Stangers in the House

Today we had to take a break from fixing up our new house as Bill (Rental owner) was coming by to fix the toilet and to bring some possible renters. So I spent most of the morning trying to clean up. It's strange having strangers walk through you home, going through closets and drawers. But we have four groups of folks come through today. After that it was too late to go up to the house so Harry and I just hung out at home and watched some TV... so it was a nice break.

Remodeling - Day Nine

Now that we had our paint we got up early and headed to the house around 10am. Once we got there Danny was hard at work. He was finishing up with windows/holes in the office wall and also working on the fireplace. We chatted for a few and then got to work priming the two accent walls in the living/dining room and area under the bar. All were a southwestern orange and we figured it was best to prime first but before we did that we had to fill in all the nail holes and man were there alot. The previous owners really liked hanging things on the wall. Once the holes were filled and the walls were primed we started to paint both accent walls in the steal blue color. One good thing about replacing the carpets is that we didn't have to worry about laying down a tarp or anything, which saved up time. Danny finished patching up the TV Room walls as well as the outside office walls so this weekend will be spent panting the living/dining rooms in the sandy brown and steal blue colors. Lot's a painting to be done but this weekends painting will be dramatic because it's such a big part of the house.. can't wait to see all this come together.

Danny also laid some tile down on the fireplace so we could see what it looked like.. it's going to be beautiful. Stay Tuned!!!!!

Furniture Shopping

After we got home from the painting sample adventure we headed to Living Spaces. We already lost out on the dining table and bed that we had seen a few weeks prior so we planned to buy this time. A wonderful sales person Heather approached us and with her helped we managed to pick out a dining table (pictured to the left, only the table) and four dining chairs.




She also checked and that there was one more bed that we really liked in the La Mirada store so we got that.






We picked out a love seat and a very funky accent chair and matching pillows and finally we had picked out two very comfy recliners but found out that they only had the one (floor model) so we had to choose another one. Which we did and purchased two electric very comfy recliners for our TV room. After two and a half hours we were done and spent roughly $4500 on our new furniture. We still have to buy two desks, accessories, a day bed, side tables and a couch table.. oh and a new mattress for our new Cal King bed... We were hoping to not spend more then $5000 in new furniture but it looks like we are going to go over a bit.. but hey how often do you buy new furniture, well for me.. never.. so it was so much fun.

After Living Spaces we then went to Home Depot and purchased the paint that we liked for the rest of the house. We also checked out more Laminate flooring and I still went for the one I saw a few days ago and I think Harry is coming around to it too.

Remodeling - Day Eight

Our contractor Danny was out today so we knew nothing had changed from yesterday construction wise.. so we headed up to the house fairly early. When we got up there the sky's were pretty good. There was a haze but i think it was just your typical SoCal haze. There wasn't much smoke in the air and to be honest it looked as though the fires were gone (of course we knew they weren't) but they weren't much of a factor today.

We first pulled off all the blue tape from the Guest Room and of course there was bleeding of the paint as we expected. Some spots were worse then others but for the most part it was all fixable. So Harry and I did a few touch ups here and there. We then went to the TV room and pulled up the tape in there and again the paint bleed through some areas so we did a few touch ups. Both the Guest Room and TV Room are done with exception of the window trim

We started with our main living room/dining room colors. We choose a sandy brown color and a stealy blue for the accent colors. We painted them on the wall and both Harry and I knew these were the colors we wanted. They looked great together and gave the feel that we wanted for those rooms.

We then put up the two kitchen colors that we choose.. it's a bold color for a kitchen but we opted for the brighter of the two (the one on the right) and then we painted the living room colors to see if they would all match since the rooms open to each other. And the all looked great together.

Next was the office, my buddy Greg is going to paint a Star Trek mural for us on one of the walls and it's going to be in space meaning a black wall so we wanted a bright color on the rest of the walls. We choose this blue but once on it felt too baby blue and I couldn't imagine that color on all the remaining walls. So we selected another more grey/blue and will get a sample for that later tonight.

Our master bedroom colors were the brown on the right and the wine as an accent and we liked the colors together but we felt that both of those colors would make the room much darker then we intended so instead we pulled the taupe color from our master bath room and made that our main color for our bedroom with the win accents.. and we really like that combination.

The guest bathroom already has the yellow.. which we like but we wanted to bring in an accent color and I don't know what we were thinking but the purple was so not what we wanted and we felt it would look to feminine.

So we took the light blue color that we didn't like for the office and the wine accent color from our master bedroom and painted those on the yellow to see if we liked any combination of those.. and we did.. we liked the yellow with the wine color so that will be the accent color for the guest bathroom.

Last and the hardest room to choose a color was our master bathroom. We had bought the taupe but really didn't like it with the tile and counter of the room. We took the brown that we intended for the master bedroom but that too didn't work with the tile and counter. So we tried the sandy color from the living/dining room and didn't like it.. so we are at a stand still when it comes to paint in our master bedroom. We want to keep the tile and counters because we like them (and cost) but we just need to find the perfect color to compliment them.

So out of all those colors we liked the majority of them and will be buying gallons of paint tomorrow and starting to have fun painting again.

It's All About the Color

Today we spent most of it at home because of the toilet thing and we wanted to pack up some stuff here at the rental. We did get up to the house around 2pm at which time our contractor was leaving for the day. We didn't have really anything to do up there because we had finished painting the day before and we couldn't paint any other rooms because construction was happening in them and we hadn't picked out the paint yet. So that is what we did. We went through each room and selected paint colors that we liked. We already made several mistake by buy a gallon of paint and then realizing you don't like it or it doesn't fit the room and wasting money.. so this time we planned on purchasing small sample paint to see if we like them first. So it took about three to four hours to go from room to room and select what colors we liked.

Once we got home we dropped off Daisy at the rental and then went to Home Depot to purchase samples of all the colors we decided on. Will paint samples on the walls tomorrow and see if we really like the color combinations that we choose. While at home depot we also checked out sinks and vanities for the guest bathroom and the Bamboo flooring that we really liked. Unfortunately we wanted a darker floors and the Bamboo only came in the light wood color (though you could strip and stain it). So we started looking at Laminate wood flooring and most of it looked fake but there were a few that we thought would work and one that I really loved that was darker and more rustic looking. Harry wasn't convinced but he did like it.. will have to keep looking. Oh forgot to mention we are re-flooring out TV room as well since it's kind of opened up to the living and dining room.

Surprise!!!

Well it's 7am and like most morning I have to get up and use the bathroom. As I leave the bedroom I hear this high pitch sound, of course I'm half asleep and I'm trying to figure out what is going wrong but it only takes a minute before I step into the bathroom and into two inches of water. Suddenly it's like being woken out of a deep sleep.. I spring into the action and walk over to the toilet and notice that the tube that goes from the wall to the back of the toilet has come off and water if firing out hitting the wall and bouncing up to the ceiling. I quickly turn off the main water and survey the damage. Besides the two inches of water on the bathroom floor the entire hall carpet is soaked. I quickly grab some towels and drop them on the carpet to try and pick up some of the water. I then attempted to take a cup and bucket and gather the water off the bathroom floor but soon discover that this is pretty useless. So I run to Ralphs to rent a wet vac and vacuum up the water. So about 45 minutes later I'm sucking up a ton of water from the carpet and bathroom. Of course alot of the water went through cracks in the floor and started bubbling up the laminate floor. But I did my best to clean it up. It's still damp and it's starting to smell musty but I'm hoping everything will work out.. it's not how I imagined starting my morning but life sometimes throws you curve balls. Our toilet is operational but you have to turn on the main valve to fill it up every time you flush and when it's not in use turn it off because the tube is back on but is loosely fit. The owner of the house will be coming by this weekend to fix.

Remodeling - Day Seven

Today we got a rather late start. When we left our rental in Reseda it was completely overcast / smokey, but considerably more humid than the past few days. The increased humidity should help the firefighters battling the Station Fire. When we were driving up north the smoke was so thick that you couldn’t even tell that there were foothills around. On the 14 the air quality got so bad, that we had get our air through the AC only. When we got off Sierra Highway exit air quality started to improve. Once we got to the house the air quality was sorta acceptable. You still could smell the smoke in the air, but there were no billow’s of smoke visible, and that's always a good sign.

We talked with our contractor Danny about the way we wanted to have the tiles in the bathroom and on the fireplace. We also were talking to him about having the the carpet in the Living and Dining Room torn out and replaced with Bamboo flooring. Yesterday we found some nice Bamboo flooring at Home Depot that we liked for a really reasonable price. We haven’t made any final decision about that yet, but it looks like we will end up doing bamboo flooring in the Living and Dining Room.

Later we dealt with some touch up work in the Guest Room (Green room). While we were doing that the air quality got worse and worse. You barely could see the ridge in front of our house and Sierra Highway was nearly invisible. It pretty much looked like as if the entire Western Angeles National Forest was on fire. But I knew that wasn’t the case since Harry was keeping informed about the fire situation online. It’s great having a working Internet at our new house. The sound of Super Scoopers and helicopters flying back and forth to the fire line and dousing the flames helps to keep your mind somewhat at ease. The reason that the smoke got so thick was that we got the wind out of the south east during the afternoon hours (Acton area) where currently a lot of the active wildfire action is happening. Once the helicopters had completed a lot of their water drops, the air quality started to improve significantly. But we persisted and finished painting the nook in the Guest Bedroom the same color of the accent wall.

By the time we were done for the day, the air quality had pretty much returned to normal and no smoke billows were visible anywhere. We still didn’t want to take the chances so we packed up Harry's truck with more of my toys that we wanted to bring back to our rental in Reseda… just to be on the safe side. When we got home Harry checked the latest Fire Perimeter Map and it turns out the the north flank of the fire appears to be pretty stable and that the Northern Fire Perimeter is still south of Soledad Canyon Road. In essence that means that there are still at least between 10 and 11 miles between the Station Fire and our house. That certainly puts our minds at ease… But you never say never with fires.. could change at any moment.

Ok time for bed.. remodeling is hard work.

Remolding - Day Six

Today didn’t quite start out the way that we had initially planned. We had planned to leave around 9.30 am but when we checked out the Station Fire conditions allegedly the Sierra Highway had been closed. According to that Info there was no way for us to get into town. Shortly after we had found out that our Contractor (Danny) had gotten there via an alternate route. So Harry checked with CalTrans and got no info about road closures, so we decided to drive up to the house and see if we could make it. Turns out that the story about the road closures, that we had read online, was greatly exaggerated. We got to the house without any problems and it looked even better than the day before. There was hardly any smoke visible, most of the smoke was to the northeast (Acton area). Of course here and there you could see dark smoke rising but you could see the large fixed wing air crafts as well. Certainly makes you feel better.

When we got to the house we saw that our contractor had made a lot of progress. He had started prepping the 2 holes in the walls of the office, removed the tile from the fireplace that we want to have refinished, taken the carpet out of the bathroom and dismantled most of the built in’s in the bedroom. I was very impressed with the progress he made. While our contractor was working on other stuff Harry and I put a second coat of paint on the accent wall in Guest Room. And later we put a 3rd coat of paint on the remaining 3 walls in the Guest Room. After that was done we painted the closet doors in the color of the accent color. I have friends who ask why we continue to paint and have a contractor doing work when the house could possible burn down. But both Harry and I look at is as we have to keep positive. The house is currently in no danger and we have to move by the end of September. Positive thinking will lead to a positive outcome... But just in case it doesn’t we brought some of my toys and some of the stuff that is irreplaceable back to our rental house in Reseda. Tomorrow we will assess if we take more of the stuff back to Reseda or not. That will depend on how the wildfire is behaving.

By the time we left there was no smoke visible. Apparently the firefighters have made some progress. Additionally the wind had been blowing all afternoon long in a north east direction. That means it had been driving the fire away from our house and we are very happy about that. On the other hand there are still 11 miles between the fire and our house and the fire is still in the hills above Acton.

I guess that's it for today report.. will keep you updated on our house progress and the wildfires.

Panic

Today when I got up I was reading on twitter that Agua Dulce was under mandatory evacuation. My heart dropped and I immediately went online to find out more info. The "Station" wildfire is out of control and is moving closer to Acton and at a slower pace it's moving north west and that is where Agua Dulce is located. The closed the Agua Dulce off ramp on the 14 freeway so the only way you could get into the city was through Sierra Hwy. It seems that the east side of the city is under mandatory evacuation but where we live is not. So I spent the morning cleaning and continuing to pack up stuff but checking the news often to find out the status of the fire.

Around 2pm Harry and I decided to go up to the house and check everything out. When we got up there is actually looked better then it did yesterday but there was alot of smoke north of us (in Acton) but our place looked okay. It eased my mind a bit. The fire was still 11 miles or so away from us. We didn't do any painting and we also didn't bring anything else up to the house (just to be safe). We cleaned up the place a bit as the contractor will be starting tomorrow.

We headed home and I continue to clean and pack. We plan on going back up tomorrow and start painting once again. Of course I listen to the evening news and it made me worry about the house again.. but to be honest there really is nothing we can do.. just hope the firemen stop this fire before is reaches us.

But I guess living in the hills we need to get use to this.. but I don't think I ever will.

I'll keep you all posted.