Home Depot Commercial Shoot

This was the scene at our house today (tomorrow as well) as a Home Depot commercial was being shot at our neighbor's house. This is great for us as the production company sends a tidy bit of cash our way for the use of our driveway to set up the craft service table,lay some wires across our property, and trample over a few of our plants! They have set up a temporary fence with a lot of potted plants between the two houses in an effort to screen out the ugly house--as well as modified our neighbor's house inside and out. Added bonus--all the free snacks we want!! If you see a Home Depot commercial with this kid playing soccer out front--think of us!

Recycling

I love hunting for cool old stuff on Craigslist, thrift stores, estate sales, etc. Here are some of our recent finds. All of the photos show the fabulous pillows from our friend Jennifer's estate sale. She has superb designer taste that I will never have, so what better way to add some style to our place than to buy up all her old stuff? We got all these pillows in a mix of great fabrics, down filled, to toss around the guest room and on our window seat. A pair of mission style nightstands, which match our bedroom funiture, which we found on Craigslist for about a quarter of what they would be if we bought them new. And another nightstand, also from Jennifer's estate sale, $40. I think it's Danish from the '40s or '50s. Thanks to everyone who is getting rid of great used stuff!

Lighting on the Staircase

We found these great old globes at a local yard sale--$10 for the pair. Old globes don't fit into standard size fixtures, so we sought out the help of local lighting expert Carlos Castaneda to find some appropriate size fixtures. They were originally a chrome finish, so we had them refinished in an oil rubbed bronze. The longer one is on the upstairs landing, the shorter, more flush mount is on the lower staircase, and allows for a little more headroom when coming down the stairs. Not bad!

Living Room and Dining Room Complete

This has been a long time coming...at the beginning of last summer we hired the genius Henry to begin stripping the box beams and wainscotting in the living room, dining room, and downstairs hall. This was a long, costly process but after the experience of doing most of the upstairs wood ourselves, AND having it take three years, it was well worth having Henry do the dirty work for us. He did a far better job than I could have done, and the photos do not do it justice. He worked 6 days a week for close to 3 months to achieve these results. Imagine how many weekends that would have taken us! (I would highly recommend Henry to anyone who needs some wood stripped or refinished. Contact us for his number.) We also had to reproduce some of the plate rail that was missing in places. Previous owners seemed to remove and/or hack at pieces at random.

Next step, the wood floors were sanded and polyurethaned by Francisco and his crew. They also did our upstairs floors in '07. Final step, paint. With the help of our good friend Patrick at Patrick Bustad Painting, many repairs were done to these old plaster walls which were in terrible shape from all the taping off during the wood stripping process. We picked from Benjamin Moore's historic color palette, Summerdale Gold for the living room. This is an amazing color which changes dramatically depending on the light and time of day. The dining room is a dark room in the NE corner of the house, and we had a hard time with the color. We slapped up about 10 different samples of gold, green, and caramel, but nothing screamed out. Finally our painter said, I'll finish today if you can pick a color. We bit the bullet and picked the best of the bunch and it turned out quite well. HC 122, Great Barrington Green. I'm not one of those who is scared to put color on a wall, and don't believe that a dark color in a dark room makes it feel closed in, small, etc. It is rich and delicious.

My parents 1950's colonial revival dining room set isn't perfect, nor is the eclectic mish mosh of living room furnishings, but that will have to wait for another time. At least we got a few pictures on the wall! If any of you readers out there have a pair of old Stickley Morris chairs or a nice unneeded settle, feel free to send them our way!

Carlos Castaneda, who has a lovely little lighting and antique shop on La Brea, shined up the old lighting fixture, and replaced the Home Depot issue chain with a more appropriate chain and hardware. We are both suffering from back aches after rehanging that thing yesterday afternoon.

Finishing touches will include swapping out the modern light switches for push button switches, and ordering some hammered copper switch plates.

Living Room Wood

We have hired a lovely young fellow to begin stripping the living room woodwork. He's been working for about one month and is doing a wonderful job so far. Keep checking for more updates.

Accordion Mirror Burns Hole In Wood

This really freaked the shit out of me--the house nearly burned down. The morning sun, from about 8-10 am, caught the magnifying side of the accordion mirror just at the right

angle, and burned this big gash in the newly refinished wood. It is about 5" long. The room smells singed. This was really scary. Notice that the mirror is now neatly folded away in its position away from the window, until we buy a shade to hang in the window.

The Big Move Upstairs!

New Years Eve marked the first night we spent sleeping upstairs, after three years in the house. The floors refinished, the walls painted, and all that white woodwork is now a beautiful dark walnut. Here is BR #1, with the lone TV as the only piece of furniture, which will probably end up as a guest room.














The green room is BR#2--our room. The dark picture is the landing which is almost all wood--it has 5 doors, and the built-in linen closet, with little strips of wall in between which we painted a golden color. (Colors don't show up very well in the pix)















The lighting Fixture is for my sewing room, from Rejuvenation. And the photo which follows that exact sewing room/office. We picked up a nice desk system and chair on Craig's list which I'll use to set up my sewing machine. It is a dark wood which goes with the woodwork really well.
It felt nice to unpack our books after 3 years--almost like getting all new stuff since we hadn't seen it in so long!

Backyard Summer Project

This was our project for the summer. Raphael scraped and cleaned a few thousand bricks that came out of our old foundation. The bricks are neatly stacked now in various parts of the yard--some as pedestals for plants, but mostly under a work table. The yard was all dirt and a big brick pile before. Spreading out redwood chips made a big change--it is now quite pleasant to sit out there. Too bad it took me 6 months to post our summer activities...

Wonderful Harvard Heights

Here is an advertisement, circa 1903, extolling the virtues of our neat neighborhood.