Last gasps of summer

One last round

Just when I thought visitors were all gone, we had one last unexpected set on Sunday. Alberto went to pick up his cousin and aunt who flew into to Tijuana coming home from Culiacan and on their way back to the Bay Area where they live. There is no direct flight to San Jose from anywhere in Mexico, so Alberto volunteered to pick them up at the TJ airport and take them to the SD airport, where they’d get another flight. Well, the border wait was so long they missed their connecting flight in San Diego and presto! We had more house guests for a night.

Not that I am complaining – I’m just tired :) It’s a lot of work to have houseguests for a month!

Kitchen Update

If you thought it was done, you thought wrong. We have been stuck on a cabinets in but no floor or countertop phase for several weeks now. Well, we finally got someone to call us back about the countertop – can you believe they’re not coming out until August 6? What craziness. I originally called and started this whole process on July 2.

For the floor, Alberto is starting to lay the rest of the tile on the floor in the downstairs, after jackhammering all the old tile up on Saturday. He's is about halfway through the kitchen and trying to get it done before the weekend. He's going to have a lot of work to do, because he is just laying the tile, not grouting or sealing yet. I don't know how he can do this work everyday...it's too hard for me to even watch.

Backyard Update

The flowers in the back are doing about 50/50 – half are looking really good, and half are not faring so well. It’s the hottest time of the year here, so maybe that has something to do with it. We are continuing to water every morning and night on the same schedule, and I am trying to give them love and a little miracle gro. Cross your fingers that they’ll make it!

We had a guy literally show up at our house who could cut down trees on Monday. What luck! Our neighbors (the nice ones) decided to cut down their pine tree and so halfway through him cutting it down (he was up in the tree so he was overlooking my yard), I came out and inquired about what he was doing. His name was Panapa. That's all I know about him. He told me he was cutting down my neighbor's tree and asked if I needed any trees cut down too. Woo hoo! Perfect timing. I had just been talking to Dalilah (Alberto's cousin) about it the day before. I got him to do both the slanting tree and the stump coming up and straight to the back for one low price. It’s amazing how much space there is now in the yard. It’s really transformed. Time to get to work on that area too!

Other items

Alberto has decided that the sickness Stephanie and I had was because of the sun. This is because I got sick again for a few days, and I had happened to work in the sun for a while right before. Dulce, one of our nieces that worked with me, got sick too. Not the bad stomach part, just the ‘skin fever’. So he has decided that it is because of the sun and I am too fragile to work outside. I can’t be out there more than an hour or so before he starts getting after me to go indoors. As a result, I still haven’t put mulch down that I bought, and the hill is getting overrun with weeds again. Drat! Never enough time…

Von Bodungen Visit, week 2

Did you miss us? Things got way too busy to sit down and write about it. Here's where we left off:

Steph and I spent the next few days sick as dogs

and mourning all the fun and happy moments

we should have had in San Francisco with Amanda.

In truth, it was probably good that we were resting anyway, we had done quite a lot the week before!

We took it easy, and just went out one morning, to stroll on the beach and explore what was happening at the Oceanside pier.

We saw a guy giving surf classes to a mother and daughter, and lots of people fishing on the pier as usual.

It was a very breezy day, almost chilly, but it felt great to get out of the house and clear the cobwebs from our brains.

When we finally did feel better we went to Jazzercise, and you know the first thing they told us? Lots of people have been getting sick that go to that studio. All of a sudden the light bulb came on for us - Jazzercise

was the only thing that we had done without the guys, and had to have been where we got whatever our virus was. I made sure to wash my hands after working out that day, just to be on the safe side.

With Mark back in New Orleans and Alberto back to work, Stephanie and I set ourselves about painting the kitchen and planting flowers in the back yard.

The boys had done the perimeter work with the trees and the bougainvillea, and it was time for us to fill in the middle.

Stephanie joked that our hill looked like a cemetary because I had placed all the potted flowers right where I wanted them to go in the ground - what do you think?

I found that a little creepy, so I was happy to finally put them in the dirt!

It was a great sense of accomplishment to get it all in the ground!

Here we are, celebrating being finished!:

That weekend, Steph and I were back at the beach to catch some rays, and drink some mudslides!

It was a beautiful day at the beach, and we really enjoyed just doing absolutely nothing after climbing up and down the hill in the backyard, and bending, reaching and stretching to paint in the kitchen.

We saw a lady with an iguana, and she was taking him into the surf! We decided that the iguana didn't like that too much, because he writhed around like he was trying to survive in the cold surf!

Then I found out from Keith that there is one breed of iguana that has adapted to water and actually enjoy the ocean. Did you know that?

Last stop before Steph went home was Balboa Park. We took Dudley with us too on his first real afternoon excursion. Dudley loved it, but we wore him out!

Steph and I were a little worn out too after a few hours of walking all around the park and peering down into some of the hidden trails.

I took Steph to may favorite part of the park, right in front of the Botanical Garden, and we got a picture of her and Dudley:


Then it was back to New Orleans and the real world! Well, almost at least. I still had a few more days before I started my new job :)

N

kitchen problems

we have run into some snags with the kitchen - all the little stuff is going wrong!

There is going to be a *big* delay for the granite countertop. The company that is going to do the work can't come out to even template it until Monday....and the actual installation looks like it's going to be somewhere around the last week of July. As in, almost 1 month from now!

We're supposed to wait to install the sink/faucet and the stove until the counter has been installed, which means I have a non-functional kitchen for a very long time.

The company was completely unapologetic about such a long delay and could only say "that's how these things go"....small consolation to us since we've been without cooking appliances for a week and have eaten nothing but shit the whole time.

There is *no way* we are going to be able to go for a month without a kitchen....so I have set Alberto to work on getting the faucet installed through the plywood, and the stove hooked up. We'll just have to undo when they get around to doing the work they were hired to do!



Other small problems:

the hose on the oven doesn't fit the attachment in the wall
the ring on the disposal doesn't fit the new sink
the vent hood didn't have the lights in the box it was supposed to

all small things, of course...but discovering them back-to-back-to-back in the span of an hour makes for a stressful morning :P

Here's the biggest small problem - the refrigerator is too wide for the cabinetry! I don't know how this got overlooked or if our refrigerator is just bigger than normal or what, but the unit juts out quite a lot from the front of the cabinet housing that was installed:

See how it's crooked too? That's because Alberto laid tile inside of the housing prior to putting the fridge back in, and so now it's more elevated in the back than in the front.

Remodeling is fun...

Kitchen remodel, Part I

We are in the midst of remodeling!!!

Day 1

We started on Friday night - at 4 pm Alberto started by pulling out our nasty old oven and breaking the tile backsplash that we have.

I helped! This is the only thing I could help with, unless you count making a decision on how the lighting is going in (and then changing my mind twice, which Alberto said was definitely *not* helpful).







The old cabinets came out next, and we found a beautiful shade of dark brown behind them.

Then we realized that it's what we've been looking at all along.

These cabinets, which are original to the house, had no backs. The walls were spray painted a dark brown to match the color of the cabinets.


Oh, the early eighties.....



It was difficult to take out the sink, so Alberto just took a little axe to it and split the wood enough to pull it down and out!




We also found that the cabinets were *beneath* the tile that had been laid at some point. So, we had to tear up part of the tile floor earlier than anticipated just to be able to get the cabinetry out.

By the end of Friday night, we had ripped out the bottom cabinets and pulled out the oven, vent hood and dishwasher, but the top cabinets were still left to be pulled.

Jose was coming at 7 am the next morning to get started, so Alberto decided he'd pull out the top cabinets while Jose was installing the bottom ones.

Day 2

And that's exactly what we did!

The next morning, Jose was here at 7 am on the dot, and they went to town.

This guy is definitely experienced with all of this work, he had the cabinets out of their boxes and in position before I even made it down the stairs to brew some coffee.
And so it went, ripping out top cabinets, installing bottom cabinets, and then getting started on the top cabinetry about halfway through the day.

Of course, Dudley had to be where the action was, and decided to supervise from the cozy little spot that he found in between the new cabinets, where the new oven will eventually go -

By the end of the day, we had all the cabinets hung except for the microwave insert and the wine buffet, and we also had to put all the trim and moulding around the tops and bottoms.

Day 3

We started again at 7 am Sunday morning (today), and wasted no time.

Today, all the trim and moulding has been placed, the glass inserts and cabinet shelves have been installed, and the arch valance has been installed above the sink.

Also, the wine buffet is up and it's looking great!

They also installed the new stainless steel sink and in the plywood. We will have someone out this week to template for the granite countertop and hopefully have that in soon after.

Here's Jose, the guy who's working with us. He is very friendly, very professional, and a very fast worker! If you are in the SoCal area and needs your cabinets put up, this is your man.

We just finished our day.

We have everything done except the oven and dishwasher installation, placing the refrigerator in its new 'housing', and the plumbing for the sink. We also need to put all the handles on the doors. Once the granite counter is in place, Alberto will make the custom backsplash he is planning for me.


After that we'll paint a couple of walls, hang a couple of nice lights, and we'll have a brand new kitchen!

While all this has been going on, I have kept myself very busy by addressing a variety of mini projects that needed to be done-

*hanging pictures
*touching up paint everywhere
*pruning the peach tree
*prepping the spa for Stephanie's arrival (in 3 days!)
*getting all my flower beds back in shape
*pulling weeds out of the grass and
*reorganizing the master bathroom.



Alberto is exhausted.
I am too, but I don't think it's the same kind of exhausted. :P


I'll post another blog when it's all done so you can see the finished product!

Emptying the kitchen

I spent my first day of unemployment completely emptying the kitchen. The cupboards are bare, the utensils have been boxed and all that we have left is disposable plates and cups to get us through the next couple of days.

I'm doing this because we are on the verge of remodeling our kitchen now! What a long twisty road that has been, with designing the kitchen "of my dreams" with the guy from Home Depot to packing our garage with all the cabinetry, to picking out what countertop to order, to ordering appliances, to the minutiae to the nth degree about everything and everything else. And we still have to buy the vent hood, the sink, the faucet and fixtures, the lighting....I'm exhausted, and we haven't even demo'ed the first cabinet yet!

I am looking forward to my new kitchen though. With any luck, it will be completely done by the end of July and I'll be able to post some beautiful photos. Crossing my fingers........