The 2nd-Best Thing that Happened Memorial Day Weekend

Holly's birthday was during Memorial Day weekend. That was, of course, the best thing about the weekend. However, the 2nd place winner was a near-tie. We found a house! After scouring craigslist for many weeks and seeing house after house that just wasn't right, we were despairing of ever finding a new home to rent. We wanted to leave Milpitas for a more amenable school district, and hoped to improve Damon's commute.

Then, finally, we came upon this beauty:

It's just around the corner from a park that is adjacent to the neighborhood elementary school. It's on a quiet, shady street. There are four bedrooms, a living room, and a family room. The kitchen does not have tile countertops (the bane of my Milpitas culinary existence)! It's an older home, but has been well cared for and was in very clean condition when we saw it.

Just the day before we'd looked at a house on the other side of the same park. It only had three bedrooms, and they were just too small to accommodate two kids each. And it was at the very top of our budget. I really liked the neighborhood and the less-than-five-mile distance from Damon's work, and as we drove away I thought, "We just need a 4-bedroom in this neighborhood, but all those houses are going to be too expensive." The next morning I got on craigslist--again--and saw the listing for a 4-bedroom house that was $500/month LESS than the one we'd just seen. When I mapped its location I was amazed. It was in the same neighborhood! I couldn't believe it. It was just what I'd asked for the day before.

We saw the house that afternoon (Friday) and by Saturday afternoon--in the middle of Holly's party--the owner was calling us and asking if he could cancel his Sunday open house. He liked us. We liked the house. It was a done deal. We signed the lease on the morning of Memorial Day, and slowly began moving our things over as Damon took a truckload to work each day.

We officially moved into the house on June 8, and for the next few weeks were visited by this welcoming committee: a flock of wild parrots!!

They are mitred conures and frequented the tree above our driveway (at the top right of the house photo above) to munch on seeds most mornings.

 

We've also been warmly welcomed by the neighbors, having met more of them within our first week than we did our whole nine months in Milpitas. The next-door neighbors are original owners of the house and have lived there for 48 years! Everyone is friendly and seems to look out for each other, which is a nice change from our very private neighborhood in Milpitas where we really only knew the neighbors on either side of us.  We feel really blessed to have found such a wonderful situation. We know our many prayers were answered, and I am looking forward to a fresh start here in California.

Organize by Number

In March I put these really fun vinyl letters on the cupboards in my garage/guest room/utility room/storage room/laundry room. (We really don't know what to call it. We call it the garage, but it's not one at all. It just used to be one. Anyway, I digress.)

Now, when I need one of the children (or my husband) to go get something that's stored away, I simply say, "Go get the extra booster seat in cupboard #3," or "The sleeping bags are in the bottom of #7 and #8." I love it, and the kids think it's so much fun to find the correct number that they're actually more willing to fetch things for me.

The Grand Entrance, i.e. Our New Front Porch

We swear, we're almost finished with our house remodeling projects. The latest one has been high on my wish list for a couple of years. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as high on the priority list. It was a new front porch.

We've always had a pretty lackluster entrance to the house, as far as a front path and threshold went. When we installed sod a couple years ago we haphazardly placed a few concrete pavers with the intent of putting in a "real" path shortly. There's also been an unnaturally high step from the concrete porch up to the front door, making visitors feel rather short upon arrival. We wanted to remedy that with a new porch, but a back patio, siding, etc, etc, etc, kept jumping to the top of the to-do list.

We have made many improvements to the exterior and entrance with new siding and a new front door, but the actual porch and walkway to the door weren't much to brag about. Recall the exterior of the house as of last summer (including the sad lawn, now revived):

Finally, this spring the porch became top priority. Here's the beginning of excavation on May 1, 2010:

Digging post holes for concrete footings and clearing some sod for paver path:

Gunnar grinning as he "helps" with his prized shovel (he sleeps with it, no kidding):

Here is the beginning of the paver path. A layer of gravel is beneath the special weed-blocking cloth. The whole path had to be planned around the cover for our water meter. Bummer. Adah is screeding (leveling) some sand with a 2x4 in preparation for the pavers to be laid:

Gunnar strolling on the finished path and Damon installing joists for the porch; (ooh, and notice the "manly" new solid wood beam and posts to replace the spindly, wobbly, ugly brown ones behind):

After a week walking in the front door over a piece of plywood placed across the joists and the children balancing (and frequently falling and scraping knees) on the joists, Damon spent a whole Saturday laying the decking. Then we spent a few obsessive days keeping all traffic off the porch as we took Sunday off and then there was dew and then dirt to be hosed off and we had to wait for the wood to dry so it could be finished. Whew!

Finally, on Tuesday, June 22, Maggie and Adah helped Damon finish the porch (Isn't the wood gorgeous?):

et Voila!

Final Note: Ironically there is now an unnaturally high step up to the deck from the paver path since Damon made the pavers level with that darn water meter cover and the deck level was determined by the existing concrete pad. So...we will probably be adding an additional wooden step on the path up to the porch.

House Beautiful

After we got the keys to our house in late April 2006, we spent the next 6 weeks feverishly remodeling the interior so that we could move in on June 15. While the new inside was a vast improvement from its 1971 glory days, I was always a little disappointed that passers-by were unaware of our hard work. (I know, I'm vain.)

Here is the house as it looked in April 2006.

Here is the house in October 2007, with some new landscaping and a new cedar fence that replaced a chain link one. (If you look at the left side of the photo you can see the tail light of Damon's car. The entire front of the house was our driveway until we shortened it and created a front yard with new sod in spring 2008. See a nice photo of the grassy front yard in spring 2009 here.)

Now, 3 years later, we have a completely new exterior, of which we are very proud.

I know that since seeing our garage-door-turned-window you've all been waiting on pins & needles to see what color we painted the house, so without further ado....I give you Squirrel (gray) and Spring Moss (green):

I originally wanted a blue house, but we chose these colors to match a mosaic tile blend that may be incorporated into the house's exterior. It's fun and different and I love it. We are getting mostly positive feedback from neighbors, friends, and our parents (who have both visited this summer), but I did have the following exchange with the neighbor across the street:

Mary: So, Jillaire...do you like your colors?

Me: Yes.

Mary: Oh...well...it's different.

Yes, it is different. It's different from other houses in the neighborhood, and it's different from where we started. It's perfect.

Oh! I almost forgot to show off the new front door:

Isn't it gorgeous?

The coolest part is the old fashioned turn-key doorbell that we installed. Visitors spin the key on the door's exterior . . .

. . . and it rings the bell on the door's interior. It is a happy (and loud) announcement that someone is at the door. We hope many of you will get the chance to use it yourselves!
A note on the grass: Our city has water issues. They are building a new system from another water source, and until that is completed the mayor has ordered everyone to stop watering their lawns. It's sad, especially when I look at photos from the spring.

McMillan Bed & Breakfast: Now Open for Business

As you know from a previous post, our garage was never really a garage. When we bought our house, the garage was the first room I remodeled . . . on paper. It was going to be my laundry-sewing-scrapbooking-utility-storage-mudroom extraordinaire. Other rooms and projects took precedent, but finally last fall I really began to move towards my dream in earnest. Damon wasn't convinced that we were ready for this home improvement project, but I knew that with some paint, an area rug, and rearranged furniture, I could make a big difference without pulling out a power tool or any dry wall mud. (That can come a little later.)

I painted the walls a cheery yellow and the dull brown cabinets a crisp white. Old plywood cupboards were freecycled and new free-standing ones put up for all the food storage. More and more items have gradually been moved to the shed for storage or sent off to the local thrift store.

The dream room has evolved over time, since originally we intended to build a new garage and make it attach through the existing garage, creating a large mudroom. When we put in a front yard instead of a new garage, we began to look at our "utility room" as a potential guest room. When Damon's parents decided to visit us at the beginning of June I had already been working hard on the room, but suddenly had an imminent deadline that really motivated me.

I've scoured all our photos of the house looking for a "before" shot of the garage, but only found this one. It doesn't really show a view of the part of the garage that has become our "guest room," but it shows you the lovely paneled walls.Here is a photo I took on Friday, June 5--two days before Damon's parents were scheduled to arrive--just after moving all the furniture and other items in preparation for laying carpet. I purchased a large remnant and some padding at the warehouse of a local carpet store on Friday morning and then worked the rest of the day at getting the room ready for our guests.

Have you ever laid carpet before? It is hard work!!

. . . but so satisfying! I'm really proud of my work, and it feels great underfoot.

Here's a view of the "room" when guests are not expected. The table is ideal for crafting and sewing.

The McMillan White Salmon B&B is now ready to accommodate overnight guests in their own private room. Please visit as soon as you can!

Future improvements: drywall to cover the studs in the new wall; a Murphy bed instead of an air mattress (we already have the frame!); a privacy curtain to further divide the "guest room" from the laundry/storage area of the garage.

Demolition Days

We just can't seem to get enough of home remodeling projects. Our focus this spring has been on exterior projects.

Since we moved into our house 3 years ago, we've had a garage that wasn't really a garage. The previous owners put insulation and paneling on the walls and built cabinets that prevented the garage door from opening. We have used it for laundry and storage. Last spring we shortened our driveway and put in sod, completely wiping out the possibility of ever using the garage for actually parking a car. So, now we've finally gotten around to taking out the garage door, framing in a wall, and installing a new window. Of course, that means we need new siding so everything matches. We've also installed new front and back doors to replace the older doors that--between the two of them--shared every possible door idiosyncrasy.

In case you've forgotten (or never seen) what our house looked like before we began all our projects, here is a photo taken when we first bought the house.

And here is a photo with the new window in place of the garage door.

Here is Damon installing the new back door. It exits from the garage (which I'm trying desperately to now call the laundry room or utility room or something other than garage) onto our back patio (another one of our home improvement projects).

Gunnar likes to help.

Here is Damon ripping out the frame of the old front door. As you can see, when I say "we" installed a new wall, window, and doors, I really mean Damon installed them. (A photo of the new front door will accompany photos of the new exterior, when it's actually finished.)

Here is more of the front door installation. You can see that the siding has been removed from the house, making it a lovely styrofoam color. On that project (siding removal) it was actually we that did it. Even the kids helped by putting the old siding in the pick-up truck. I even ended up on the roof pulling the siding off from under the roof overhang.

Last Monday our friend Justin began installing the new siding. Now, if we can only decide what color to paint it....