Showing My Baby Part II

It’s cool! It’s working. 

I’ve created the “place” and ways to have privacy and also happily rub shoulders when they want. TJ keeps standing in front of the chimney and new upper cabinet, saying, “ This is just what it should look like. I keep forgetting it hasn’t always been here.” 

As we show the place to potential housemates,they smile as they walk through the house. Some have actually expressed that they can feel how I’m aware of their needs. (And our own, too actually, but they don’t know see that as much.) Places are “sweet,"  and special to them- like the little laundry room. And the upper deck that they can sit in even when it rains. “Oooh, can I do a veggie garden in pots up here?!” she asks. “Yes, it’s wonderfully sunny and veggies will love it up here.” I reply. 

They’re putting themselves into it.

The laundry room has an ironing board and folding area, and we hung a clothes rack right over the heating vent for "air drying." 

I found our table

...well, actually, I made our harvest table! It comes next Wednesday. And it really feels like mine.

I picked the table top and the legs - well TJ had a say and more than agreed to what I wanted. It's a 7-foot long wooden door from an old factory made of Siberian pine, with an unknown history in a few repaired patches. You just want to run your hands over the dark stained boards. To make it into a true harvest table top, they encase the door with perpendicular "breadboard ends."

I read somewhere that Siberian Pine wood has excellent resonance qualities and is used to make pianos, harps and guitars. Fits our family!

I told the store, which happened to be closing for good the next weekend, where I wanted the legs placed so we had the right amount of overhang (to look like our vision of a harvest table ), and still offer enough leg room at the ends. We pulled 3 ladder-back chairs up to another similar sized table and slid three chairs between the leg placement we measured. They will easily slide underneath. Eight people would fit around our table comfortably.

A silverware drawer in the skirt would've been just perfect, but we are getting a custom assembled table to my specifications using the inventory still left. At less than half price, I can't really complain. In fact, it feels very much like the best part of when I redesigned old broken homes: I used the essential good bones that were there, but made it into something fresh and wonderful.

We paid, set a delivery date and headed back to our car in the heavy rain, excitedly talking about our table. Just as he started the engine, I told TJ to wait, and ran back to the store. "Don't finish the legs or skirt," I told them. " I'll do that." I'd seen many wonderful, distressed milk paint tables while doing my farm table research. 

I don't need another task in all this project planning,shopping and designing, and I have no idea what I'm getting myself into figuring out how to use lye-based milk paint. But now that I've had a direct hand in creating this focal point to our new way of living, I just need this table to be really ours. I want my hand in the table's history too.

The Lair Redux

Moved our bed to the other side of the room yesterday and turned it 90 degrees. 

You have to understand that we are already sleeping in the old family room downstairs behind the kitchen. It isn't really a bedroom. It was an add-on in the 60's,  and as is typical of the rest of that upgrade, it has exterior siding on its walls. 

But...

It's very removed and private, away from the kids upstairs, and it even has a little sink/bar in one corner. Years ago, I convinced TJ it would be a lovely removed boudoir. And if we put a simple room divider that had one side as a closet, and the other a bookshelf, we'd create a sitting area as well, That seating looked out onto a small enclosed piece of our yard that we could make into a garden.

We've loved the realm we created, if not the finishes in the room. The room divider offered some soundproofing from the street noise beyond the "meditation garden."

So the current move: Now we face the small garden. Our sleeping space is really tighter, but it feels intimate with a view, and I really like it. I specifically wanted to remove the bed from possible view through the doorway since it's to a common area (the kitchen). Now it feels very private, even though it’s in the same room as before. (Gotta clean up that garden now though.)

We hung up  our private lair pictures, ones we haven't used in years. They found their own perfect wall.

....Now if only I can figure out where to put the emergency food storage we’ve store in corner of our new bedroom. Staring at it really changes one’s mood.

In Search of an Honest Man

Okay so we’ve determined a miniscule budget on purpose - $25,000 -  to be able to add three housemate to our household!

I’m determined to save the rest for my business' growth. I also need to see if I can really squeeze the dime as we all must these days. DIY time wherever possible. We will do all the priming, painting and finishes and reuse everything we can. Good for the planet, good for the pocketbook.

But still we must move a laundry, split the great room into new work studios  for TJ and for me, add a new bath and master closet, renew an upstairs tub, add cabinetry and another fridge to kitchen for the housemates, relocate hallway and pantry storage, add a new deck railing and roof, and spruce up the outside. Oh, and also cordon off a section of the backyard with a low fence for our pooch Dash, so a housemate doesn't inadvertently let him out of our gate when they park their bikes. Oh, a lockable bike rack too.


( add planned AFTER house sketch)

I no longer have the shoulders or knees for rehab myself though I tell you, I yearn to do a little tear-out. Oh the pleasure of a wrecking bar. You can’t imagine how just plain good it feels to yank a wall down! Plus I no longer have my hubby General Contractor/builder to coordinate the order of workmen. Or a sense of what this all would cost here in the Bay Area. I need a GC. 

Sigh.