Who needs contractors when you have parents?

My parents - the best parents on Earth - took a week of their vacation time to come all the way out to California and work on the house. Their good ol' midwestern attitude towards work meant that the two of them got more done in 5 days than Luke and I could hope to achieve in a whole week (it does help that they didn't have the little issue of having to work getting in the way). Mom artfully stripped the kitchen of all wallpaper and (the 4 layers of) glue, got rid of the wood panelled wainscoating, and painted out all of the dark, dreary mustard and aqua paint with a refreshing shade of white. Dad did what he does best and played in the yard by tearing out most of the stone clad "gardens" that lined the house and removing creepy, spindly bonzais. Dad and Luke got to swing hammers into walls as we knocked out the master closet to enlarge the bathroom, while I painstakingly took out the 3rd bedroom carpet and dried-out, crusted, and flaking padding under said carpet. Home Depot also came to replace windows at the front of the house. All in all, it was quite a productive week! Before and after pictures forthcoming.

Let there be light

What a busy weekend! Luke successfully took down the shed that was attached to the garage, effectively expanding the backyard by 1/3. Meanwhile, I was hard at work gardening, ridding the neighbors of their front row view of dead bushes, flowers, and weeds. What I learned this weekend: having a lemon tree, 3 orange trees, a cherry tree, a fig tree, a plumb tree, and 2 black / red raspberry bushes is all fine n' good in theory, but they drop a lot of fruit. I am forever sworn off of oranges after rooting through, picking up, and discarding rotten oranges fallen from grace and lounging on our lawn. My new form of torture is orange-scented... anything.

Be gone, ugly awning

Mold, mold, moldedy mold

I wasn't sure what kind of relationsihp I'd have with mold, but as suspected, I discovered tonight that it is, indeed, gross. Sink and tub in the bathroom turned out to be fine and not a problem to tear out (with the exception that the tub weighs a metric ton... how on Earth do you go about lifting that??), but the toilet leaked. Heavily. So the mold was everywhere. The good news is that it's all now nicely prepared to have the mold guys come in an get rid of it. The bad news is that we haven't decided on a design for the bathroom so it will remain in demo state until we can.

The Bathroom Has Begun

Sound the horns - tonight we got to start on the renovation! First up: the main bathroom. While it was basking in a glow of glory with avocado green, yellow, and chocolate brown, we decided it was the perfect candidate for our first project. Highest priority is fixing the floor, which is damp from leaks. Note to DIY'ers - linoleum is just as much fun to take up as you imagine it to be (which, for most of you, would be "not very"). I had my first proud moment when I - not Luke, ahem - figured out a clever way to unstick 60-year old linolum from a very glue happy base. Mwahahahah. I would tell you what that tactic is, but then I'd be required to know the name of the tool that I used, which I don't.

What I learned tonight: linoleum can be cut with an Exacto knife, not all things that look like tile actually ARE tile (we had some strange plastic imitation instead... which turned out to be exceedingly easy to remove), there is a layer of floor between linoleum and sub-floor that isn't particularly high on the "easy to remove" list, and to prevent lots of creaking in floors, one can choose to use lots of staples in laying the floor. Which, consequently, means that renovating a floor requires one to remove lots of staples.

Our project manager Lucy the Dog drove us hard, but there's still more to do. Tomorrow's project: finish removing the Purgatory of flooring (that layer of floor between linoleum and sub-floor), remove toilet and sink, try not to sit on any staples we missed, remember to bring the ShopVac, and come up with a better plan for dinner. Stay tuned!

One step closer...

What they don't tell you about buying a house (especially in the current economy...) is how HARD it is to get through the loan process. Despite the pain, we have FINALLY submitted our downpayment today! If all goes well, we may even be ripping out bathroom floors by next week - get ready!

Our Willow Glen Ranch Renovation!

We are starting this blog to detail the journey we will be undertaking in buying our first home, which just happens to be a fixer-upper. We chose location over all else, and we got a real basket case of a house, but in a great neighborhood. We look forward to sharing our stories and adventures on the house's history, and our exploits at attempting to do most of the restoration and "modernization" ourselves. That's right, we are all about the DIY!