Try and Knock THIS Fence Over, El Nino!

This one is short and sweet.

In January, El Nino knocked over 40 feet of my fence and half of the gate between my driveway and garage.

My beat down fence after the storm.

In February, I got a new, roid raging fence that I DARE El Nino to knock over again!

It's nothing fancy, but instead of wood posts which rot, it has metal posts. Suck it termites and weather!

Metal posts. My new pillars of strength.

I had Carl, the handyman who did all the remodeling on the house next door, build it. I only had to pay for half the cost of the fence because it was on a property line, so the neighbor had to pay for the other half. And I had to pay for all of the new gate. We decided to relocate the gate to the front corner of my breakfast nook which I like because now my windows aren't quite as easy to get to.

My new fence, paid for in full by my awesome insurance company, Liberty Mutual.

Free labor, free furniture, and robots

Cheap Labor Rules
My backyard truly is a sight to behold. It's so beautiful that I want to be able to see it all the time.


Clearly, the only way to accomplish that is to install landscape lighting! That's why you see that person bent over in the back - that's my manscaper, Matt. He installed the lights I bought but was too lazy to do anything with. He did the labor and we called it my Christmas gift (yes, this is another post about something that happened months ago).

Ok, ok. You caught me. My backyard is crap. But it's dark and scary back there at night. THAT'S why I wanted the lights. They light up the walkway and the back perimeter so I can keep my eyes peeled for boogie men.

Manscaper proudly finishes his light installation job (you can see two of them near the tree).

I actually will be getting a proper backyard. I met with my friend Krista (check out Krista Percival Landscape Design) to talk about the plan she drew up for my backyard living space. I'm pretty excited about it! It's going to be for relaxing and entertaining, with a firepit, and a cozy place for my hammock and string lights, and a cool wave pattern in the ground, and plants in bright pots. No grass. Now all I have to do is stay motivated and get the work done....

Living Room Updates
I bought an area rug for the living room after about 6 months of lusting over it. It's just about the sweetest thing you've ever seen. I've gotten a lot of compliments on it. Most of all from Jackson, who loves to use it as a horizontal scratch post. Boo.

Speaking of Boo...check out my Robot Kitten

Here's the view of my rug from above. I took a lot of pictures of it. It was like area rug porn.

I also got a new dining table set. Well, new to me. My buddy Joe and his wife Holly who used to live up here but moved to Costa Rica to run their surf camp were tired of storing stuff, so they gave it to me. For free. I have nice friends!

It looks a lot like the one I already had, but this one actually is adult sized, not dollhouse sized. Plus the leather chairs are really comfy. And just in case I ever actually decide to cook, invite people over, AND make them eat at the table, it has a leaf to make it longer. That's how I know I'm a grown up: my dining table has a leaf.

Guest Bedroom Goodness
Speaking of free, my entire guest bedroom, from the furniture, to the mattress, to the bedding, curtains and accessories was all given to me by friends as well. I must have been really nice in my last life.

This is THE most comfortable bed. I like to take my naps in here (so does Boo). Bedding courtesy of Joe and Holly. Bed and frame courtesy of Erika and Jerry.

Mirror, curtains, and candle holders courtesy of Joe and Holly. Dresser from Erika and Jerry. The stereo is mine. But I didn't even buy that. Christmas gift from my aunt and uncle about 9 years ago.

Another angle. Just trying to sell you on my guest bedroom so you'll come visit. I know when a lot of people say their "guest bedroom", they mean the office with their college futon and all the junk that doesn't fit anywhere else in the house. Not me!

Tile, Chicken Breasts and Candy Hands: Adventures in Bathroom Floor Installation

I knew when I bought my house, I wanted to replace the old linolium floor with a tile floor. Waaaay back in October, I finally did. And by "I", I mean my buddy Max and my money.

My bathroom floor before

Max and I went to Home Depot one evening and got all the materials he'd need:

• 36 sqr feet of 2x2 octogon tile sheets
• hardy board
• tile spacers
• replacement baseboard
• waterproof tile chaulk
  
• tile cement, grout sealer, grout scraper, grout spounge (these I all got from Matt since he had them from his kitchen remodel)

Interlude: Everyone who gave me a Home Depot gift card at my house warming last summer: thank you!! You paid for the materials for this project =)

While Max demoed the existing floor and removed the toilet (ewwww...that alone is worth paying someone to do this for you) I went over to Arizona Tile off Morena Blvd, all by myself like a big girl, to pick out my grout. I ended up going with light sliver. I saw a lot of people use this in the online research I did and it looked nice against white tile.

Here's what the subfloor looked like once Max got all the linolium up. The wood around the toilet hole was rotted so he replaced that with plywood.


Even though I was paying him, I felt guilty that while Max slaved away, I laid on the couch reading for about 5 hours.

Max installing the hardy backer over the freshly laid plywood subfloor.

The floor after day one with the grout applied but not wiped away yet.

It only took two days to install the floor.

My new bathroom floor.

Close up of the tile.

My floor was completed on Halloween. My bandmates and I had a party that night. Here's my costume (which I just noticed, totally matches my bathroom):

Chicken Breasts. I was pretty proud of this - came up with it all on my own.

Max came to the party. Best make shift costume ever.

Alex (Swine Flu), Max (Candy Hands) and Matt (Ugly Face)

El Nino Ate My Fence

I have a lot of house blogging to catch up on and I had hoped my first post of the year would be to tell you about all the projects i've worked on the past few months. Instead I guess I'll tell you what my next, unplanned, project will be: a new fence!

The beginning of a week-long El Nino storm rolled in to Southern California yesterday afternoon. By 3pm my entire street looked like the Grand Rapids; it was flooded from sidewalk to sidewalk (I mean up over across the sidewalk, up to everyone's lawns). The rain slowed and by 6pm, the street was just creek gutters. Then it was calm all night and in the morning.

While i was at work, the rain and wind turned on again, with wind up to 21 miles an hour. When I pulled into my driveway at 3:45, all I could do was laugh when I saw this:


Some of the posts that were in the ground, were snapped in half and some had pulled out iwth the cement they had been sunk into. Luckily, the fence was just short enough to miss taking out my neighbor's 3 cars. In fact, I went over there and they hadn't even heard it fall down earlier! They were nice and helped me knock down the last section that was about to come down (it's still up in the above picture which I took before they helped me).

For reference, here's what my fence used to look like:

I called my agent at Liberty Mutual to see if my homeowner's insurance covers this. It does, but I have to pay a $600 deductible. For some reason that's not stressing me out. Probably because I'm excited that I'll get to get a new, slick gate across the driveway. Although it is a little ironic that after 5 months of debating on this area rug, I finally bit the bullet and ordered it last night because it was on sale. Doh. Picture for those too lazy to click on the link (you can also see it in the living room of the current season of Biggest Loser - I think it's season 9):

The bursts are made out of raised ribbon.

However, who knows how long until the new fence is actually up? I'll probably have my friend Krista's carpenter come do it since he's reasonable and he built her an awesome barn door style gate. But the adjuster might not come out until Thursday and the rains are continuing through Friday. I guess for those of you who know where I live, you now have open access to play Super Mario Brothers on the hot tub Nintendo in the back yard =)