do it on her own on the ground for little bits of time. Zoe laughs hysterically when she inevitably topples over :)

She loves to sleep in the top right corner of her crib. So random. But that's when she ends up 80% of the time after she's wiggled her way around and gotten herself comfortable.

She LOVES going on the swing at the park. She even giggles and kicks her feet all around in delight. Zoe loves to push her on the swing as well, which is pretty heart melting.

Her stats?

Height: 27 1/2 inches (97%)
Weight: 15lbs 10.1oz (35%)

Still making long, lean babies. They're both super tall. It doesn't get old how much that humors me. They'll both be taller than me by the time they're like 12. Of course, Merritt is so little still who knows if she'll keep being super tall. We will see, we will see.

Well, that's our little cutie lady at 6 months. Can't wait to see what fun she starts to discover this next month!

We Put an Offer In: Adventures in Short Sales

2015-12-28T07:59:00.000-08:00

I debated at what time to write this post: right when we saw the house, when we put an offer in, if/when the offer was accepted, if/when the house was officially ours... There was a lot I thought about. I didn't want to jinx things. I didn't want to get too excited. But I pride myself on being honest, and even if I shared this after that experience resolved itself in whatever manner that ends up being, that would still be being honest, but I found I wanted to share it now, while it was happening.

If you follow us on Facebook you'd know that we put an offer on a house over Thanksgiving weekend. You'd also know that this experience has been a little different than normal. It's different for two reasons: 1) the house is a short sale and 2) the seller's agent is not very experienced and should be asking for a lot more help.

I don't want to share any pics of the house, because that's where I am superstitious. But I do want to share what this experience has been like. I will let you know now we are technically in a contract: The seller's have accepted our offer, but we haven't heard from the bank yet, and for a short sale, that is of course the one that matters. But let me share this adventure...

It's been quite a funny (and frustrating) ride.

The house popped up on the internet a couple days before Thanksgiving weekend. It was weird. There were few pictures, it wasn't on the MLS yet (I had found it because I'm obsessively on every house site) and there wasn't any open house scheduled. I thought that was weird. Our agent was also going out of town to visit her college sons, and so she couldn't visit the house with us.

I was very intrigued by the house from the start. It was strange how into it I was from the start. There were 6 pictures online at the time, and they all sucked. I could tell the house was outdated, but wasn't really given a sense of it. But there was a description of the square footage (2500ish), beds and baths (3/3), the lot size (0.6 acre), and we did a drive by - it looked pretty damn cute. I was incredibly intrigued.

But there was no open house scheduled.

Our agent hooked us up with someone from her office while she was out of town. We all talked on conference call together a few times. What we all concluded was this was a weird situation. The house was finally on the MLS, but the agent was super hard to get a hold of. We all just kind of got a weird feeling about it all. Something was a little strange.

When our "temporary agent" finally got a hold of the seller's agent she was able to get more info out of him. There was no open house scheduled and there might be some private showings. Might? How the fuck can you see it?

The weirder thing: here was already an offer on it. WHAT!? Without them having seen it? This market is crazy. And we did something crazier. We all came to the conclusion through many phone calls that we would put an offer on it sight unseen. Yup, insane. But we just had a feeling.

I know, this is completely crazy. But we reconciled that we would make the offer contingent on an inspection, so that way we were in the game against the initial offer and if we didn't like the layout, bedrooms, if it was in super shitty shape - WHATEVER - we could completely back out with no legal or financial responsibility.

Crazy. Yes.

So we put together an offer.

After the offer got put in, THEN we found out it was a short sale. And not even a "regular" short sale because the bank (or in this case a credit union) didn't know that they wanted to sell the house yet. WTF?

Then the seller's agent said they WERE going to have an open house the Saturday and Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. This is a stupid time to have an open house if you're a seller's agent actually interested in selling the home for a good amount. There are so few people around this time, so there is obviously less foot traffic. I mean, that's fine to me, but bad for your seller.

So I went to the open house on Saturday while Chris stayed home with the girls. I was the first line of defense. If I liked it, we would have my dad watch the girls the following day and Chris and I would go look at it together.

I met our "temporary agent" there (I had spent a lot of time with her on the phone, she put our offer together, but I hadn't met her in person yet.) We walked through the house together. I loved it just about the second I walked inside. The layout was great, the lot was relatively flat and there was an awesome view of Knowland Park out the back. I was hooked.

The seller was at the open house. A little weird. Usually not advised. I knew this would turn off some people, but I thought it might be a good idea for her to have a face to our offer. Maybe she would like me and that would help us get the house. I don't know why I logically thought that because in a short sale it really comes down to the bank - but I wanted to take anything I could.

So I introduced myself to her. We ended up talking for an hour. We talked about our families, she told me all about the house and the neighborhood. It ended with her giving me a hug, in tears, and telling me that she wanted us to have the house.

I came home to Chris and told him I loved it. His response? "No pressure, we already have an offer in and you love it." Lol.

The good news is that the next day Chris and I went together for the second open house day and he quietly walked all around and while we were standing together in the backyard looking at the back of the house he said to me, "Yeah, I love it too."

Want to know the even weirder thing? Neither of us had seen the master and Chris hadn't seen the basement. The seller was a little uncomfortable with people being in her home (but you're selling it...) and didn't want people in her bedroom. While this was weird, I didn't actually mind it because I have no requirements for a bedroom in all honesty (I don't need it giant or anything, just big enough for a bed really). The basement was a little more annoying because although I saw it on that first day, it was locked the second. The basement is incredibly necessary for us for secondary storage and Chris would need to do a thorough inspection for structural issues. I hadn't seen any that seemed obvious, but Chris would absolutely need to look at that to make sure.

So our agents went to work (our regular agent came back to town) finding out anything they could - what was the status of our offer, the other offer, the short sale docs, etc.

Our offer was the front runner, so that was great news. There was no word about the status of our offer (it would need to be "accepted" by the seller's, then passed on to the credit union). But the most annoying was that the status of the short sale was complete shit.

During this process our agent found out the seller's agent had only been licensed for 3 months, had little to no mentoring from anyone in his office and was a relative of the seller. Oy. Short sales are already complicated, and having someone not really know what they were doing was going to make things worse. The credit union didn't even know the house was going to be sold, didn't know about our offers and the prep work of all the documentation that needed to be done (and there's A LOT) had not been done at all. The seller's agent also had some crazy idea that the house was worth INCREDIBLY more than it was offered at to make it NOT a short sale (it needed to be sold for about $200k over asking for that to happen. And the house just really isn't worth that.)

Jesus.

So our agent got to work and over the next 3 weeks there was a lot of action. First, they countered back at the super high amount that would make it NOT a short sale. We rejected that and countered back. We went a little higher than our initial offer.

Then that offer got sat on. Meanwhile there was a trustee sale scheduled for the middle of December. And the seller's agent still hadn't told the credit union he had an offer. And he was nowhere near completing all the paperwork necessary to send to the bank.

We were all a little confused about what the hell was going on and how clueless this guy was. He just had NO SENSE of urgency. It got to the point where our agent almost called his broker because things were getting a little dicey.

But then, about 5 days before the scheduled trustee sale 2 things happened.

The first: I called my brother for advice. He has bought and sold MANY properties. He knows I lot about real estate - especially legal issues. Our agent has referred us to ask him about certain things. He was able to find out who the contact was at the credit union who was in charge of the loan of this house. Through about an hour of research I was able to find her email and contact her and tell her about our offer and give her my contact info and our agent's (Adam told me it would go over better for me to contact her instead of our agent.)

The second: the title company and our agent basically coached the seller's agent into completing all the necessary documents. Even TITLE was pushing him to get things together. It was crazy.

After those things happened the credit union contacted the seller's agent and said they heard there was an offer (hooray for my crazy recon!) The seller's also finally signed our offer, hooray! That doesn't actually mean much because whoever owns the debt needs to accept it, but it was an item that needed to be checked off in order for things to progress.

About ten days before Christmas all the paperwork finally got sent off to the credit union! We were moving! The seller's agent said the their negotiator said our offer wasn't too crazy off base, but we had no idea what the BPO (broker proposed offer) was, so we didn't know what kind of hit the credit union was going to be willing to take. He also said they told him we would probably hear from them "before the holiday." We had no idea if that meant before Christmas or New Year, but with the trustee sale postponed till February, we were willing to wait. And I didn't really believe that anyway as so much that was "supposed" to happen hadn't (and we haven't heard back yet - shocker).

Of course, we still hadn't seen the master, or (Chris) the basement. And there were a couple inspections we wanted to do (sewer lateral, structural engineer - everything else we're comfortable doing ourselves). But again, the seller's agent was making things difficult. And it was important for us to get in there before the bank accepted because if we found anything big that we would want a credit for or money taken off the offer it would be much easier to negotiate with the credit union before they fully accepted things. It finally got to the point where our agent was not super friendly in the way she told him exactly what day we were going to be there and he better be there to let us in. Also that if the master and basement areas were not unlocked for us to see them that we would be backing out of the deal (so get your shit together!)

I told you, this shit is crazy.

So last Monday we went for our inspection. And don't think the excitement ended there. Because of course it didn't.

We arrived at the house with my dad and uncle in tow. I always want my dad to see the house and my uncle was an added bonus as he was in town. He's bought several houses and has a creative eye, so it was nice to have his point of view. Our agent told the seller's agent MANY times that the master and basement doors NEEDED to be opened and unlocked. The good news is, hooray! they were. We were all getting to see the master for the first time and everyone but me had not seen the basement.

The master wasn't anything exciting, but like I said before - I don't really have any specifics for a bedroom, it just needs to be bug enough for our king bed (Chris has the Jimmy legs). The master bath was a little disappointing - the ceiling was much lower than normal because of ducting throughout the rest of the basement servicing the upstairs. That was a bit of a bummer, but if the furnace was going to be replaced we could let them know to put the ducting as high as possible and during a future bathroom redo we could maybe get another 6 inches, which I think would be really worth it.

Chris loved the basement and it was bigger than I had described it to him. I had purposefully described it a bit smaller than I thought it was because it would be used for secondary work storage and I didn't want to exaggerate the space and get him looking forward to something that couldn't live up to the hype. So good thing he loved it :)

But, the excitement? :)

We were doing most of our own inspections, but we wanted a structural engineer to check the foundation and structure. We were all looking at the house waiting for the doorbell to ring and the engineer to arrive. Well, the doorbell did ring. But it wasn't the engineer. It was a couple who had come to look at the house. Our agent called the seller's agent to (much more politely) ask, "who the fuck are these people?" It turned out he had told someone that it was totally okay to check out the house for a viewing -without their agent - while we were doing our inspections!!! I cannot even describe how wrong this is.

THEN, I was looking outside (after the engineer had arrived) and noticed a car circling around. I told our agent (wondering if it was another "prospective buyer.") She called the seller's agent again and it turns out it was a family member waiting to come back home. He told us that we needed to finish. Well, that wasn't happening. We'd only been there about 20 minutes. He seemed to think that doing this visit was just like a "showing," - we'd walk through and give it another looksie and that was it. In fact, he told our agent that we should reschedule if we wanted more time. Well, our agent (politely) lit into him. Apparently he did not understand what an inspection visit was and that we had ever intention of staying for at least 90 minutes going over the whole house with trades people checking over things we were concerned about or knew if there were issues that would cost a large sum of money. This guy was completely clueless. Luckily our agent whipped him into shape.

When we were all done we went home (after my uncle took a ton of photos for me for reference). We spent some time on the phone that night with our agent and discussed how we wanted to proceed. We decided to change some terms of our offer (initially had rent back for the sellers, but we took that off because the house was beginning to be not taken care of - ie HUGE mess and we just wanted it vacant). We also asked for a bit of money off because of the sewer lateral, condition of the deck (second floor and in ROUGH shape), limited earthquake retrofitting, and pest.

So we sent the revised offer back to the seller's. We still haven't heard back from the bank. We're in the waiting game.

At this point we have no idea what will happen. Short sales are always an adventure. But this one is complicated even further by several factors: the agent's extremely limited experience, his lack of asking for help/being overseen by his broker, the agent being a relative of the seller, the seller being very slow moving, dealing with a credit union instead of a bank, and there being multiple loans on the house. And we're just at the whim of the credit union at this point. Waiting to see if they'll accept the offer or not. I put our chances somewhere around 50/50. We just have no idea what kind of hit the credit union is willing to take.

And while this has been an adventure and a bit of a headache so far, there is definitely a huge payoff for us: it's in our most desirable neighborhood, four houses away from a giant city park, a 3/3 with a secondary living room that we would use as our office, a 2 car garage that would act as Chris's workshop, a very large basement area that would be great secondary storage, on 0.6 acres (and relatively flat), AND it's a fixer - so we can put out personal touch on it. It's potentially a great place for us. So keep your fingers crossed!

Merry Hannu-kawn-festi-mas

2015-12-25T07:46:00.001-08:00

Whatever you celebrate, or if you don't at all, I hope you have a happy day

As Always there is Christmas on Picardy Drive

2015-12-21T07:53:00.001-08:00

As always, the holidays on our street make me happy. I will forever remember being in contract on our house during the holidays and feeling so happy that neighbors asked our agent if they could light up our house - I didn't want to be the house that missed out. I say it every year, but I feel so proud around this time to be part of a street that takes so much pride in hanging their lights because they have since the Depression. When I tell people what street we live on many who are from Oakland know it as the Christmas light street and tell stories about driving on the street when they were little to go see the lights. That always makes me happy. We never go all out, mostly because it just feels like there is never enough time, but it always makes me happy to participate. And this year was no different.

Over Thanksgiving weekend while Merritt was napping we got our decorations down from the attic and got them ready to hang up. Zoe actually participated a bit with me last year

And this year she was pretty into it. I explained decorating for Halloween, so the idea of having more things up was very exciting for her

she actually requested, "Put this on me momma!"

Chris doesn't get nearly as excited about decorating, mostly because going up the 20ft extension ladder isn't the most fun. But I know Zoe's excitement makes things better

Part of the fun each year is finding out how many strands of lights don't work. And I mean that completely sarcastically if you hadn't guessed :) Honestly it's so fucking annoying. Every year we say we're going to buy new lights after the holidays when they're on sale that aren't pieces of shit, and we never do. So, inevitably at least one or two stands don't work because they're all pieces of shit. So we always stretch them all out and figure out which ones aren't working before they go up on the house

This year was pretty annoying because half of them didn't work. And before Chris had a mental breakdown, I volunteered to go to HD and spend some money on LED ones. We didn't really want to splurge, but it finally seemed worth it.

But you want to know the fabulous news? The perk of going to HD on Thanksgiving weekend is that there are great sales: 50ft stands of LED lights for $6. YES PLEASE. I would hope that the LED ones last longer, but just in case they don't I bought about 3x what we actually needed because I couldn't pass up that sale.

After bringing them home we got them up on the house pretty quickly. And the next day the city came to light the tree on the island in front of our house like always. This of course was fascinating to Zoe

Over the last 3-4 weeks I've enjoyed our nightly walks with more and more houses lit up as the days inch closer to Christmas. There varies between 75-90% of houses participating on the street each year, and as we get closer to the 25th more and more light up. Zoe LOVES to go in walks at night to see everything: "LOOK! They decorate for Christmas too!" Then we discover all the lights, decorations, figurines, etc all over all the houses. It's fun every time. And while some houses are more plain (like us... hehehe)...

...there are some that really get into it. Those are of course favorites

I love the street at night

I love that so many people visit. One night last week while it was just Merritt and I taking a walk a car drove by with a kid hanging out the window yelling, "Merry Christmas everyone!" It made me smile.

Possibly the best thing our street does is host a community holiday gathering. We invite people from around the area to come sit by the fire, have treats, listen to music, and of course visit Santa. This year there was even a group called Scraper Bikes that came by to hang out. Chris talked to one of the organizers for a little bit. It was a pretty cool group. Their website says:

"The Scraper Bike Movement seeks to capture the creativity of youth living within dangerous communities. It gives them a positive outlet that is fun, educational, and promotes healthy lifestyles. The Scraper Bike Movement offers youth a sustainable group of peers that is positive and motivating. We want to expand and enlighten young peoples perspective on life through fixing and painting bicycles. Our goal is to support youth entrepreneurship and cultural innovation."

They had some pretty cool bikes. Two of them were even wired up with speakers using an RV battery.

I love that people from around the area come hang out. We all visit and talk on the island. By the middle of the event there are usually more people than can fit on that strip of land so we pour on to the street a bit. It always feels so happy.

And of course, Merritt had to make her first visit with Santa. Zoe was having none of it (though she did throw him a cookie. Yes, literally threw it to him. Or more at him.) Merritt politely let him hold her. In true Merritt-is-the-chillest-baby-ever fashion she just sat there, dum de dum not being bothered at all. It cracked me up. She gave him a good once over

Then decided, whatever, Santa was no big deal

Cutie.

If you live nearby I encourage you to visit the street over the next week or two. There are always the most lights the week of Christmas, though many people leave theirs up until New Year's as well. And give us a wave if you drive by :)

Holy Shit...CABINETS!

2015-12-16T09:53:00.002-08:00

Remember those cabinets that have been in our living room since... APRIL!? Oh, you don't? Let me remind you

Yes, those giants cabinets, remember?

They sat in our living room so long we kind of forgot about them. Which is saying a lot because they took up a lot of room.

Merritt hits 6 months shortly before Christmas. She'll start crawling a couple months after that. We don't know how long we'll be here, but Chris and I finally hit the threshold of living room craziness and made it a goal to finally get them into the laundry room before Christmas.

When we bought them I was about 7 months pregnant. And although I prided myself on being an active pregnant woman that was a lot to carry at that point in pregnancy, so our neighbor helped Chris move them inside. I thought I'd be able to help Chris move them into place now that there's not a baby living inside me and all. But I've evening while just hanging out we tried to lift them together, and, well, they didn't go anywhere. Doh.

What to do? Call your dad :)

So a couple weeks ago I sent my dad an email and asked if he might come on a Saturday to help Chris and I. But with two kiddos, there was now another wrinkle: Zoe freaks out about loud noises and Merritt obviously needs to take a nap in the morning and drilling these babies into place would make too much noise and disrupt both kiddos. So my dad came over to our house, and I took the kids to his for Merritt to nap and Zoe to play with my step mom. Great plan! Yay parents living close!

Of course I'm usually the official photographer, so I reminded Chris to PLEASE take pictures of the progress. I needed to blog about actually working on the house of course!

My dad came over at about 10am and when we the girls and I came back at about 12:30 I was just hoping that one of the larger cabinets would be installed (two pantry size, one base), but this is what I saw

Holy shit!!! That's amazing!

I could not believe how much they got done in 2 1/2 hours! Of course Chris forgot to take any pictures at all of the progress, so I'll explain as best I can :)

We originally wanted the cabinets set back a bit more, but the heater vent that blows into the bathroom prevents that (I tried to take a picture with the flash on so you could MAYBE see it - YAY BLURRY PICTURE!)

We built a box around the ducting for the vent and this prevented the cabinet from backing up all the way against the wall. Chris and my dad could have cut a bunch of shit out of the bottom of the cabinet "to make it work," but it was easier not to do that. Do the cabinets take up more space in the room? Yes, but it's not that big of a deal. They had to modify the cabinet enough for the laundry chute from the bathroom, and that was enough work.

With the second pantry height cabinet my dad and Chris had a debate as to whether to back it up all the way against the wall (because it didn't have the ducting in the way), or keep the front flush with the other. My dad voted to back it all the way to the wall, but Chris thought I wouldn't like that, and voted to keep it flush with the other (winner, winner chicken dinner). That cabinet went in a lot faster because there wasn't any modifying.

Then came the last base cabinet. It couldn't come out as far as the two tall cabinets because it would get in the way of the slider, so that one got butted right up against the wall

Seriously, how amazing is this!? And how difficult to get a picture of all 3 together? Ummm, nearly impossible

There is still work to do of course.

1) We need to install the crown at the top of the cabinets

2) We need to install the hardware (that's what the blue tape is acting as for the time being :) heheehehehe)

3) We need to figure out what to do about the side of the pantry height cabinets (because there's a gap between the back of them and the wall because of the box we built around the vent) and the "backsplash" above the base cabinet

Chris and I talked about it a little and, BING, I thought, what about sheet metal? What about a nice right angle of sheet metal covering that gap and acting as the "backsplash" above the base? This seems to be an easy solution for the backsplash because it won't have to be nearly as precise as drywall. It's also less involved (no mudding and taping - hooray!) Plus, I like the more industrial look in a utility space. And having magnetized sheet metal could be cool to stick things to. Everyone likes that, right?

The last two things are

4) installing a counter (it'll be the same material as the counter we still need to install over the washer and dryer

5) organize the shit out of everything!!!

Oh my lord I'm so excited for this step!!! There is finally a proper place for the vacuum to go after living here for almost 7 years!!! I cannot wait to go through the cleaning supplies and other miscellaneous items throughout the house that need a home. It's actually quite pathetic how excited this makes me. But it's the little things, right?

Oh!? And, would you like to remember what the floor of our living room looks like?

We can walk in here again! Oh, and hello Christmas tree. This is obviously a Christmas MIRACLE!

Now, off to organize some shit :)

Zoe: 2 1/2

2015-12-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

I thought I was just going to write these posts every year from now on. But it seems fitting to do a 6 month check in on this little crazy seeing as last year I went from monthly to quarterly. I don't have my "official" chair picture, but I'll sprinkle in some Zoe cuteness as I run down the last 6 months.

These are the words people frequently use to describe Zoe: crazy, firecracker, piece of work, Zoe the destroyer...you get the idea. This child has a mind of her own. And it's a stubborn, strong, willful and also pretty smart one

There is no doubt about Zoe's verbal skills: the girl can talk your ear off and is pretty advanced about language. Her day care provider keeps thinking she's 3 because she can talk so well (and because she's tall as shit). That's probably the thing people observe the most about her - they're very surprised at her just hitting 2 1/2 with all the crap she talks about. It should come as no surprise seeing as I can't ever keep my mouth shut. The two of us just talk talk talk talk talk. Poor Chris. Hopefully Merritt is quiet ;)

What does she talk about? ANYTHING. I like to say she narrates life. It's funny. She could be by herself playing at the park and you just watch her and she's talking about what she's doing to herself. Or trying to talk to some other kid. Or just talking to nothing. It's hilarious. It always makes me laugh and smile. I love it. She also "reads" books to herself. When you read books to her she frequently moves her mouth to the words with you. She does the same when she watches other people have conversations with each other. She does the same with songs. She listens to you sing and moves her mouth. Sometimes she doesn't move her mouth correctly to match with the right words, but it's like she's practicing for when she knows it all.

I still cannot look at this picture without dying laughing

Speaking of songs, oh MAN this girl likes to sing. I feel like each week she's got another song in her pocket. We love ABC's, Twinkle Little Star and Old MacDonald. We sing those 3 songs over and over again. She sprinkles a lot of others in there as well, but those are definitely her favorite. She also LOVES listening to the radio and likes to ask which song is playing and who is singing it. Her favorite song is "Renegade" by Jay-Z and Eminem. Definitely appropriate, lol. She always asks for it.

She loves to ask questions. We haven't hit the "why?" stage (or maybe this is just her "why?"), but her 4 favorite things to ask are:

1) "What's that called?" This is asked ALL THE TIME. About ANYTHING. It might be a tool, a way she moves her hand, a piece of furniture, something outside, the face she makes. She asks it about anything. She'll lean forward in her seat: "What's that called?" She'll rest her foot on you leg: "What's that called?" She'll line up her books in a specific way: "What's that called?" And you actually have to answer. If you don't have an answer for her she gets very frustrated. So I will literally say, "That's called putting your foot on momma's leg." It's what she's doing and she's satisfied with the answer.

this is the face she makes when you ask her to "smile!" for a picture

2) "What's your name?" OH MY GOD she asks this ALL THE TIME. At first she would ask us what someone's name was, but we encouraged her to ask people herself. So now she asks us, we say she should ask, she'll tell us, "I'm going to ask him/her." Then, with just so much authority and confidence she orders/asks, "WHA YO NAME?" (with her little toddler accent.) Sometimes it involves an assertive point at the person as well. Frequently people are a little thrown off but this little person being so direct and so they sort of act surprised for a second. Then they answer and ask her. This one took her a while, but now she responds, "My name WoeWe." (it's so fucking cute how she says her name.) She will continue to ask the person over and over again. All the time. She LOVES to ask. One time she asked our neighbor about 10 times in the span of 2 minutes. Luckily she's little and cute, so it's funny. Not weird. I wonder when it will get weird...

3) "He/She talk?" She LOVES knowing if people talk. I wonder if she just notices that people don't talk as much as her (lol) so she's wondering if they do talk at all. It's a hilarious question she asks. It is frequently following asking what someone's name is: "Wha yo name? He talk?" That kid cracks me the hell up.

4) "[insert name], you happy?" This is frequently asked after she knows the person is not happy. And it frequently involves Chris or I, lol. She might have done something wrong or knows she's being a bit of a trouble maker, "Momma, you happy?" Usually it also involves her saying right after, "I will make you feel better." And she gives you a hug and kiss. Can't stay mad at her long, that's for sure.

She loves to learn. I love that about her. She asks lots of questions and day care says that during morning curriculum they started her a bit early because she's one of the younger kids but is interested in what's going on. We go over letters and stuff at home, but I don't press it. We learn what she wants to learn. I want her to make sure she likes learning and doesn't feel like she has to at this age - because she doesn't. I'm much more concerned with her learning to play with kids and getting dirty and discovering things than I am with her knowing the alphabet. It's an added bonus that she likes to play with letters and wants to sing the ABC's.

She is funny as fucking hell and loves to make people laugh. That has really never left her. She really enjoys people and likes to interact with them. She LOVES things that are funny and particularly likes physical humor. A friend of mine has 2 boys that are 5 and 3. They're always rough housing with each other and Zoe loves to remark, "That's funny," and runs over to play with them. People falling down is hilarious to her. She'll laugh and laugh. She loves when Chris acts goofy and falls all over everything. She just dies laughing. And she loves to be the one to make you laugh as well and when Chris and I laugh at something she does she gets a big smile on her face and says, "I funny." She loves joy.

She also just continues to love people more than anything. She'll tell me all about a boy or girl she met at the park on days she comes back with my mom. Or when I'm at the park with her she might just run up and hug someone. She always asks where her friends are (several of my friend's kids.) The kicker is her adoration and love towards strangers. She certainly does NOT get that from Chris or I. I'm outgoing and friendly, but inside I'm actually a bit of a bitch. I'm the person on an airplane that PRAYS you don't talk to me and I put headphones on AND read a magazine or book as an extra line of defense. Zoe? She could just socialize and talk with strangers all day long. On Thanksgiving we went out to get bagels (Chris is a "fake Jew" as I call him :) hehe) and she decided at the end of the excursion that the family sitting next to us needed love. She hopped off her chair, walked over to them and hugged and kissed each of their legs. It was adorable. And the dad said, "That's the best thing that's happened on Thanksgiving," and just had the sweetest look on his face. It melted my heart. I love how much she loves people and wants them to be happy.

She loves joy, but don't let that fool you, this kid is also a bit of a bossypants. She is very orderly and likes things a very particular way

Lots of kids are like this but even her day care laughs about it (she has to put every kid's cup in their correct cubby). It's very humorous, but can also be frustrating at times and we're working on it with her. She will yell at Chris and I or act out if we're not understanding what she's trying to ask or do. We try very hard to communicate with her and ask questions about what she needs, but she is of course limited verbally, so sometimes we all have a hard time understanding each other and she can get really frustrated when that happens. She definitely has a way she likes things. When she's done with something in her room at night (like her water), she'll leave it right at the door. And you absolutely cannot put it anywhere else when it's done. That's just where it goes. I think Chris has a bit harder time with it than I do when things get a little more testy with her. I have a very orderly brain and like things VERY MUCH in a certain order, so I understand how that little brain is chugging in that way. That's not to say I don't get frustrated because LORD is it aggravating at times. But it's definitely something we're working on.

She loves movies. And especially loves the bad guys or the mischievous characters. Lilo & Stitch from the same movie, Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka, the "mean witch" from Enchanted, etc. She thinks they're fabulous. I don't know whether to be worried about that one... :) Other movies she's liking right now are Alice in Wonderland and she LOVES Mary Poppins.

She's got quite the lively imagination and has started imaginary play. She also likes to make up names for people in her books and make up things that she's cooking. Oh, yeah, she LOVES cooking. LOVES it. LOVES to pull up her stool to the stove and help us. Then take out every single pot, pan, utensil, spice, etc. and pretend that she's cooking. I try to not get frustrated when she's making a mess and "cooking" because it's a very good skill to have an will be helpful. It's definitely full to have her be interested in it and we let her help us with things on the stove.

She used to LOVE to slam doors. Thank god that phase has passed. That was annoying. Jesus she would just SLAM them. We tried so many things to get her to stop: timeouts, putting a towel on the top, leaving them closed already...nothing worked. Thank god she stopped, it was so loud and I swear she almost broke a couple.

She loves water. We haven't done swimming lessons in a while and we really should. That kid could just play in her plastic pool forever. Doesn't matter if she's clothed, it's cold, whatever, she'll jump in any water.

She's still giant. Just hit 2 1/2 and exclusively in 4T clothes and almost in size 10 shoes. I still don't get it cuz I was always a shorty. We'll see if it sticks and she continues to be tall her whole life. I always wanted to be tall. So I'm envious :)

Hmmmm, well, I think that's about it for now. She's our tall, funny, loud, talkative, smart girl. She may drive me crazy sometimes with her energy, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't wait to see the little person she continues to be. She's an entertaining one that little lady :) Love you Zoe girl :)

Things I'm Jonesing for in a Future House

2015-12-09T07:09:00.001-08:00

When we finally find the house for us, Chris and I have talked about it frequently - we will spend the time and money to invest and create the house we really want. That will mean waiting longer to re-do rooms. Frequently spending more time really thinking about exactly what kind of cabinets we want, sink we want, etc. Our future home is really what we imagine spending many decades in. So we want to make the investment to create exactly what we want.

With that being said, I have spent a lot more time on Pinterest lately. In the past I have gone on Pinterest and spent time pinning things for specific projects and ideas. But now, as I brainstorm things I like, or how I want things arranged, I am finally really seeing the value in Pinterest. Isn't that crazy? I know, ridiculous. But now with a lot going on, it's wonderful to bookmark things. And, especially for me, creativity is a long process. It was the same when I was an art student - I would think about a project I wanted to do endlessly and revise and revise and revise in my head until I had thought about all the details and how I would fine tune it. And then, I would create it in a flurry. I find Pinterest to be helpful in the same way: I search for something and pin it as a placeholder and see if I really like it, then I'll usually go back and revise boards about once every 2 weeks and really refine things to a point where I like everything. I don't want to have a bajillion things pinned and forget why they meant something to me, I want these to be the things I really, really like.

I'm not sure where I should start, or if you even care, but it's just kind of nice to share what's going on stylistically in my mind at the moment. I can definitely tell how my tastes have evolved that last 3 years, and even the last year as I work more and more with clients. It makes me more sure of what exactly I like. ANd it's kind of a modge podge really.

I will say the goal for me with the next house is to not take myself too seriously. I want to really do things because we like them. I have always been about function over form. That's not to say I don't want things to look nice, but I am all about efficiency and authenticity. But I want the girls to have KIDS rooms. I want them to look nice and go with the rest of the house, but if they want a loft, I want to build them a loft. I've always been enamored with the idea of having a swing in one of their rooms as well. I'd like to think we could do that. I've talked about it with Chris and I know he thinks I'm slightly fucking crazy and gave me a wide-eyed stare, but I really want their rooms to be a place that they love. A place in their home that is just for them and all about them. I want it to be fun and I want it to be indicative of each girl's personality. I want bathrooms to be practical. I want kitchens to function as the hub of the house - because that's so frequently what they are. I want our office to have space for the girls to hang out and do their homework with us too. You see what I'm saying? I want our house to be reflective of US. I think I felt incredibly tied to the idea of this house being a Storybook Home. I will confess, I absolutely hate when people make a Bungalow into a loft. It almost makes me cry. But I also wish I would have had a little more fun with the things I picked. But it was my first time in a lot of ways and I was nervous to take chances.

I want to take chances and really be ourselves. And I'm excited for that. I think that's why I'm so eager to find the next house. I just want to create OUR space.

Now, enough talk, time for some pictures. That's what everyone likes anyway :)

1. One Day Kitchen

I haven't so much thought about layout, etc., because who knows what the fuck the place will look like. But I have thought about colors. I REALLY want to be ballsy enough to try a colored cabinet. I love me some gray, but gray and white are so trendy right now. Chris and I picked out white cabinets 6 years ago and I loved them, but I am eager to try something new. And I loooooove me some blue. It's probably my second favorite design color behind gray. And white. Okay, so maybe my third. But don't these cabinets look dreamy?

here

I'm still not into the brass hardware, and I definitely don't want one color uppers and another on the lower cabinets. But holy shit do I lust over these blue cabinets. Luckily Chris is pretty in favor of it.

The other thing in the kitchen that Chris and I DEFINITELY want, is a secretary area

here

I don't think we would actually put a computer here, but we definitely want a place where bills get written, mail can collect, take out menus are arranged...at the moment that stuff either gets put on the kitchen counter, piled in my office, on the cabinet in Chris' office, on our pass-through, in Zoe's hands...we just want a place where the "house administrative" stuff can happen. And where it can go. We could put it in our office, but I'd like to keep that to work stuff.

Office you say...

2. Dreamy Office

This room is VERY important to us. Maybe the second most important room behind the kitchen/living space. We run a home-based business, and I also work from home for my brother. Having a fully functioning office where Chris and I can interact and where the girls can hang out with us too is extremely important. Right now we have 2 half offices and Chris constantly uses my computer (it's where we have Quickbooks installed). Our filing is in my office, but our office supplies are in another room. This split would also be remedied if we had a larger space. And we pine for a larger work space. I pine for an office where we can have: both computers for Chris and I, work space for us to have things laid out, a work/play area for the girls, filing, office material storage, places for samples/fan decks/catalogs, etc. Ohhhh the dream. Hence the name: Dreamy Office :) And I've got a lot of Pins for this room going :)

I L.O.V.E. the dark blue on the walls in my office. I dream of painting the future office BLACK

here

Dreeeaaaammmmyyyyy

We also need a lot of shelving storage. We have binders for bookkeeping, projects, reference and design books, catalogs, samples, inbox, etc. And ohhhhh the though of a giant wall of a bookcase just makes my heart flutter

here

And while a giant wall of built-ins is awesome, you know what is more awesome (and space saving?) a giant wall of built-ins and desks!

here

And I really want the girls to feel like they belong as well

here

And filing cabinets are so boring. I like how I redid ours that we got for free, but it would be nice to have a pretty one too that didn't feel so filing cabinet-y

here

And, of course storing office supplies could be made fun

here

I don't need my paperclips and thumbtacks to match. But they certainly are stored in an accessible and aesthetically pleasing way. And I can get behind that.

3. General ideas

This board is just for the feel of the house and little ideas I have. There's very little one it mostly because it's impossible to pin ideas when you don't know the feel of the house.

I love the idea of creating a little nook of wasted space. It has such a romantic feel

here

And we have a shit-ton of books, CDs and DVDs, so it's not like a space like that would be wasted at all.

I also like the idea of a giant cork board somewhere to just toss stuff on. We have 3 small ones in the kitchen and they're always full of stuff

here

4. Bathrooms

There are basically two things I have become completely fixated on in terms of any future bathroom(s). Patterned tile:

here

It's not even borderline obsession, it's like, needs to be sent straight to a 90 day rehab addiction. Luckily Chris is totally into it and sends me photos of tile he likes from time to time that's patterned when he's out o jobs. That would be fatal if he didn't like it too, lol.

The other is a trough sink. And preferably a double faucet trough sink

here

Luckily, again, Chris is totally behind the idea. And even had the brilliant idea of having the guy who has made his stainless steel inserts for his truck cast one out of metal. That would be fucking awesome.

5. I have thought of LOTS of idea for the girl's rooms

This one will be harder. I want their rooms to feel whimsical, like THEM, put together. I think it'll be a challenging balance, but their rooms are probably the thing I'm most excited for because it'll be FUN.

A loft, ooohhhh a loft

here

Just like you Nikki.

And the idea of some crazy ridiculous paint job gets me super excited

here

Zoe LOVES books. So it would be cool to have a fun way to store them for her

here

And a cool way for them to display future (hopefully) art projects would be exciting

here

A fun dresser just makes me smile

here

And a magnetic wall and a swing feel like just about the coolest things

here

Did I mention I wanted these rooms to be fun? ;)

6. And lastly, the exterior

This is totally up for whatever style the house is, but I long to go for it and paint a future house a really dark color. Lllllloooonnngggg for it

here

Chris has even gotten into the Pinterest game and spent an evening on my phone pinning things. Is it wrong that I found this completely adorable?

So, there you have it, where my brain has been at. This could of course all get thrown up into the air depending on what kind of house we get. And, we likely won't be making any drastic changes or tackling a kitchen or bathroom first thing when we (if ever) move into a forever home (I wissshhhhhh). But it's nice to have these things bookmarked.

What do you guys think? What do you hate? What are you pinning for yourself?

Picardy Poll: To Paint, or Not to Paint Brick

2015-12-07T07:25:00.003-08:00

I know it's very soon for yet another Picardy Poll. But that's for 2 reasons. 1) I love them. And 2) we recently looked at another house that had a partial brick facade. And it got me thinking about brick. And whether or not it should be painted. And where brick should be painted. And if people are as opinionated as I am (Meryl, opinionated? No....) I LOVE POLLS! :)

Ohhhh, the debate. I must say, I used to be STAUNCHLY sided on the DO NOT PAINT BRICK side. Now, I'm more in the middle. But this does seem to be a hotly contested one. But there are many factors to consider, and of course, are we talking about the inside, or the outside? Well, how about both.

The things to consider: for me, it totally depends on the space. I love an exposed brick wall and all, but if the brick looks like fucking shit, it's not as romantic. I feel like on a show like "Rehab Attic" she does all she cna to have brick be exposed in its raw state. And while I totally love that in theory, sometimes I feel like it's really hurting and might be better painted. Also, if there are no windows or very little light, I'm also not inclined to like it as much because it is a light sucker.

Interior/exterior: I think I am much more likely to leave brick how it stands on the outside. I like a bit of a brick veneer. We don't have many (if any) brick houses out here because of earthquakes, but there is frequently a nice brick facade on the lower portion of the exterior of ranches here in Oakland. And I like seeing that. Of course, if you watch "Fixer Upper" I don't think they've ever left a brick facade in it's original brick state, so of course there are some who would always like to paint it.

What about you? Are you always in favor of leaving brick how it is? Or do you hate it? Or do you feel it totally depends on the space? And there are TWO polls for you to take :) And please leave comments also. I'm so interested in this one because there really are so many variables in play.

Interior: To Paint or Not to Paint Brick

Exterior: To Paint or Not to Paint Brick

Meet Andre

2015-12-02T09:27:00.001-08:00

****Two posts from Chris so close together! Chris got a new work truck OVER A YEAR AGO. Actually, in August of last year. Don't believe me, well, this is what Zoe looked like when we went to a park after we bought it

Just a little walker, with hair so short it barely fit into pigtails. Cutie.

But I digress. Since then he's been fine tuning, installing a lumber rack, figuring out how to best organize things, and make it the best work truck it could be for him. I've been hounding him to write a post about it because I love how he's got it all organized, and I think it would be an interesting and helpful post. And, well, he finally relented :) Oh, and he's called Andre. For Andre the Giant. Duh :) ****

I'm a handyman and Andre is the name of my truck. He's a workhorse, the key to my success, and I couldn't do my job without him.

Here's the lumber rack.

It holds 16' pieces of lumber. Trim, baseboard, 2x4s, 20' pieces of rebar, etc. It goes up there up and out of the way. Gone are the days of worrying about long pieces of lumber hanging out the back of the truck and having to worry about how to support them. It also houses my step ladder which is with me at all times. It's a 4 step gorilla ladder that's good enough for me to work on ceiling as high as 10'. Made of lightweight and rustproof plastic and aluminum it can stay on the rack despite the weather and is easy to carry in one hand while I carry tools in the other.

Attached to the System One lumber rack is my System One toolbox.

It's a 90" box and fits four Festool Sortainers. Drill bits, driver bits, screws, nails and fasteners of all kinds, caulking, trash bags, hole saws, dremel, staple gun, etc. all get housed here.

Pretty much any fastener I need is back here and it's a million times better than having a couple little plastic small parts cases with random screws. It's organized, labeled, and constantly being refined to suit the most common jobs I get.

In the back is a custom made platform with three tool box drawers underneath.

The top of the platform is big enough to hold sheets of plywood, drywall, FRP, etc. Underneath the platform are enough tools to get 90% of the small jobs I may encounter done without needing to bring anything extra from home.

They're all in Festool systainers for clean, waterproof organization. Each systainer is set up for a particular task or job type. Tools for: plumbing, electrical, cordless tools, HVAC, all sorts of drill bits, cleaning supplies, sanders, painting, drywall, etc.

Throughout the entire truck I probably have 10 flashlights, 5 11in1 screwdrivers, 8 utility knives, etc. There's a lot of duplication within the boxes because it makes more sense to have a duplicate than it does to have to go back to the truck for a utility knife or screwdriver or whatever. Plus, I have common replacement parts - I always carry extra switches and receptacles, some common water supply valves, escutcheons, nipples, etc. The platform itself is made of 1 1/4" subfloor plywood with a steel right angle screwed to the front for additional stiffness.

The middle drawer is taller so that when the platform is weighed down with 1,200 lbs of gravel or some concrete or extra lumber, it doesn't sag under the weight.

Instead it sags about a 1/4" and then rests on the middle drawer. Yes, this makes the drawer unusable while the weight is on it, but that's a sacrifice I have to make for the flexibility of the entire system; and the other two drawers can still be used so it's not that bad.

Add to all this, two bags for common tasks - a hand tools bag and a bag for my drill and impact driver. In my drill/driver bag I have a utility knife and flashlight (one of many) along with two containers full of drill bits, a Makita socket driver set, and two containers for the most common screws and nails I need. Sure, I have a virtual hardware store in the truck, but if I can save a trip to the truck with a few well chosen screws that make a little job go a bit faster then I'm better off. A radio and vaccum round out the list to clean up and give me something to listen to while I work.

On a daily basis I'm carrying about 1,000 lbs of tools, supplies, and infrastructure. It's all worth it, though. Trips back home for a forgotten tool or to a hardware store cost me time, and time is money. For every mile I'm on the road I waste about 2 minutes and about .08 gallons of gas. This calculates to about $2.25/mile. If I'm 6 miles from home, or the nearest hardware store, I'm looking at about $27 in wasted money (12 miles round trip, $3 in gas and at least $24 in lost productivity); all because I have to make that unnecessary trip. I've avoided countless trips because of Andre and this organization.

We Upped the Budget

2015-11-30T07:53:00.001-08:00

Yup, we did. I must say it: I WANT TO MOVE SO BAD. I know this is TERRIBLE and we have a lovely and awesome house and we could make it work for us for the time being. But I have a fucking bug up my ass and I want to move.

Plus, moving the girls to share a room isn't actually going to work at this time: Merritt is FINALLY kind of sleeping like a "regular baby" (whatever that means, but not as much crying at night and fewer wakings), and Zoe shits around her room for 2 hours every night. We can't have Zoe playing in her room, making lots of noise, etc. and keeping up a baby till 9pm when we have finally gotten Merritt on a schedule that doesn't leave us all like walking zombies.

And we are so quickly running out of storage space for work materials and kid stuff (and we really don't have much kid stuff). Our house is 1600 sf, but we use about 250 of it (our "formal" living room) for storage - cabinets are still sitting in there at this time for example. And it stores all the lights we'll be installing for people, drywall that needs to be installed, etc. So we're working with 1350 for 4 people. I know it's an obnoxiously American thing to think that's not enough space, but with only 1 real closet that's not a clothes closet in the house, we need storage.

And I just want to make our family forever home. I've been having this itch for about 2 years now, and the last 1 1/2 years having been spent actively looking for that forever home, and well, you can imagine I'm getting impatient as FUCK.

So we upped the budget. How did we do this? Well, we have a set MAX budget. But about 2 months ago this magical house came on the market. It was an acre, COMPLETELY FLAT, had a 2 car garage, plus a 40' x 40' basement area that Chris could make his shop (doubling our current shop space), each girl could have their own room and we could remake the formal living room into our office (as a family run business out of our home, office space is a MUST). The only kicker: oh, it was several $100k OVER our max budget. But, we realized: if we find a place with a lot that big, we could build an in-law unit and the rent we would receive would be enough to supplement our mortgage payment to afford a home/land several $100k over our initial budget. But it would HAVE to be buildable (many regulations - set backs, separate parking, etc. if you are to build a stand alone in-law on your property.)

So now we have 2 budgets: we have the "standalone budget" (a home/land just for us) and the "in-law budget" (a home/land that we could build an in-law on to supplement our mortgage payment). This has opened things up. In addition, we've started working with the real estate agent who sold us this house. We weren't before because I had my license, but it recently expired and because I don't need it anymore for the work I do for my brother we decided it wasn't worth the time and money to renew it. As a result, we reached out to our old agent (who we LOVE and Chris actually does work for frequently) to help us find a house. This has opened things up more as well because she's obviously a very active agent (as opposed to me), so she's incredibly more knowledgeable.

Now, with alllllllll that being said, let's see what we've looked at, shall we?

1. The one we fell in love with

This was the one that made us up our budget. It was magic.

The interior of the house itself was nothing to write home about. It was a standard ranch from the 50s that was in need of love

The interior was completely servicable, just very ugly. But we could totally move in right now. The thing that absolutely made us fall in love with it was the area, and ummm, this yard

That's a fucking acre, in Oakland, that's completely F.L.A.T. Yes, flat. And if you're at all familiar with this area, you know that this is incredibly rare to find. It also had ample space inside, and double the work space for Chris with a basement/crawl space (with 8ft + ceilings) that would need a slab poured and some electrical work done - but that's easy.

We LOVED it. LOVED it. Of course it was also and the T.O.P. of our "in-law budget." We talked to our parents, got help from them, and put in an offer as high as we could absolutely go (which was just BARELY over asking). But it wasn't mean to bed (cue many sad faces). It got 9 offers and the winner was $330k over asking. Yes, I know. How fucking god damn fucking ridiculous is that? Ugh. We were sad. Again. I cried. Again. I felt helpless about finding a house. Again. It sucked.

Our agent said it was a once every 10-20 years lot. The worst part is that whoever got it is probably going to tear it down and build the MOST OBNOXIOUS mansion in it's place. And make me barf all over myself. (all pictures from here)

2. The one that's been on the market forever

Well, it's been on the market for almost 3 months. And in this market, that's forever. But sometimes, that's what happens in a market like this: seller's get very entitled. They think that because a lot of houses are going for a lot of money, or a lot of money over asking, that their house is worth a TON of money. It's always hard to say what a house is actually worth, because a house is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Sellers get attached to their homes, or attached to the idea of making a lot of money - as is the case with this seller.

Our agent thought we should check this one out. It was on an acre, not entirely usable, but still an attractive lot. It also had a pool. Not a plus or a minus, but an interesting feature. There was a ton of interior space and a 2 car garage. We thought that because it had been on the market over a month at the time when we saw it that there might be some wiggle room. Not to mention the home needed some work

Or do you like that fake lava rock wall?

Basically every surface in the home needed touching up. Even all the walls. That home would do good with some new drywall all throughout. It was weird. Just gashes in places and not kept up great. It turned out it was a rental, and that made sense because it wasn't cared for great.

But the seller was delusional. And the seller's agent was fully aware. I could tell he was annoyed when we went to go see it, and that put me off a little bit. But by the end of the showing I could understand why: his seller was never going to be satisfied and he was doing the work of continuing to show the property and his seller wasn't going to sell. Yes, that is very annoying. It was below our "in-law budget," so there was wiggle room. But to us it wasn't worth ANYWHERE NEAR the asking price because it needed soooooooo much money poured into it. It turns out they had had 3 offers (and this was almost 2 months ago): and at least one for full asking, all cash. But that wasn't good enough for the seller. They wanted more. And apparently they're really rich people who can kick their tenant out and try to sell a valuable property and let it sit on the market for months taking in no income and just waiting for their right price.

It wasn't worth the price they wanted AT ALL. So we politely thanked the seller's agent at the showing. (images from here)

3. The Flip

We wish we had seen this property earlier. But, we didn't have the "in-law" budget at the time it went on the market before. And some investor and a real estate agent bought it and flipped it. And it's ugly.

Why did we see it? Well, we went to go look at it for 2 reasons: just to get an idea of homes in the newer "in-law budget" range. And to see in what condition the home was in. If the work was done cheaply and things could be removed, it might be worth it to purchase it and take some of the things apart and sell the materials. Certainly not a top choice of something to do, but it was on a big lot (just under an acre) and already had a secondary unit built in the backyard - we would just have to run plumbing to it and install a kitchen and bathroom, so a chunk of the cost of building an in-law was already spent.

Let me tell you, this work was complete shit. 2 things just first off. I fucking hate beige or beige-yellow or whatever you want to call this "official flip color"

And second. Can you at least clean the floors before you take pictures? I know that is kind of being a stickler, but when people are going to pay a shit ton for your product, you could at least show the effort to use a fucking swiffer

The work was crap. It was ugly and not done well. You could see drywall tape seams, there were crappy transitions between the floors, gaps between the lights and the drywall, they put sod down in the back and side yard and did no attempt at any watering so they're shriveling up now, they completely cut into a joist supporting the back deck because they were lazy. It was just shoddy work. And it didn't surprise me that the agent had a vested interest in the sale. If contractors and flippers would just spend a couple thousand dollars to hire a designer, their spaces would look so much fucking better. And sell for more and quicker. I don't get it.

This one has also been on the market for a while in this market (over 2 months now). It is priced high to me, but again, what do I know. It's fallen out of escrow once. But we shall see what happens. (images from here)

4. The super cute one that was too small

Sometimes people ask me what my favorite style house is. That honestly changes from time to time. At the moment I would say a California Bungalow. Or a Craftsman. Or a Victorian. And I really like our Storybook home...you can see, I like character. I can really get behind the style of a lot of houses, I just like a house that knows what it is. Is it a Mid Century Modern? A California Ranch? Contemporary? I just want it to have it's style. This one certainly has a very sweet California Log Cabin feel.

It was REALLY cute. It was also on a 1.25 acre lot. Yes please. It was sloped, but still very usable. It was also very cute inside

And had an awesome driveway

But there were 3 problems.

1) Oakland housing requires that if you are building new construction (which our in-law would be), that there be certain road requirements (pull outs and secondary access if past 75ft long). This house was on a private road off of a main street. We were fairly certain that if we were to build new construction there would be certain road requirements we would have to abide by and build - and that would cost A LOT. That was something we wouldn't want to chance. If someone in the city told us we wouldn't have to build or improve the road and then through permit approval we discovered that we would in fact have to, that would add TENS OF THOUSANDS to the budget. Not a good accident to find out.

2) It was already sort of fixed up

But still needed more work

3) And it was small. Smaller than our current house with the bedroom doors right off the living room. So that would be VERY loud for people going to bed.

We decided that it still needed a hefty chunk of money poured into it (we could rearrange the floorplan to make it work), but it was already pricey, and it just didn't seem to be worth it. We felt like we would really be trying hard to make it work, and compromising a lot. It was a great piece of land though and a super cute house, so I was a little bummed. (images from here)

5. The house that was sad

There was something about this house that just felt sad when we walked in. It was in a really great area, at the top of our "standalone budget," on 10,000+ sq ft, had a secondary living space, 5 bedrooms...but there just wasn't anything that stood out to us.

The garage was a little small and we thought about actually ripping down a wall between the garage and the house and combining a larger bedroom with the garage. The kitchen was also SUPER closed off, and we thought about tearing down the wall that opened up to the stairs to the bottom floor and making it have an open railing

But those things would make it sort of work for us. But neither of us got very excited about the house. It felt like another case of making things work. The energy just felt off. It was just, "Yeah, I guess this is nice..." It was weird. It backed up into a green space and was on a pretty good lot, but we just weren't feeling it. I went to look at it twice and the second time it definitely felt like a "No" (ALWAYS go see a place AT LEAST twice before making an offer). It just wasn't us.

It also felt wildly overpriced to me for all the work it needed. The neighborhood is nice, but man, every surface and every room needed some love

I'm sure someone will pay asking or maybe even over. But definitely not us. (images from here)

So, there you have it. More houses. And another one we missed out on. Sigh. Now when we look at houses we have two to compare to the heartbreak. The nice thing at least is that there seems to be a decent amount hitting the market during a time that is historically not as active, so at least there's stuff to look at.

People ask why we would ever invest in a home at this point in the market. I have to think about it differently. Yes, if we were INVESTING in a home, I would absolutely never buy in this market. It always cracks me up because things are always snatched up by investors in markets like this and you don't actually make as much. The smart thing to do is buy low, fix it up (when prices for construction are also lower so the work is done for less money because people don't have as much work), sit on it and rent, then sell when the market is like hotcakes. But we're not investing, we're looking for our forever home. And yes, the market will dip again in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years - whenever the dip happens again. But then, in 10 years it will go up again. We're not looking to sell again in 10 years, we want to be in this house for decades. Sure, it would be better to buy when things were slower because we would have more money in our pocket, but we're ready to leave now: we want more space, we need more room for our business, and we're just ready. We just need to find that house...

Tools I'm Thankful For

2015-11-25T08:11:00.002-08:00

...or: Tools for which I'm thankful; if you're a stickler for such things.

***First, disclaimer: I have been wanting Chris to write a post like this for a while. Seeing as he's pretty handy :) and now handy for a living, I thought it would be a cool post. I also want to mention that we were in no way sponsored at all for this. I just wanted him to do it because I thought it might be helpful or interesting. So, here it goes...***

Fein Multimaster, or equivalent.

First of all there's no equivalent, but I have a Makita cordless version and while it's not as powerful, it's super useful when I don't want to break out the cord. Otherwise, when power is needed, the Fein Multimaster (I have the 350Q) is one of those tools that solves a ton of problems. Sometimes it's the only tool that will do the job and other times it's the only tool that will get me in and out in a reasonable amount of time.
As an example, today I was replacing a kitchen faucet. The replacement had a larger attachment nut than the original and it wouldn't fit between the underside of the sink and back frame of the cabinet. After about 5 minutes of cutting away a little excess wood from the cabinet frame the nut was free to spin tight against the faucet. If I didn't have this tool it would have involved a minimum of 30 minutes of awful cursing and hacking away at the wood haphazardly with a hammer and chisel underneath the world's largest sink with one arm behind the garbage disposal and my face sandwiched between a drain and hot water valve. Thank god for quality oscillating tools.

Festool Tracksaw

I had to cut the bottom off of 9 doors today. A customer had carpet installed and they didn't cut down the doors (not sure why, but some installers don't do this for you). In the old days this job would be done like this: put door on sawhorses, measure 2.25 inches away from bottom of door (1.5 inches for distance between saw's base plate and blade plus .75 inches I'm trying to cut off) and clamp level to door, tape cut line with blue tape to minimize chipping, make cut with circular saw, unclamp level, peel off tape and put door back on hinges.
With the tracksaw it goes like this: put door on sawhorses, measure .75 inches from bottom of door, place track on door, make cut with tracksaw, take track off, put door back on hinges. Don't need clamps, don't need blue tape, and no math required to take into account space between saw blade and base plate. The cut is perfect every time and not having to fiddle with clamps saves valuable time.
If the door is already in place and needs a little trim you can even clamp the track to the door and cut it in place. This speeds things up even more and allows me to fit more jobs in a day which means more money in the bank.

Basin Wrench

The Fein costs about $300 and the Festool TS55 costs about $600 so these tools aren't for everyone, but they help me stay profitable. A basin wrench, however, is within reach of all homeowners and DIYers.
Being under a sink can be truly awful so I try to avoid spending more time under there than absolutely necessary. There are times when I'm replacing a faucet or tightening up a loose one where a basin wrench is just about the only thing that will work. I use the Ridgid brand wrench and it works well. It has a telescoping shaft that allows you to position your hand wherever it needs to be (above a drain, below a valve, etc.) to tighten those pesky retaining nuts in possibly the worst place a handyman has to work on a regular basis: under a sink. They're sometimes wet, dirty, smelly, dark, cramped with water supply lines, drain pipes, garbage disposals, water filters, and of course the sinks themselves.

Makita Impact Driver XDT01

I probably use my impact driver more than any other tool. I use it literally every work day and couldn't be nearly as efficient without it. I've used impact drivers from Panasonic and Milwaukee and DeWalt which historically have been other highly rated drivers and none of them are as good as Makita. The reason I bought heavily into the Makita line of cordless tools (I have at least 15 in total) begins with the impact driver. It has the shortest nose of the impacts I've looked at, it was the first maker I know of to have the LED light stay on after the trigger was released (a nice feature), it has 4 driving modes for increased control, it has more power than any of the other models I've used, and it has the best feel of all of them.
I was disappointed by the Milwaukee impact because that's usually the one that competes best with Makita, but it was underpowered, louder than the Makita, and not as balanced. The Makita just makes my day, everyday. Strong enough to drive lag bolts, small and delicate enough to drive cabinet hinge screws without stripping them.

Milwaukee Right Angle Attachment 49-22-8510

Costs about 3 times as much as most other models, but it's better in every way and so you pay extra for the best. It's very durable. The handle can be turned around in just about anyway you want thanks to the two way adjustability. It's slim. It locks the bit in place with the locking sleeve. All these features make for an attachment that earns its keep those few times when it's the only tool that will do the job.

Merritt: 5 months

2015-11-23T13:29:00.002-08:00

Smiley baby hit 5 months yesterday

Seriously, this baby is so damn smiley, it just makes me so happy. Also, let it be known that as soon as I finished taking her 5 month pictures, I held her up over my head and oogled her cuteness and she promptly spit up ALL OVER MY FACE. And mostly my right eye. I saw it coming out and closed my eyes and mouth JUST in time. Lol. Oh, babies.

And, of course, here's the comparison of her and Zoe

I like how I accidentally both have them in Raiders onesies for their 5 month pictures, lol.

It's funny, Merritt was born with A LOT more hair than Zoe, but so much of it has fallen out that I actually think Zoe at 5 months had more hair than Merritt has at 5 months. Merritt's hair color has also completely changed. It was black when she was born, and now it's the same brown color as Zoe. And same with her skin color. She was born olive like me, but her skin has really lightened in these 5 months and now she's fair skinned like Chris and Zoe. Her eye color seems to change daily as well, but at the moment they look deep turquoise almost. I find it hilarious that I'm olive skinned, dark hair (was black when I was little) and dark brown eyes and I have two fair skinned, light brown haired babies with eyes so light blue they're almost gray and the other with turquoise eyes. Nature is a crazy thing.

Last month the biggest development was the development of lack of sleep, lol. We're still struggling a bit, but things have greatly improved. I would say there's 1 good night, 1 so so night, 1 bad night. And then the cycle repeats.

The things we've done this month to help improve things (with help from the behavioral specialist): we moved to two naps a day exclusively. We were doing this a bit before month 4 hit to try to ease her into it, and now we're there solid. She takes a morning nap at about 9:30 that usually lasts about 45 minutes. Then she goes down for her second nap around 1ish. That one usually lasts about 2-2.5 hours. Then she's up till her bedtime at about 6:30.

We also have a nighttime routine: we go on a family walk, nurse, read a book, sing a song and put to bed. I found the routine really helped with Zoe and it seems to be helping with Merritt as well.

We also removed the swaddle. That was terrifying.

In working with the behavioral specialist she determined that Merritt was a natural planner and doesn't like transitions. This makes sense if you know Chris and I, and it also made sense in the way she fussed about certain things and already seemed to have a routine of when she wanted to eat even at 2 months (she would just flat out refuse the boob unless it was her own already designated feeding times). We felt the best way to eliminate the swaddle because of this was to just cold turkey take it away. No slightly easing into things, inserting a little crutch or helper for a couple nights - it was just RIP THE BAND-AID OFF. Otherwise, we'd just have a terrible night again as we were eliminating the things that helped us eliminate the swaddle.

That first night SUUUUUUUCKED. It was awful. I think Chris and I each got about 2 hours of sleep. But the next night, AMAZING improvement. And by the 3rd night, it was like she'd never had it.

Part of the reason why we took away the swaddle was because she is a little ninja when she sleeps. Seriously, her movement as she gets to bed is ridiculous. We would put her on her belly, in the velcro swaddle down to sleep and after hearing her scream and yell and be pissed off for 30 minutes we'd go in there and she'd have moved to the entire other end of the crib, rotated 90 degrees, flipped herself over and had her arms out of it. And she'd be screaming her head off. She was a danger to herself, lol. We determined that she's just a kid that needs to move and wiggle to get herself comfortable and that the swaddle was probably making her more uncomfortable, whereas we thought maybe she needed to have that movement confined because that was what was working her up.

But after we removed the swaddle she went down initially for nighttime and naps so much better. Success!

Nighttime wakings still suck for the most part. We've finally eliminated the 10-11pm one. So that's good. But she was still waking up at 1, 3 and 5. Ughhhhhh. We've mostly eliminated the 3am one, so that is STUPENDOUS. And I would say every 5 nights now she only wakes up once, HOORAY! So that is an AMAZING improvement. The thing that is still hard however is that a lot of the time it can take her a LONG time to get back to bed. Some kids wake a lot to nurse, then BOOM, the boob puts them out. Not Merritt. She'll hang out in her crib, talking to herself, making crazy noises, fussing, crying for sometimes up to 2 hours. It's rough on all of us. Luckily these nights aren't as frequent (they used to happen at least one feeding every night almost). Now they're about every 2-3 nights. So again, a big improvement.

I think the thing that has helped me a bit over the past about 2 weeks is just accepting the Merritt is a rough sleeper. I kept trying to MAKE her be a good sleeper. And while she will eventually get there, right now she just has a tougher time at night. And, honestly, I'm a shitty sleeper that wakes a lot in the middle of the night and sometimes can't go back to bed for hours, so I guess she just got my crappy sleeping gene. I'll have to let her know it improves once you can read, because then at least there's something to entertain you in the middle of the night.

So that's the sleep adventures thus far.

What else is there?

Well, I say it every month, but she really is the damn happiest baby. It is so adorable to see. I love it. She just smiles so big and it just lights up her entire face and sometimes it's so big it makes her whole body do a little shimmey. It's so cute :)

I LOVE when she wakes up in the morning or from a nap in a good mood and she's just laying there playing around and she hears you come and say hi to her. She perks that head up, turns to you and just smiles SO DAMN BIG it doesn't just melt your heart, it melts your soul. It's the sweetest and best thing to see.

She also continues to love having Zoe around and would rather watch Zoe play and run around like a wild woman than just about anything else. Zoe continues to reciprocate the feeling and insists on hugging and kissing "baby Merritt" whenever she leaves the house, gets dropped off at day care, when the baby goes to bed, etc. It is wonderful to see

Merritt is definitely a lot calmer than Zoe was. Many people have made that observation. Merritt still reminds me a lot of Chris - she's a thoughtful observer. She is definitely engaged in what's going on and likes to be propped up either on your shoulder or especially now my hip so that she can see what everyone is doing and what's going on. But she just has this calm and sweet energy about her - she's looking around, but she's just here to hang out.

Being held on my hip is just about one of her favorite things. She could do that forever.

She rolled over about 6 weeks ago now from back to belly and has NEVER done it since. It's the funniest thing. She did it about 10 times that initial evening. And just flat out decided it isn't worth her time anymore, "I conquered that task. Moving on." She also only rolls over from her belly to back in her crib. NEVER while we're playing. Again, it's as if she only performs a task when she determines it has value: rolling over in the crib lets her play with her feet or see what's going on. Why would she roll over while playing on her mat? There is no added value there? She's our efficient baby.

Feet are fabulous this month. It's best to grab and try to eat them while on her changing table. It is also best to grab and try to eat anything she can maneuver into her mouth. The gnawing is still in full effect this month and she will grab that hand of yours and shove a finger in her mouth and just chew chew chew.

She still doesn't really love to play with toys. I remember Zoe was always grabbing for stuff and wanted to wiggle and shove things around. Merritt is just content to be in her swing, lay on her mat or just hang out with you. But you absolutely must be near. This child loves personal contact and close proximity. I can't get mad at a snuggler.

I notice that she seems to also favor her left hand for grabbing and sucking. We'll see if that sticks, or if I'm just hopeful (as a lefty myself). And she also has been loving running her fingers over things and scratching at them to feel the texture of things. She especially likes zippers. Funny how kids already have such a preference for things

One more of that GIANT smile

Alright my little cutie. Happy 5 months to you. Can't wait to see what month 6 brings!

A New Meaning to The Family Jewels

2015-11-12T11:26:00.001-08:00

After we had Zoe I knew I wanted to get a family ring made. I'm not a big jewelry wearer or anything, but it seemed like a nice, sentimental piece that I would love. Of course, I needed to wait for our other baby to be born first :) But after Merritt was about a month old I went to the same jeweler who made our engagement/wedding rings and gave him the task of making my family ring.

I had been pinning items a bit and had a pretty concrete idea of what I wanted. Chris (the jeweler) was already very familiar with my linear, geometric, OCD brain and how I was very particular about things. So he was ready to take a lot of notes.

These were the things I liked: something different, something (OBVIOUSLY) to symbolize each of us, the stones to be flat and more unassuming, the number 12.

These were the things I had pinned that stuck out the most to me

from here

I liked the idea of black metal. And...

from here

I liked the idea of the right having a flat top. I don't like my rings to have stones that protrude out too much, and I didn't want this ring to just have a simple of layer line of stones because that's what my engagement ring has, and I wanted them to be different.

After a bit of research however I nixed the idea of the black metal because it's usually plated gold and rubs and scratches off. You generally want to get it re-plated at least once a year to keep it looking nice. And, let's be honest, I'm super lazy about jewelry and I want it done just once. Chris suggested that I stick with rose gold (my middle name is Rose, and rose gold is rose colored because of copper, so it seemed fitting) because I don't like yellow gold or platinum and I'm allergic to several other metals. But he suggested a matte finish to make it just a little different. LOVE the idea.

Then we talked about what stones I wanted. Hubby Chris was easy: July is Ruby. Done. But October is traditionally Opal and that's an incredibly soft stone, so I didn't want to use that. Instead, we went with Rose Zircon. Then, for the girls we used Alexandrite. This stone can be INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE if it's natural Alexandrite. But lab made Alexandrite is much more affordable, so we opted for that. The really cool thing about this gemstone is that it actually changes colors based on the lighting and environment it's in, which adds another cool layer to the ring. Both girls are born in June, but I didn't want to use the same exact stone for each of them, because they're different individual ladies, so I made Chris hunt down two different colors of Alexandrite for me :)

We got 3 stones of each color - 12 stones in total. 12 is a number that is special to Chris and me. I'm not superstitious or anything, but that number comes up A LOT for us (birthdays, anniversaries, addresses we've lived at together, etc.), so it's a poignant number for us.

Once we had all of the stones he cast the ring in wax to make sure I liked the shape of it. I went in to make sure it fit and check on the taper of the top, how wide it was, etc. I loved how it looked, so then it came time for him to cast the ring in metal. After he was done with that step he wanted me to come in again to approve the shape before he set the stones in. It looked AWESOME

He finished it two weekends and wanted me to come in to see it. I LOVED it. But he wasn't as happy with how he had done the matte finish (essentially with a sander used for jewelry). He wanted to re-matte it with a sandblaster, which I thought was SUPER cool. As much as I wanted to take it that day and wear it forever and ever already, I trusted his artistic vision :) (he was actually pretty excited along the way and had lots of suggestions and input, which was fun).

So I went in last week to pick up the finished ring. And let me tell you....AMAZING

I love it sooooooo much.

I love all the stones together and on their own. The 2 rows Alexandrite in the middle tend to look pinkish most frequently because they're next to the Ruby and Rose Zircon, but the darker one (on the left/middle in the pic) can sometimes look green/blue or even black. And the lighter one (on the right/middle) can look white and gray. It is so fucking cool.

I love how it is flat and presents itself at the top. It's still unassuming and not BAM in your face (I don't like big stones that jut out) but it has a subtle beauty that I love.

The sandblasted matte finish to the rose gold band is fucking awesome. It's such a cool technique he used and the matte is incredibly even all the way around. It's super cool.

I love the heft of it. He actually ended up using almost and ounce and a half of gold, so it's a fairly heave ring. But I actually really like that. It's not too heavy that it's annoying, but I'm always aware that it's there and it's nice to look down and stare at :)

I love my family (except the other day when I had to DRAG Zoe screaming to my car from the park with no shoes on while also holding Merritt in the carrier. That wasn't fun...) and I love my ring :) :) :)

Picardy Poll: What's Your Favorite/Most Hated Countertop Material?

2015-11-09T07:59:00.000-08:00

I love polls :)

I've been thinking about this one a lot lately because I went against my natural instinct and put Quartz in an old Victorian for my brother's project. I don't generally make myself stick by time period (hello, our counters are granite and we're in a 1920s house), but I also don't really like to go super modern in a traditional home. This project of course is trying to marry modern and traditional, so I think it was a nice touch with the Shaker style cabinets.

But it got me thinking about the PLETHORA of different countertop materials and what people do and don't like. So I'm going to do TWO polls here.

The first will be what counters are you favorite. People are definitely material specific. Some people LOVE granite or LOVE marble or think concrete is cool and a bit different. I have a client who loves her ceramic tile counters and I have a personal aversion to them. There are just so many different opinions.

And it seems like there is so much love for a certain material by people, but that there are also strong opinions about what people DON'T like. Many folks are getting sick of granite, think ceramic tile or butcher block are unsanitary....people, there are lots of ideas :)

So let us ask: what is your FAVORITE and also what is your HATED countertop material --> FOR YOUR KITCHEN? There are so many choices out there, but I'm going to stick with these "most common" (although how can this many choices be most common) eight choices

Granite

from here

Marble

from here

Butcher Block

from here

Quartz

from here

Concrete

from here

Soapstone

from here

Ceramic Tile

from here

Stainless Steel

from here

Want to know my choices? Of course you do :)

My favorite material: soapstone. I pine for the day when we can do another kitchen and I can put soapstone counters in (if I feel like it fits). I wish we had done soapstone here. A small regret by both Chris and I.

My least favorite: it's a tie between butcher block and ceramic tile. But I think butcher block edges out ceramic tile by just a hair.

Okay, what are your opinions?

Picardy Project

From Dark to Light

And the Revisit Round 2

Zoe Girl's Wonderously Fun Bedroom

Chaos

Just a Quick Note

Merritt: 7 months

SF Project: We're ALMOST Done!

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

My Decorating Pet Peeves

Breastfeeding the Second Time Around

2015: A Year in Pictures

Merritt: 6 months

We Put an Offer In: Adventures in Short Sales

Merry Hannu-kawn-festi-mas

As Always there is Christmas on Picardy Drive

Holy Shit...CABINETS!

Zoe: 2 1/2

Things I'm Jonesing for in a Future House

Picardy Poll: To Paint, or Not to Paint Brick

Interior: To Paint or Not to Paint Brick

Exterior: To Paint or Not to Paint Brick

Meet Andre

We Upped the Budget

Tools I'm Thankful For

Merritt: 5 months

A New Meaning to The Family Jewels

Picardy Poll: What's Your Favorite/Most Hated Countertop Material?

What is your favorite kitchen countertop material?

What is your least favorite kitchen countertop material?