Home Renovations

Yes, amazingly, as promised I am actually doing a post on our interior work! Over the summer, over two months ago, I finally finally finished plastering the living room. I did all the plastering, and most of the paint removal before that, so it was supposed to be my husband's job to sand the walls. Of course, there was no attempt to sand the walls in the last two months, but eventually, we decided we should sand it together the weekend before this.

So we draped everything in plastic to avoid the dust problem we had when we stripped the paint.



We even taped up a tarp over the doorway, though with a quite weak tape that failed a few times as we worked. The draft was fun to watch, making it billow back into the dining room.



Apparently, you should use duct tape instead, next time we definitely will. Also, we probably should have know not to pile everything we had in the living room on the dining room table. As you will soon see. Here is what we had after the three or more hours of sanding (Not bad for all the grueling hours I put into getting the plaster onto the walls; electric sanders are wonderful).



Then, a bit of the way into those three hours we noticed a light snow building up behind the curtains so tried to lessen the damage by draping another tarp over all our things on the dining room table.


We had had the forethought to close the doors to the bathroom and two bedrooms, however...



As you can see from the fog of dust, it might have been a good idea to shove some towels into the inch wide opening between the bedroom doors and the floor. The bathroom came through pretty much unscathed though because there's a raised lip of wood to cover the edge of the tile floor, pretty much eliminating that gap.

Then, there was this weekend. Starting at noon yesterday and working leisurely until about 6 o'clock tonight, we finally painted our front room. Let us please remember where we started.

Now, finally, a finished room - viewed from sunset, of course, but you can just see the light subtle green.



This makes 4 out of 6 rooms painted, but this one feels the real accomplishment. This is the only room that has been properly replastered and sanded. There were a dozen large cracks throughout the room, now all completely invisible.

Maybe this will make us more eager to get the rest of the rooms done.

Stress Relief

These past two months have been filled with stress after stress. First, my husband, the OUSD teacher, received his pink slip, along with 1/3 of all the teachers in Oakland. About a month ago, that slip was rescinded, but two weeks before that I found out that my near senile boss had advertised my job. Not that I was looking for jobs at the time, I was good at my position and enjoyed the work, the ridiculous old man accidentally showed me proof of the ad himself. One of my many roles was to draft the occasional e-mail for him, so he asked me to do that for him on that Monday and I see a response to his ad at the top of his inbox (he's an old man who doesn't really understand e-mail). Even more shocking, two weeks later, I was able to quit for a new position in a walnut creek medical office. Again, it doesn't end there, the seemingly kinder, more level headed new boss turned out to be a completely deluded nutcase and about a million dollars in debt with no income coming in (to be brief - I could go on forever about my month with her and prove it but this is the wrong blog for that). I practically didn't stop looking for jobs because of what I saw the first day I logged into her QuickBooks.

But for the past week and a half, I've been at my new place of work - God, I hope this one will work out. I'm working for a landscape design and construction company in Berkeley - 5 Elements Design.

This could be a dream come true...! And the end of our problems...?

During all of this, I've found comfort in working in the garden and house. Next time I post, I'll try to show some of the house. It's just hard to show the slow slow progress that I've made in plastering the front room. But the garden has changed quite a bit in this month.


The lawn is firmly established, about 60%-40% grass to weeds.


About a month ago, you could see the ladybird poppies and lupine, the stars of this area.


The lupine grew shockingly fast, from a tiny 6" puff to 3 feet with blooms in two months. But it grew too large for its place, so last week I pulled it out and pruned the lavender next to it and moved it into the vacant spot.


This spot isn't shining anymore but the lavender will fill the area nicely and of course, next year the daffodils will still have room to come back up.


These two sad looking plants, I planted just next to the pink Dianthus above. I started these from seed a year and a half ago, letting them die back three and four times, not watering them, and not repotting them until a few weeks ago when I decided to finally pay them some proper attention.


Now they've gone from scrawny and sad to beautiful pink Echinacea (with a little more growing, they'll look great from every angle).


Down closer to the house and my neighbor's garage, the wildflowers are completely faded now. I've cleared most of this already and collected tons of seed. I'll have more wildflowers next year but positioned around perennials so that I don't have totally wasted looking areas next year.


Already the perennial monkeyflower is starting to fill in that bare area. There's also a very small buckwheat and milkweed that aren't quite photo ready. I've left just one of the wildflowers standing because of the peculiar way the bees were acting around it...


I think this is Gilia capitata... and well the bees apparently like to use it as a bed... or drugs den. I can see them there everyday, completely stoned and oblivious to my presence. I can move the flower heads around, brush the bees themselves a little and all they do is twitch their wings or move their legs a bit.


Then, there's the new bed next to the garage which has filled in very nicely. The trellises are completely covered by the nasturtium vines I bought from Annie's.


From this angle, the vines are just what I wanted - a beautiful pop of yellow on blue. However...


The lower you look the worse it is. I've decided I'll be changing the vines next year, I really love the reddish pink bougainvillaeas or maybe a clematis. But no more yellow, it sounded nice and looks good up close but from far away it looks too much like yellowing leaves.


The little hostas are flowering quite prettily, not sure what type they are.


Geranium pyrenaicum 'Bill Wallis'.


Then there's our first attempt at edibles. My husband has a great weakness for rhubarb pie so here we are. One month ago, we had this.


Now we have this! What ridiculously huge leaves. The two lettuces I tried between them, I've ripped out now - turns out they were a bitter type, not something I'd like.


We've put the half wine barrel up in the back right of the yard where we plan on putting more edibles someday. Then, two weeks ago, I dug up and divided a very old Salvia leucantha and planted 5 large divisions along the fence here. I can just imagine how beautiful the line of them will look next year.

Focusing on the Lower Garden

Just over a month ago, I was so proud of myself when I was able to post that I had cleared the grass from the island in the middle of our lower garden.



A months worth of evening gardening since and a few hours of rototilling donated by my husband, we've completely transformed the lower area. First we cleared the area next to the house and garage.


Then, we cleared the area past what will be the dry creekbed and spent hours flattening, weeding, rototilling and compacting the middle round patch for Patrick's lawn. It works well in my design, so I like it but it is definitely Patrick's lawn (he has to mow it).


This picture was May 30th and carefully examining the seeded patch every night after work, we found sprouts on June 6th.


This is Eco-Lawn grass seed that we bought from Annie's Annuals which is supposed to be less thirsty than a regular lawn. Also, from pictures around the web it does look like it will be a pretty grass left long. That besides how soft and thin the blades seem to be.


By June 8th we had grass that we could actually see a bit from a distance. And as of tonight, it looks like the picture below. The only bit we're disappointed with is that the one bag of seed we bought wasn't enough for this small bit of grass. Maybe it should have been but we still have a bunch of bare spots so we bought another bag over the weekend and seeded those spots again.


Now to the details. The foothill penstemon has been in bloom for some time now. I'm just in love with its beautiful blue. The one I have planted is a bit scraggly this year but I'm sure next year it will be much fuller.


My wildflower patch with wrinkled apricot poppies, five spots, and tidy tips were at their height a few weeks ago.


But are now acting floppy and not shining so much. On the plus side, I'm starting to collect seeds for next year. Below you can see what tidy tips seeds look like. Apparently, the tidy tips seeds I separated out from the mixed bag last winter were the ones I thought were yarrow. Oh well, I prefer tidy tips and next year I'll have thousands it seems.


While the wildflowers fade away, the two Agastache I planted next to them are in a wonderful full bloom that should only get better in the coming months.


Agastache Rupestris


Agastache aurantiaca 'Coronado'


Then we have the gorgeous ladybird poppies. God, I've wanted these for two years, ever since I first saw them at Annies, they are so beautiful. And finally I have two of my own. Sadly, they are supposed to be annuals so I'll do my best to try and collect seeds from them.


Behind the first picture, you can see some blue flax, now in bloom as well. Almost all of these planted only a month ago.


There's one other big change to the lower garden. In just a couple of hours and after one swipe of rototilling by my husband, I cleared the area next to the garage and created a small planting bed framed with some redwood 4x4s.



Hostas and lady ferns (a bit sun bleached but this is the shadiest part of the garden just now)


Some Astilbe, finally sending up flower stalks after two years.


And for our two trellises, we're trying Nasturtium (Tropaeolum peregrinum) "Canary Creeper" which started out too short to attach to the trellises.


But with just a month, they're halfway up the wall. There are also quite a few other plants along the garage but I'll go into that later when I have nice pictures of them.


And finally after sitting on our back steps for two or three weeks, I went on a planting spree this Sunday and put 10 of the suffering little guys in the ground. There are some Gaura that had reseeded in my parents Antioch yard that I rescued, two blue gentian sages, two more foothill penstemons, a milkweed to hopefully bring in the Monarchs, Galvezia speciosa "Island Bush Snapdragon", a Monardella villosa "Coyote Mint" and lastly my second Ceanothus 'Dark Star'. I feel bad for leaving that one so long; a lot of the leaves had gone yellow, but I'm sure that I got it in the ground within enough time for it to recover.