Buy Nothing Today #27

This is the 2nd time we have participated in "Buy Nothing Day." The idea is to not buy material things on so-called Black Friday, filling our house with things we probably don't need, and for sure the earth needs us not to add more things. The first time was in 2007. Last year for 2008, we bought a house on Buy Nothing Day, opening escrow and everything. But at least we were helping the housing economy. This year, we stayed home, watched some TV, did some housework and cleaned the garage. I was up in the garage attic for the first time, and organizing things. I wish I could see more progress in the garage itself, but it is a work in progress. We were going to go up to Larry's house to work on it, but didn't. Anyways, I am happy to say that I am caught up on NaBloPoMo. It is coming to an end soon and I still have all these things to blog about. So maybe I won't go complete AWOL in December. Ok, got to run, I've got 2 mortgages to pay. NaBloPoMo#27

Home Improvement: DIY Bathroom

I never posted some of the DIY work we did on our old house to get it ready for renters. Our bathroom was a pretty disgusting place for several years, and not because of what happens there. When we moved into the house 13 years ago, we vowed to do something about it and the awful wallpaper and medicine cabinet which we lived with for 12 years, but never did until we had to get the house rented. In our defense, we did change the shower curtain at least 3 times, and there was a lot of cute 2 year old artwork with soap crayons in the shower, including a "Tony Loves Jenni" note scrawled near the shower head, which was there for a couple of years. Here are some before and after pictures.

BATHROOM BEFORE:

Doesn't seem too horrible, huh?

Note the beautiful cabinet and faux marble porcelain countertop with random kiddie stickers.
Got to love that awesome medicine cabinet with a mirror I could only see from my neck up on my tippy toes for 12 years. Greenish yellow rose wallpaper was the highlight of the 1950s bathroom.

BATHROOM AFTER:

A lot of elbow grease went into the remodeling of this bathroom. It wasn't a complete renovation like our kitchen, but it was an inexpensive fix of what was pretty awful to start with. We have to give big props and thanks to Mike Mura for all his help in sanding, removing wallpaper, removing the old cabinet & sink, putting in the new mirror medicine cabinet, priming, painting, and installing lighting fixtures. Then, Noe & his crew who did parts of our kitchen remodel 3 years ago and our floors in the den, put in the new cabinet/sink in about 30 minutes I believe. We also had a plumber come and take care of some leaking in the shower and recaulking some of the tiles and floor. I did a lot of scrubbing, scrubbing and more scrubbing, and buying matching towels and neutral shower curtain for the Open House.

All this while Tony was taking care of his dad several times a day, shuttling him to dialysis, closing escrow on the new house, and working on other parts of the house at the same time during the Christmas/New Year holidays, a very stressful period in case you were wondering. In all, I think the remodel costs for supplies, decorations and professional help, was probably about $500. And there you have our bathroom remodel. Coming soon, more DIY projects on our old house.

NaBloPoMo#14.... and counting.

Happy Belated (Chinese) New Year

Happy New Year 1/1/09

Ai yah. Well, I have missed not only New Year's, but Chinese New Year too. We finally moved on January 18th. Things have been even more hectic stressful than usual, doing home improvement on two houses (still), including renovating the kitchen in the new house. All that plus Tony's dad in the hospital for 2 weeks in January, in a "skilled nursing care" rehab facility for 4 days, and then back in the hospital again since Maiya's birthday on February 1.

Can't hardly believe this girl is 4 years old. She sometimes acts like she is 10, but then again she also sometimes acts like she is 2. Well, the girl is my heart, as I've said before. We had a little manju party at her preschool (pictures to follow once I find our card reader), but she spent her birthday at Ikea (and including 15 errands--that was in and out of the car literally 15 times that day). We hope to do a party in the next few weeks once things have settled down.

Last two weeks we had the electricians and the cable, phone & internet installed. This week we had painters in the house and baseboards put in. Yesterday I spent the afternoon trying to figure out our finances, then Maiya & I went to visit Mike, Laura and the kids. Today, Maiya went to the boat show with her Auntie Gayle and her cousins, while Tony worked on the old house. Meantime, I cleaned cabinets, lined shelves and unpacked the master bathroom all day, organized Tony's dad's bills and medical files, and went with Tony to the hospital, while doing 4 loads of laundry at Uncle Bill's house tonight.

Still to unpack: about 24 boxes of books, about 30+ boxes of kitchen stuff, and about 20-30 boxes that are unmarked or marked "junkies" or "misc." which is a little bit daunting. Ok, that's it for now. I don't know if you'll see much of me around these parts (blogspot), but if you need an update, come to FB. Happy (Chinese) New Year of the Ox. As I said, more photos to come. When I can get to them.

Come see our Open House

OPEN HOUSE * SUNDAY 1/18

Unfurnished 2 Bedroom + Den, 1 bath newly remodeled open kitchen, bathroom and den/office, bamboo floors in kitchen, hardwood floors and refinished concrete in den, refrigerator, dishwasher, stove, washer/dryer, garage. Nice, friendly neighborhood with beautiful landscaping and paid gardener. Walking distance to Marina shops and elem. school. Available 2/1/09. One year minimum lease.

Closed!

Escrow closed today, 10 days late... now the work begins.

Rating My Space

Have you seen the website/new HGTV show RateMySpace? We've been addicted to HGTV for the last few years, not easy since we don't have cable, but we've been spending a lot of time at Uncle Bill's house lately. I discovered the website one night, and actually stayed up until 4 or 5 am, putting up our recent kitchen renovation. I was amazed to see like 1,800 people actually looked at our kitchen and made comments on it.

I put up our unfinished living room/dining room on the website, asking for suggestions to deal with layout, lighting and storage issues of our living room/dining room. You can find me under JenniK. If you like, please rate our living room/dining room, we are open to any suggestions.

Partially finished living room/dining room

Totally revamped tiny 1941 kitchen

Disaster Den

NaBloPoMo#26: We just got home from dinner at Junior's Deli & visiting Uncle Bill. Tony's giving Maiya a quick bath and then it's bedtime duty for me, so I only have a minute for this blog entry. So, I thought I'd post some photos of the disaster den. It's our room that needs more than a 4 day weekend to make a dent in the clutter. Often when we "clean" the house, this is where the crap gets piled. It's not that big a room, but it is our office, den, storage, and Maiya's playroom. We've kicked around the idea of sending in these pictures to HGTV. What do you think? Can we tackle this room alone, or do we need professional help?

Declutter Friday

NaBloPoMo#23: Every year, I try to take advantage of that extra day off after Thanksgiving. Never made it to the gym today, but took a nice heavy nap with Maiya. I cleaned up the kitchen and emptied all the expired (2006) food from the fridge. Tony slept until noon and made turkey soup today. This afternoon I worked on filing in the disaster den, and we spent a few hours cleaning out the garage and loading up things for the thrift shop. You could barely walk in there lately, but now, we are 1 dining room table, 1 microwave/tv cart and 2 boxes away from parking in the garage after over 2 years!

If you're interested, this is such a deal. It's our Danish dining room table now on sale (again) on Craigslist. It converts from a round table to an oval by pulling out the leaf which is hidden inside.

Yard Sale with Craig

Help us clean out our garage this weekend! We're having a Yard Sale/Block Sale this Saturday along with several neighbors on our street. Lots of tchotzkes, baby things, books, and also some furniture. My dad once said that "One's trash is another's treasure." I hope it will be your treasure. Here's some stuff I put on Craigslist tonight.

DANISH MODERN CONVERTIBLE ROUND/OVAL TABLE - Reduced to $150 OBO











LEATHER CHAIRS - No longer available











NIGHTSTAND/END TABLES - $125 EACH














TV STAND/MICROWAVE CART/STORAGE CABINET - Reduced to $25!











FREE GOOSE FEATHER COUCH CUSHIONS - No longer available


Edited to add: We made about $78 from our yard sale. Great sales from 9am-10am, but then the rush was over. Slow sales for the next few hours. Then, out of no where, for the first time in like a year, it rained! For 10 minutes, no more. Long enough for the dust from our tree to drip onto EVERYTHING for sale. Then my friend Lianne, who I had emailed at 4am about the yard sale, showed up. She took almost all of the clothes to take to the Philipines and then bought a bunch of other stuff as well. We took several boxes to the thrift shop afterwards. Sunday we went through more stuff and kept on going with the clutter purge. We sold our 2 leather chairs on Craigslist. Yeah!

Previewing before the Big Reveal

It was a busy weekend. Our baseboards were installed in the house on Friday, but they couldn't paint them until today. Our house is all chaotic, packed up and piled high, so we stayed away this weekend.

In all the mess, can you see our paint colors emerging and our baseboards on the back wall? We're getting ready to order our designer lamp. The plumber came this morning, and we have an appointment with the guys for the new window coverings (It's been newspaper the last few weeks). It's getting so close we can taste it.

Decisions, decisions...

For the past 3 weeks Tony has been getting our living room and dining room ready for painting. One of those projects we just didn't get finished before Maiya was born. Packing up our two little rooms, washing down walls with deglosser, scraping, sanding, pulling off baseboards, puttying and spackling the ceiing and walls. That's all the physical work. I have been working hard trying to keep Maiya entertained, safe and out of the way and out of the house while living with plastic and dropcloths, eating in the backyard and hanging out at Uncle Bill's. And of course this all happens during my busiest time of the year at work (until Thursday) so Tony is also juggling swim class and childcare with me. One of the things that hung us up 3 years ago was deciding on the paint colors. But, this weekend we finally selected 3 colors from the ones in the photo above: Oat straw, Firenze and Glacial till. Tony did the ceilings yesterday and the living room today. You'll just have to wait and see how it turns out!

Evolution of Maiya's room

We've lived in our house for 10 years. For 8 years, our extra room was a 10' x 11' office/junk room. A few times it was a den, with a futon couch and the TV in there. But most of the time it was our office with various desks and configurations. That file cabinet below held dry food and pastas and rice crackers as we never had a pantry. Here is a picture of me, Fall of 2004, several months pregnant and wondering what we're going to do with this room and how it will ever accommodate "the baby." I think this is some time before Tony took out the carpets and we painted the room.

In December 2004, about a month and a half before Maiya was born, we painted her room lime sorbet green. Visitors to our house would look at the green room and say, "Hmmm, green..." or "wow, that's bright." Here is the room in January 2005, all ready and waiting for "the baby." Notice the crib, was only used for a few naps and diaper cover cleaning times since we have chosen to be a co-sleeping family. Maiya once fell out of the crib at about 7 months, which is when we started storing crap (figuratively) in the crib.

In Maiya's first month, the rocking chair became the place where I spent night and day. Notice the lovely baby gift bag window coverings. We were too busy dealing with breast pump parts, sleepless nights and diaper changes to deal with anything else at that time.

Maiya's room has gotten more and more cluttered as the volume of toys and books has increased. Although as I look at the books in the photo below, she now has more than twice as many books as in the picture. Luckily, like her mama, Maiya likes to keep her floors clean--here she is in July 2006 doing her part to help out.

In January 2007, right before her 2nd birthday, Maiya got her new big kid bed--which we use occasionally since we are still using the family bed. Sometimes the bed gets crowded and one of us will wind up in her bed during some portion of the night.

Last month Tony got these cool designer shelves on Craigslist for $50. Here's Maiya showing them off wearing her "Hello Kitty" underpants.

Today, I bought one of those orange storage hanging baskets from Ikea at a garage sale for $3. We'll see what comes next. At some point we are going to have to do a toy purge cause it's getting out of hand. Stay tuned, if I can gather the courage, I will post photos of our office/library/playroom.

The Big Reveal

Before: Our old kitchen looked very much the same between 1941 and 2003 (when this picture was taken). Two years ago, we took out a few cabinets, got a new fridge, moved it into the laundry room, and created a prep space. It was a lot of work to make our kitchen work a little better for us, but it still was a small kitchen, with very little counter space or storage space. We have been talking about this kitchen remodel for at least 5 years, and decided to make the plunge this summer. It was a lot of stress, sweat and hassle--we didn't hire a general contractor, so Tony did all of the space planning, comparison shopping, heavy lifting and countless trips to the hardware store, while I did a lot of childcare. We went back and forth on the costs of doing a major kitchen remodel vs. painting the shelves, updating the drawer knobs and replacing the sink. After: In the end, we took out 2 walls (from the dining room to the kitchen, and from the laundry room to the kitchen), extending our kitchen by 4 feet, and merging the laundry room and kitchen into one 13 foot galley kitchen. Like you see in magazines, here is what we got (in case you're interested):

• Floors: Carbonized vertical bamboo floors
• Cabinets: Custom cabinets by Danny Molina using Apple-ply prefinished maple with tung oil rubbed edging
• Countertop: Caesarstone in Lagos Blue
• Paint: Benjamin Moore Jute (only 2 walls done so far)
• Lighting: recessed fluorescent lighting (pendant light over the sink still to be purchased)
• Stove: DCS with Viking hood and ventilator
• Dishwasher: Bosch (not shown in picture)
• Back Door: Double pane single-light French door with cherry stain finish and 5-6 coats of polyeurathane seal

In all, it took 3 months. We still have some things to be done, but with the help of my parents, we unpacked our kitchen stuff from the garage and put all the pots, pans and dishes away this weekend. Thank goodness for the extra storage space because we don't have a china cabinet anymore. Gone are the days of using file cabinets in the back room to store food. We hope to finish up the dining room and living room in the next month (or so). I'm so excited about this kitchen, I'm inspired to cook and clean! Maiya is enjoying dancing around the new kitchen, and she wants to climb up and see and touch everything. Big thanks to Tony O. whose vision and hard work made this kitchen a reality, and Tony’s friend Danny, whose skill and craftsmanship we could not have this beautiful kitchen without.

Blog more? Blah-ghh!

Hmm, maybe I'll start blogging more. But if I do, you'll read more mundane things about what we did today, or what we need to do. So last night, we went to dinner for our niece Danika's 15th bday. We went to Billingsley's, a steak house in West LA. My food was delicious, I got a monterey chicken with sauteed mushrooms, avocado and melted cheese on a bed of salty rice, with mashed potatoes. The bad thing is that Tony's dad got sick last night, and Tony was sick this morning. Don't know if it's from the food, or what, but you never know. We were tired, so went to bed right after we got home, before 10pm.


Maiya has been nursing a lot at night lately, seems like all night long (while I'm sleeping) and heavily during the 5:30 to 7:30 am hours. So I was awake by 6am, thinking about all the things I need to do. We got up a little after 8am this morning. Tony went to B&B Hardware and Cox Paints (we decided we didn't like the color of one of the two walls Tony painted yesterday). Tony's dad stopped by, Danny came by to do some finishing touches on the cabinets. Tony's agenda included installing the backsplash, hood, fan and stove. Maiya had toast, cereal, OJ and cream cheese for breakfast. The cream cheese was a mistake, I had left the almost empty container on the table, and when I looked at her (I was sitting right next to her), she had her face inside the container and was licking the edges, and had cream cheese in her hair and all over her face & hands.


At 10am, she nursed a bit and fell asleep for a little nap, and I hopped on the computer, tidied up, did some dishes IN THE NEW SINK (YEAH), and tried to study a bit. Unfortunately it was only a half hour nap. Then at 11am, we had some more snacks (crackers and apples), and then time for crayons, playing with yogurt containers and some dancing. Helped Tony a little with the backsplash. At about 1pm, Maiya and I took a shower, drew Elmo in the bathtub, and then got ready to go. Tony picked up some Taco Bell, so Maiya ate half a bean burrito and needed to get her clothes changed again. Right before we were leaving, I said "let's go," and she said "no," and then spread her legs wide, bending her legs and then grabbed at her pants. Oh! What's this? Sure enough, there was a little poo poo, and she practically ran to the changing table, turning around to make sure I was following her. So, at 2:15, we finally left, and went to the Giant Robot store, and GR2 on Sawtelle to pick up some bday presents. Maiya and I went to Dyami's 4th bday party, a puppet show in Santa Monica, although we were 45 minutes late, and missed the puppet show, and Maiya napped in the stroller for most of the party. It was nice to see my friends Monica and Benjamin, and Paulina and Shabaka (all from my Great Leap days). Maiya ate a little pita with hummus and chicken and a gingerbread cookie.


Then, at 4:45, we left Santa Monica, and went home to pick up Tony, who was at B&B for the 3rd time today, and then went over to my sister Gayle's house for Taco Night to celebrate me and my brother Darin's bday. We got there an hour late. Maiya had so much fun! Their house is like romper room, with toys galore. Five kiddies, makes for a lot of giggles and playing. Playdough was a big hit tonight. We stayed till 10pm, and then came home. I put Maiya to sleep and then went to help Tony with the duct and chimney cover for the hood. He sure is working hard to make this kitchen really nice.

Ok, well, this is the kind of detail you're going to get if I am blogging more often, if you are even still reading this. TMI? Interesting? Not so much? I doubt I'll keep it up. In any case, that was the day. Tomorrow Howard, my creative wood artist friend is coming over to talk about custom TV/stereo holder, and possibly a built in bench for our dinner table, and maybe some shelves? Tony's plan is to get all the appliances in and start lining the shelves. We'll see, and then maybe we'll get to Ikea, do some laundry, and I can study for Tuesday's exam. Toodle-loo!