Aesthetics vs. Environment: Tree Removal

I feel completely guilty about it, but I've LOATHED the two huge Junipers that obscured the front of my house since I bought it. I really appreciate how old and big they are, but I hate Junipers. They're ugly and cheap looking. I also have not-so-nice feelings about the cheap, purple plum tree in front of the house. And that's the one I SHOULD like because it's totally goth. But those purple trees just remind me of low-income landscaping. Not to mention the off-center placement in the yard.

This is how my house looked the day I bought it.

Anybody who talked to me when I first got the house knows I was always complaining about the ugly trees and talking about how eventually I'd get them taken out, despite feeling bad about removing old trees. The one good thing about Junipers is they don't wreck the pipes; I guess certain trees are notorious for the roots growing in to the pipes and the foundation. Juniper roots don't attack like that.

Well I remember this very vividly because it was my last day of work, September 16, 2009. I left work at 11am super stoked to be free of my job after 7 years and I went for a very uncrowded lunchtime surf at 11th Street in Del Mar. When I got out around 1:30 and got to my car, I noticed I had a voicemail from my friend Krista. She wanted to let me know not to be surprised the next morning when two guys with chainsaws showed up at my door. She was sending them over to cut down my trees!

What a friend, right? Well, she's actually a landscape designer (Krista Percival Landscape Design in Del Mar, CA) and we're doing a service swap. She gets a website, I get a front yard! And she decided the trees had to go (I would have talked about removing them for a year before I actually did it).

So Thursday morning two men and a big truck with a wood chipper showed up and went to work:

Part way through: the middle tree is gone and half of the Juniper on the left.

By the end of the day, it was done:

I admit it looks pretty pathetic now. The trees annoyed me because they hid it, but they also made it appear bigger because you couldn't see it. And now I notice the color more and it's horrible.

But I've put all my faith in Krista. I may be able to do graphic design, but I'm clueless about landscaping. I don't even have vision. But I know she'll make it look amazing because I've seen all the before and after pictures of the other properties she's done. And I'm pretty lucky - she works with really high end clients. I'm honored my little Rolando bungalo is getting her attention!

This week she sent me over a first draft of a rendering for my design. I told her I want a porch and no grass and that I'm probably going to paint my house yellow becuase I've always wanted a yellow house. She's come up with this neat Mediterainian inspired design:
How pretty will my house look in a few months?!?

Mid-Century Modern Furniture

I absolutely love mid-century modern furniture. I check craigslist on almost a daily basis, just to see what's out there. But over the past few years, I've already bought almost all new furniture so I don't need anything new. And it's all dark wood, where mid-century is typically a lighter color so to buy a new piece here or there would really make it mis-matched.

I do however need to buy two things: a couch and some bookshelves/cabinets for the office now that I don't have built ins.

I lucked out and found an awesome set of shelves on Overstock.com that have a mid-century feel with their shape and the spindle legs, but comes in a two-tone dark wood design that goes with my existing furniture. They're made by Sitcom Furniture who is quickly becoming my favorite furniture maker. I bought two of their office shelves from their now-discontinued Audrey furniture collection, for about $200 each.

Audrey Office Shelf by Sitcom Furniture

I also found a cool couch at Macy's from their Corona collection, but have been sitting on the fence about it. And I'm glad I did, because while I was shopping at Underground Furniture in Pacific Beach, I saw a couch in the window that I fell in love with. I had actually seen this couch online and not liked it at all. But in person, it's the perfect couch for me. Has mid-century lines, is totally comfortable, made out a of good fabric, and comes in three cool colors (brown, green, and a burnt red) and is reasonably priced.

Jordan couch by Sitcom Furniture

It'll probably take me two more months to jump off the deep end and actually BUY a couch, but at least I've found two I like and just need to suck it up and throw down the cash. It's always scary spending more than $500 at one time on a single thing!

I've been eying the Enzo bedroom set at Jerome's as well. I never expected to find something cool at Jerome's; they're very traditional. but this set has a cool shape and I was actually surprised by how much I liked the walnut and cream two-tone veneer. I don't really like the headboard, but I like the frame. If I bought a new bedroom set though, that would feel like a total splurge. I need a frame for my bed, but I have perfectly nice dressers already. But not cool like these =) Although the drawers are on the shallow side which is helping me keep my pocketbook closed. For now...

Before & After: Painted Rooms

I'm baaaaack....Sadly, I've been sitting on this post since July. I've just been THAT lazy about getting the pictures cropped. Because what use is a before and after post without pictures? I could paint you beautiful pictures with my words, about the richness of the green in my hallway, the warmth of the cappaccino in the living room, the coolness of my new bedroom walls. But really, it's not like you guys are Stevie Wonder. You've got eyes and you want to use them for more than reading. So let's begin, shall we?

It's been about 10 years since I've painted. And now that I'm done (practically) painting my whole house, I hope it'll be another 10 before I have to do it again!

Things I've learned:

• You ALWAYS needs to do two coats. Even if you primed. Even if you're painting white on white. A-L-W-A-Y-S two coats. Boo.
  
• Painting trim & crown moulding blows.
• You can reuse painters tape. Yes, I'm that frugal.
  
• Wash your rollers and brushes yourself if you have people helping you that way you can only blame yourself if they don't get cleaned well enough to reuse (sorry, Stephen).
• Don't paint the same weekend a killer surf swell comes in. Surfing twice a day plus painting for 5 hours in between surf sessions leads to immobility.

Amber's Painting Bootcamp
Before we get to the pics, let me take a minute to whine about how sore and exhausted I am! Like I said above, I surfed a ton while I was painting. Southern California got a rare, extremely good summer swell the weekend I had dedicated to painting (remember, I started this post around July 27th, for the surfers reading, that's when we got the super awesome swell in for a few days). So my painting weekend was more like a bootcamp workout (I assume; I've never worked out).

Saturday & Sunday:
9-11:30ish Surf Black's Beach, then climb back up the 1/4 mile cliff by the Torrey Pines Glider Port
1-5:30pm paint, paint paint. I already knew painting was hard on the arms, but it's just plain painful after paddling against a current for hours. Plus stepping up and down off the step-stool added a whole extra level of physical endurance to the process. I bet by the end of the weekend I'd done several hundred steps.
6-8pm Surf Black's. Paddle, paddle, paddle, catch my first overhead wave. Haul exhausted butt up cliff.

I was physically exhausted all weekend and by Monday the actual pain started to set in when I woke up and couldn't really move.

The Living Room
Team Kelly came over on Saturday to help me with the living room. They kicked ass! Hayden is a SUPER fast painter and taper. Hayden in action:


And Kristen...well, Kristen looks cute when she's sweaty. See:

And she does excellent clean up work. (she paints good too!)

Thanks to them I was able to get a first coat on the living room and did the second coat myself on Sunday. Did the baseboard trim during the week. Here's the final result:

BEFORE
Cream walls. Blah. Not terrible. Bot not terribly pretty either.

AFTER

The Breakfast Nook
I took Monday off and did the nook myself (you'll remember Stephen helped me tape and prime this room previously).

BEFORE (way before...the wallpaper is still up!)

AFTER

Mater Bedroom
I did this room on my own. Walls Sunday and Monday. Trim Monday and Tuesday. I'm so excited to not have to look at the primed walls anymore (it was primed for 5 weeks)!

BEFORE

AFTER (yeah, you can't really tell the color, but it's one of my favorites in the house)
AFTER (night time, color looks different)

So I did those 3 rooms at the end of July. Then I had to wait for payday so I could buy more paint and tackle the rest of the house.

Kitchen
I picked this green mostly because I like how it looks next to the blue in the nook when you look that direction. The whole kitchen needs to be redone (I want to sand and stain the cabinets a dark walnut and replace the gold, blingin' hardware). I'm a little mad because I bought the wrong paint. I got a semi-gloss instead of the satin which is less shiny. So I might have to repaint. Luckily there's hardly any wall and it's pretty quick. Except I have to tape again... =(

BEFORE

AFTER

Hallway and Trim
Here's the hallway. Not much to say, but I really love this color! And this was probably the worst because of all the doors and trim (I still have to paint all the doors and half the trim; but it's primed).

BEFORE (waaaay before, there's still carpet!)

AFTER

Guest Bedroom
I'm on the fence about what I did with this room. I went out on a limb and bought some dark colors and it's just really masculine and makes the room feel smaller. But the light bedding and furniture tones it down a bit. And every male that's visited always comments on the color of this room and how much they like it, but say nothing about the rest of the house =)

BEFORE

AFTER

So that's it. I only have one room left, the office. I'm leaning toward orange/something warm.

I really like how all my rooms have turned out, except the guest room but it's grown on me the past few months. Paint makes a big difference. Plus it just makes it feel more like mine. Particularly since I did 85% of it on my own.

A River Rock Runs Through It

This weekend I did something I've heard other people talk about, but never actually did myself: yardwork.

I woke up at 7:45 to the sound of the neighbor up on the hill's dog pushing his food bowl around on cement and barking. He did it again the next morning too. Doggie wants his breakfast apparently. Amber wants to sleep in. But it worked out well because that meant I was out in the yard by 8am, while it was still cool outside.

For someone who hates creepy crawlies, you think I would have been smart and worn something besides flip flops on my feet since I spent a total of about 10 hours climbing around in the corners of the yard, clearing out underbrush. And rocks. Lots and lots of river rock. it's clear that at some point, somebody put a lot of thought and time into this backyard. Then some lazy f*ck let it all go to hell.

There are a lot of spaces in my backyard. I focused on one of the at-one-time landscaped areas behind the rock border along the back fence.

Before.

After. Look, there was a walkway burried in there!

In clearing out the years of build up from leaves, I discovered someone had put a lot of river rock in this area which had become half burried.

So I dug all the rocks out. I'm going to guess this is at least two hundred pounds of rock, probably more. Because each of the smaller containers was too heavy for me to lift easily.

I'm a rock gardener. Or a rock pirate and this is my rock booty.

I also finished up the work I did on my lovely dirt plot last weekend. My skate friends want to build a mini ramp back here. Tempting....but I think I'll put in some grass instead.

Before.

After.

My Guest House. You're welcome to stay any time you want. It might be haunted though.