House – Page 2 – The Beehive

October 30, 2009November 11, 2009

Beautifying the Bathroom

When we moved in, our master bathroom was a grotesque shade of fluorescent green. One of our friends said we just needed a black light in the room.

The awesome green paint ranked high on our list of things to change as soon as possible, starting with the WC. I painted it in stripes of Behr’s Silver Tradition and Soft Denim.

I carried those colors into the main bathroom, but not the striping action. The ceiling became Soft Denim and the green walls were covered with Silver Tradition.

The whiter-than-white master bedroom is still in progress, but it’s getting a makeover too. To be continued . . .

October 4, 2009

Adventures in Garbage Disposing

Last weekend, I started a batch of limoncello. I spent some time looking at recipes on the internet, and decided a combination of techniques that I thought would work for me. I took the peel — no pith — from about ten lemons and dumped it in a pitcher with a bottle of Everclear (151 proof) and let it sit for a week.

Digression: Have you ever read the label on a bottle of Everclear? I think there are less warnings on common household cleaning chemicals. WARNING!! Overconsumption may endanger your health. CAUTION!! Extremely Flammable Handle with Care. There is a whole paragraph of warnings:

Caution: Do not apply to open flame. Keep away from fire, heat, and open flame. Contents may ignite or explode. Do not consume in excessive quantities. Not intended for consumption unless mixed with non-alcoholic beverage.

(Emphasis added.) So I guess it makes sense that this stuff is illegal in some states, as it is explosive and not suitable for human consumption. But back to the real story.

Today, satisfied that the alcohol had stripped the lemon peels of all their lemony goodness, I finished the limoncello. First, I strained out the lemon peels, leaving me with some strong lemon-infused grain alcohol. Then I made a pseudo- simple syrup. I decided to make limoncello crema, so I made the syrup with milk and half and half instead of water. This involved a little bit of experimentation on my part. I found a number of variations of the recipe, some calling from milk and some calling for half and half. So I split the alcohol mixture in half and made half with whole milk and half with half and half (say that three times fast). For anyone that wants to attempt, that was one pint of either whole milk or half and half simmered with 1.5 cups sugar until the sugar is completely dissolved for HALF of the alcohol. Let the sugar mixture cool and add to the alcohol. Bottle and refrigerate/freeze. I haven’t tasted either version chilled yet, so the jury’s still out as to whether milk or half and half is the better choice.

When I was finished, I was left with a sieve full of brittle lemon peels. One of the internet recipes I read suggested putting them through the garbage disposal to “freshen” it up, which seemed to make sense to me since I’ve heard before you can put some citrus wedges down it to make it smell fresher. So — and here’s the REAL point of the post — I put the lemon peels down the garbage disposal and fired it up. Seemed to work just fine, until the next time I used the disposal.

I washed the dishes later in the day, and when I drained the sink, I switched on the disposal to clear out any stray bits of food. Suddenly, the water stopped draining and murky black stuff started to come up through the drain. Insert random expletive here. I was pretty sure this was not something I could fix myself. I’m handy, but just not that handy. And now is really not a good time to be staying home from work to wait for a plumber. Steve stepped in about here, but he knows about as much about fixing a disposal as I do. We cut the power to the disposal and I reached my hand in to see if there was something jammed in it. He pressed the reset button. Still spewing black stuff. We were resigned to calling a plumber.

In a last ditch effort to to DIO (do it ourselves), I called my dad for advice. I explained to him that the motor appeared to be working when we turned the disposal on, but nothing was going down the drain. This led him to believe it was a clog, not a problem with the disposal itself, and he suggested a plunger. Five minutes later, water was flowing freely down the drain and there was no black stuff to be seen. Woohoo!

Dad can pretty much always save the day, can’t he?

September 14, 2009September 14, 2009

Fit for a California King

As I mentioned in my last post, we’ve been sleeping on a tiny, hand-me-down bed since we got married. Here is a look at our little bed in our big master bedroom. As you can see, we haven’t done much in terms of decorating the place. The curtains were graciously left for us by the seller.

bedbefore2

Here you see more of those fab curtains, and our mismatched dressers.

bedbefore4

And finally a sneak peak at the master bath. Through the doorway, you can see the mirrored doors of Steve’s closet (mine is on the other side). And if you look close, you can see the bathtub reflected in it. Yes, that is fluorescent green paint.

bedbefore3

The new bed we purchased over Labor Day weekend was delivered on Saturday. Saturday morning, I stripped the old bed so they could take it away when delivering the new bed. The delivery window was from 12-4, and I expected to be waiting around until 3:45 or so at least. But amazingly, they were at the door at 12:01, hauled away the old bed, set up the new bed, and were gone again by 12:15. These guys were pros.

oldbed

newbed

It still has “new mattress smell.” We let it air out with the windows open and the fan on until just before we went to sleep. By then we were tired, so we made the bed a bit hastily. It was like sleeping in a bed from a nice hotel, all plush and cozy.

bedroomafter1

August 25, 2009

Ring of Fire

Yesterday, from my office window, I saw a huge plume of smoke billowing from behind the high-rise across the street. Eager for a break from the grind, I jumped up from my desk and walked down the hall to see if I could get a better view. Sure enough, our office turned out to be prime viewing real estate. We could see smoke, fire trucks and ladders, fire fighters on the roofs, actual flames, and eventually functioning fire hoses. So that was a bit of excitement in an otherwise typical day at the office.

Digression: Someone forwarded me a short online breaking news story on the incident as it was happening. Not a whole lot of interesting information, two alarm fire, the fire department is responding, no further comments given, blah blah blah. But here’s the kicker, “a man who answered the phone at Tadich Grill confirmed that the building was on fire.” Excuse me? The building is on fire and this guy is still inside answering the phones?

So, the real point of this post: we don’t really have functioning smoke detectors in our house right now. Of course, watching someone else’s property burst into flames made me think of it. If I recall correctly, the smoke detectors were disabled when we moved in, and we found out why when we enabled them and tried to cook dinner. We didn’t even burn anything, but those alarms started wailing, and they are not easy to turn off. Steve has mentioned replacing them on a couple of occasions. Needless to say, this is now going to the top of our to do list.

August 24, 2009

Weekend Update

This weekend felt extremely busy, but looking back it does not seem like we did all that much.

Saturday we finally got out and tested the sprinkler system. The prior owner had mapped it out for us, but strangely lost the map prior to moving out. So we’ve been watering by hand since we move in back in April, which not surprisingly has been a bit sporadic and some of our plants are starting to show it. Saturday morning, Steve went on to Google maps and printed a satelite photo of the house. We started with zone one on our sprinkler box and started filling in the map. The box has the capability to handle 18 zones, 8 through 18 of which currently do absolutely nothing as far as we can tell. Also, none of them control the backyard, which clearly has a drip system throughout. We figured out later that there is a hose that connects to the drip system and apparently the prior owner just hooked it up manually to the spigot on the side of the house whenever she did that watering. In any event, the drip hoses have seen better days. There are multiple splits in the main line and almost nothing comes out the actual drip points, so it’s going to need some overhauling.

Saturday afternoon, we went shopping for a birthday present for our now 5-year-old friend, Abby. As much as I loved Toys ‘r’ Us when I was a kid, I really dislike it now. I never imagined it would be so hard to shop for a 5-year-old! We picked out something we hoped she would like and moved on to our next errands: JC Penney to check out window treatments and Home Depot for some yard stuff.

Penney’s was kind of a disappointment. We have tall ceilings in our family room, so we needed some lengthy curtains, and it seemed they mostly only had standard 84 inch panels, which was too short. But still, we got an idea of what they had, and were able to order some online later that evening. I’ve had a backache for the past few days and I needed to go home and lay down, so we skipped HD.

Sunday we spent an awful lot of time doing just general chores, which had been put off all week long (we should know better). Then, of course, the birthday party, and finally home to relax. Sort of. I did not feel like watching my sixth auto race of the weekend, so I pulled out our leftover paint and slapped a coat on the upstairs bathroom while Steve watched Indy car from Sears Point Raceway. Probably not the best thing for my back, but really there is only so much racing I can take.

And that’s about it. I’m certain there will be much more to come on the sprinkler system, as that needs a lot of work. And I’ve been taking pictures of the bathroom as I go, so I’ll be posting those as soon as I can download them from my camera and re-size them for posting. Because I know the three of you reading this are on the edge of your seat just waiting to see our upstairs bathroom.

August 11, 2009

House Tour Part VI: The Downstairs Bath

This is our downstairs bathroom. When we moved in, it was a strange brownish orange (which might be called “baby crap” depending on what your baby’s been eating) and had a dolphin-covered disposable shower curtain.

I had never seen a disposable shower curtain before. Turns out they are actually quite useful.

bathroomduring1

We had leftover paint from the family room and kitchen, and this bathroom is right off of those two rooms, so it made sense to continue on with that color.

But wait! There’s more! In an effort to make it look like this was not the same old thing over and over again, I painted some stripes on the walls. This involved some (sort of) careful measuring, blue painters tape, and a handy laser level. One thing I learned is that a textured wall makes it difficult to get a nice crisp line. In order to prevent the paint from seeping under the tape into the lower levels of the texture, you need to make sure you firmly press the tape down into the divots so there is no seepage. Here is the finished product.
bathroomafter2
bathroomafter1

bathroomafter3

August 5, 2009August 10, 2009

No More Salmon in the Kitchen

The color, that is. Actually, now that I think about it, we’ve never had the fish in the kitchen either, and given Steve’s distaste for it, we probably never will. So interpret how you please.

Back to the point of this post, when we moved in, the walls in the family room and kitchen looked like they were dripping with Pepto Bismol. We took care of the family room first, and the kitchen was next on our to-do list. Here’s what it looked like before:

It doesn’t look like it should be too difficult a paint job, because there is not a whole lot of area to cover. As usual, it didn’t quite turn out that way. The tight spaces and numerous corners made it very time consuming. But it turned out fabulous.

kitchen-after-3

Doesn’t it look like a different room? I think the green paint looks so much nicer with the blonde wood cabinets. The ceiling still needs a coat of paint, and I look forward to getting rid of the rug under the kitchen table, but already it is so much more pleasant to be in the kitchen and family room now.

July 28, 2009August 10, 2009

The Blind Leading the Blinds

When we moved in, there were no blinds installed in the dining room or living room. There were decorative draperies, but nothing that you could really shut to keep the sun out or prevent the neighbors from looking in and seeing you running around naked. The seller did, however, leave several sets of blinds behind in a closet, which she said were for the living room, dining room, and garage. She urged us not to install them, though, so that all that beautiful sunlight could shine in. That sun isn’t so beautiful when it’s 103 degrees outside and the sun is beating in.

blindinstallbefore

I think in response to several extremely hot days, Steve decided he was going to hang the blinds. Obstacle #1: There are two large windows in the dining room, two large windows and two small windows in the living room, and two large windows in the garage. There are only four sets of blinds. Easily overcome. We don’t really need the blinds in the garage right now, so we’ll just use them on the large windows in the dining room and living room (as they are clearly too large for the small windows).

Obstacle #2: The blinds were not all the same size, as were the windows in the living room and dining room where the blinds were to be installed. Although all the blinds were the same width, two of them were about a foot too short for the windows. Steve scavenged the house to see if maybe some other rooms with a same width windows had blinds that were way too long. He did find one. That’s right, just one. So after he switched the too long blinds for the shorter ones in the closet, we were left with three sets of right sized blinds and one too short, with no window anywhere in the house that would accommodate it.

So we installed blinds in three of the four windows and put the last set back in the closet, for the moment. The installation was incredibly easy. Steve measured and marked for bracket placement. Each bracket had four screws, for which Steve pre-drilled the holes. He used a dremel to fit better into those tight spaces than a big power drill. Once the brackets are installed, all you have to do is slide in the blinds and clip the bracket shut.

blindinstallafter

We’ve been very happy with the blinds so far. They help a great deal to control the temperature inside the house on hot days. We’ll be shopping for that last large set and too small sets of blinds soon.

July 21, 2009August 10, 2009

House Tour Part V: The Kitchen

It’s back downstairs for a look at another one of the rooms we spend a great deal of time in: the kitchen. You might recall that the family room sits right off the kitchen. They are actually totally open to each other. And that means that the Pepto-Bismol pink paint that coated the family room goes right on through the kitchen.

We don’t have huge plans for the kitchen. Other than the color, it’s been great (particularly since the size of our old apartment kitchen was pretty similar to the size of the center island in this kitchen). The amount of counter space and storage is like a dream. The kitchen table, chairs, seat cushions, and rug were all left by the prior owner, and we really like the table. We’ll paint it to match the family room (ok, we admit it, it’s well under way and there will be after shots soon), hopefully switch out the round rug under the table and chair cushions, and replace the dark brown electrical outlets with something more in line with the color scheme of the room (either white or perhaps a wood tone to match the wood of the island where they are located).

July 16, 2009

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

We’ve been in the new house about three months now. We had one brief encounter with our next door neighbors one Saturday morning when we were out weeding, but other than that, we have not met anyone in the neighborhood. Well today we received our first real introduction to the neighborhood in the mail, and it went something like this:

Dear New Home Owners,

Perhaps as a new owner in Eagle’s View II you are unaware of the Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions mandated by this development.

Enclosed is a copy for your benefit. Please read section 5.5, the requirement on maintaining your landscaping. Please hire someone to assist you if you are unable to maintain it yourselves. Our home values have diminished quite a bit already, we would appreciate it if they did not devalue any further due to neglect.

Thank you so very much for your attention to this matter.

Your neighbors of Eagle’s View II

You’ll hear no argument from me that the yard needs some attention, but there’s also no question that it is vastly improved from the state it was in when we moved in, which Steve decribed as “jungle-like.” Both of our families have agreed that it looks much, much better. We’ve worked really hard to get things in better shape. Could you give us a little credit?

The thing that really bothers me, though, is that this person or persons did not even have the guts to sign the letter. It’s totally anonymous, with no return address. We’re your new neighbors. If you have a problem, would it really kill you to stop by, introduce yourself, and talk about the issue? Is an anonymous nasty-gram really the best way to welcome someone new to your street?

I remember when I was growing up I new pretty much everybody living on our street. All the neighborhood kids used to ride bikes or play ball in the street when the weather was good, and our parents all used to bump into each other outside and chat. For a long time we had a block party every year around the 4th of July. I can’t imagine being friendly in that manner with someone that would send this type of anonymous letter, and since it’s not signed, it feels like they were all in on it.

I hope nobody around here stops by to borrow a cup of sugar anytime soon.