Home Improvements

Tom’s mom Joan died a little more than a year ago. She and Tom’s dad were master providers and savers, on one public school administrator’s income, and with five children to provide for. Somehow they had enough money to comfortably get them through retirement and their senior years and various health issues. Somehow they managed to save enough over and above that, to pass on to all their children. It was such a surprise, and such an incredible gift, to receive a check from the estate after Joan passed.

We decided that we needed to talk to a financial planner to get an idea of how this gift should be spent, as we really wanted to honor it. When he heard about the state of our 1949 home, he was very adamant that we needed to invest in taking care of the structure, making sure it was both safe and protected for the coming years. Our roof was literally falling off, piece by piece. The roofing over the garage was rotting and leaking. The exterior paint was chipping and flaking, exposing the redwood structure. Both of these issues were expensive and we hadn’t been able to save a large chunk of money to get them addressed. Tom’s parents provided us the means to do so, and we are so grateful.

We chose companies owned by people who had grown up in our neighborhood, folks who appreciated the history of the area and the houses. The roofer was amazed that our interior was dry, the roof was in such bad shape. When the workers came to demolish it, they found all kinds of rot. Many boards were removed and replaced before the new roof was laid. They also replaced all our leaking, rusty, crooked gutters.

the old roof, little more than tar paper.

the garage

rotted boards

new roof. new gutters. old paint.

With the roof safe and secure, we next turned our attention to exterior paint. From my geography teacher, I had learned that paint color affects how hot your house can get. If you choose dark colors, the paint will absorb more radiation from the sun (insolation), causing the molecules to vibrate fast and creating friction, which would heat up. That heat would be moved into our home by conduction. And when I talked to the painter, he told me that darker colors fade faster and don’t last as long. The trend in our neighborhood has been painting the houses a very dark color, and using a very bright color for the front door. It looks nice, but I knew that a lighter color was the way to go. Plus, our front door was handmade by my dad and would NOT be painted! But I was sick to death of a white house and green shutters. And the trim was a sort of pukey olive color. My painter gave me several palettes that Sherwin Williams had put together for ‘California Modern Ranch Houses.’ We all voted, and ended up with a paint that is somewhere between brown and grey. The painter also commented on how our house was a ‘gem.’ That everyone is tearing down and rebuilding, or enlarging the footprint, but that our house was unique because it was historically intact. He wanted to protect the redwood, which was a-ok with me. We were on the same wavelength. The painters had to work between rainstorms (rainstorms! in May! very unusual) but we now have our beautiful new exterior. And oh, they said that our 70-year-old house had had only two coats of paint in that entire time… can you believe it?

I love the dark brown trim

You see that door? That leads to the garage. We had the most disgusting door before, both here and the one leading to the laundry room. Oh, I found a picture, here you go:

Holes had been hacked out of both doors (not by us) for animals, and they were gross. Plus do you see that hole to the left of the door? Someone hacked that out to put a dryer vent in the garage (we have ours in the laundry room where it belongs!). Tom was able to make a circle of redwood to fit most of the hole, and the painters sealed the rest up with a special putty. You’d never know that hole had been there! Anyway, Tom and I bought ‘new’ doors at Urban Ore, a great cavernous warehouse in Berkeley that has a bunch of scavenged materials from building sites that are being torn down. We found two of the exact same doors, and Tom bought new hardware, and somehow managed to get the doors to work in this old, crooked house. The painter looked at the ‘new’ doors and said “Those are $300 doors!” We paid $75 each, so we feel pretty proud of ourselves.

After these two major projects, we still have a little money left, so we made a list of all the things we want to tackle in the house, none of which are urgent issues, and many of which are aesthetic, like refinishing the oak wood floors. We couldn’t figure out what was best to do first. We plan to be in this house another 10-15 years, and we want to enjoy our time here. We see people redo their houses all the time and then sell them right away, never getting to enjoy what they’ve done. We want to increase the property value, but we also know that trying to make it right for a buyer’s taste is not the right thing to do, since they’ll probably change everything anyway. And our yard - our weird, permaculture farmy yard - is already going to skew our sale to a certain kind of person. Anyway, I remembered that the real estate agent who helped us find this house 15 years ago is married to a contractor - he helped us put in a duct system when we first moved in, for central heat and air (all it had was a wall heater). I contacted them and he agreed to come over and help us prioritize. He didn’t think it was worth it to try to add another bathroom (we only have one) since the kids will be going to college soon. He didn’t think a whole bathroom redo for our one bathroom was worth it. He thought redoing the shower might be good, and redoing the kitchen counters. When we told him about our old pipes, he thought repiping would be a good investment. And he also was very much on the side of adding solar panels, which is something we very much want to do, but weren’t sure it was worth it. I mean ecologically it is VERY worth it, what I mean is if it would improve the value of our home. He said a very vehement ‘yes’ and also said it was important to buy, not lease.

It is worth it to add that when we asked the kids what they thought we should do with the last bit of money, they both immediately said ‘solar panels.’ No hesitation. It’s good to listen to the younger generation. They’re pretty smart.

So, now we are deep into that research and learning curve and are gobsmacked at how much it all costs. We need subsidies for clean energy!!!! How is anyone supposed to afford to do the right thing? Anyway, I will keep you updated on what we decide and the entire process, if it happens.

Meanwhile we are feeling very safe and protected in our newly roofed and painted home! I can’t get enough of walking around and just looking at it. Thank you Joan and Tom Boegel, for being such amazing savers and such generous people!!! I hope you’re looking down on us and smiling in approval.

Western Ranch Home (Painting Project)

Now that I'm out of school, and the kids nearly finished themselves, my main job will be shuttling Adam and Kate to their various activities (although it could be argued that it will be tending the garden and preserving its bounty; we are experiencing the calm before the tomato storm). I find this leaves me a little adrift; I don't like being idle, and I've always got a list of things that I want to do around the place. For a solid year now I've wanted to repaint the interior of our house and this seems like the perfect time to do it. We moved in 13 years ago and the whole house was the color of putty, with the kitchen cabinets (some sort of particleboard, yuck) a depressing fake grain. I painted everything before we moved in, and at the time, I was very much into bright, vivid colors: Adam was in the midst of chemotherapy, and both kids were very young. We were also leaving a very new house in a very new development, for this older house which was half the size. (The big, newly constructed house we were leaving was in a very sketchy neighborhood and the schools were terrible, plus Tom was commuting two hours each way to work; this house is in a fabulous old neighborhood with excellent schools and is closer to an hour away from Tom's work. Cutting our space in half and managing an older, shabbier house seemed like small problems in light of those facts.) So I painted every room a different color, and that really helped us feel cheerful and welcomed into this older house. At the time, I couldn't have cared less about the historical 'rightness' of my paint choices; I just wanted us to feel at home. 

Taken just this morning.

We also have a very eclectic collection of furniture, nearly all of which was made by my dad (I've written about that before here), and all of our artwork is homemade as well. We have a hand-me-down couch and rug. We are happy with our furniture and decoration, we have neither the budget nor the inclination to re-do any of it, and so whatever paint I choose has to fit in with all the stuff we already have. This isn't a big remodel, it's merely a change of color, and hence a change of mood. With the kids in high school now, and our personal preference for natural materials and light, we'd really prefer more neutral colors. 

Plus you can see we've got lots of color and textures going on already, so something more neutral on the walls would be a help. "Calm" and "natural" are words we tend to use over and over again.

And now that we have a new floor in the kitchen, we see how shabby everything else looks. We will hold on to our appliances as long as we can; I think the next big project in here is a new countertop (I'd really like wood). And the cabinets, while really subpar, are just too expensive to replace right now. So a fresh coat of paint will do wonders.

The kids both repainted their rooms last summer and both chose blues, so now all three bedrooms are differing shades of blue and so is the bathroom. I won't change our bedroom or the bathroom just yet, though I suppose in this painting frenzy I might just get inspired to do those too.

Before I chose colors, though, I wanted to do some research on our house and what was happening here in the late 40's. It's been a fun project, and though I can find very little information on our actual development outside of what I've heard from the old-timers who still live here, there are still many interesting facts from that time period. It was post-war, of course, and suddenly it seemed there was a shortage of housing all over the country. Folks were anxious to make homes and families, and wanted the safety of putting down roots and owning property. This is the period when large tracts of land were developed quite quickly, the most famous of which is probably Levittown, NY. Many homes of similar style were built in planned communities; most of these homes were 1,000 square feet or smaller. They were affordable and attractive to small families. Many of the homes were 'ranch' style, that is, one story, convenient for aging in place.

In California, the first ranch homes were based on Spanish Colonial architecture and influenced by the adobe of the Southwest. During 1949-1966, Joseph Eichler began building a completely different kind of California ranch house, which had much more specific style. A lot of mid-century furniture seems to stem from his Modernist architecture. California is also heavily influenced from the Arts and Crafts movement earlier in the century, and many of the bungalows in Oakland and Berkeley are of this style. 

Sadly, our home missed both of these great architectural movements, and was built during the reign of Levitt and that style of home. All of the houses in our neighborhood were of similar size, with fairly bland exteriors, attached garages, and just under a quarter acre of property. At that time, there were no other houses in the area; you could walk straight up to Mt Diablo if you chose. The one telephone was on the corner and served the entire community. The towns of Orinda, Moraga, and Lafayette, all tonier and built earlier and slightly closer to San Francisco, were originally built as vacation homes for folks who lived on the peninsula; but our neighborhood was likely built with post-war soldiers in mind. Walnut Creek itself had been established in the late 1800's as a farming community, parts of which are still evident, even though it is now considered a shopping destination for high-end buyers from all over. Most of the newer homes in Walnut Creek are gargantuan in size and look like Italian Villas. Steph Curry, our recent neighbor, is selling his home not a quarter mile from our house, and it is a spectacular monstrosity. This mix of old and new is very inherent in Walnut Creek, and while we still love our little old neighborhood, it is a relic. The new will eventually take over as it always does. Most of our neighbors have redone their homes to be quite a lot larger, we are one of a very small percentage that still has only one bathroom.

It was fun to read about the history of the Ranch House, and how they would have originally been decorated. (If you're interested, look here and here and here.) It seems wallpaper and jewel tones would have been very popular, with white kitchens (white means clean!). If I wanted to have our home be a paean to 1940's Western Ranch Homes, I'd have to do a lot of remodeling. We'd need mid-century furniture, for one, and though we have a couple of pieces that Dad has designed in the style of Hans Wegner or Sam Maloof, most of our stuff is a mix of Colonial, Shaker, and 18th century styles. I like that and don't want to change it. Plus, as the floor company salesman described me, we're just 'down to earth' folks. We want to keep things simple. I don't want jewel toned living room walls or fancy wallpaper. I just want something that goes with or philosophy of bringing nature in, of handmade and crafted items, a restful place that feels like it might belong in a farmhouse in rural Kentucky rather than five miles away from a Neiman Marcus and Tiffany Jewelers.

Plus, we're saving up for an Elon Musk solar roof. :)

So, I'll just do some painting. We'll stick with neutral colors (though I've spent a few happy hours going down the rabbit hole of different kinds of neutrals; I enjoyed very much the Farrow and Ball website). It'll be a big project and it'll take a few weeks, but that's exactly what I'm looking for right now, something to keep me occupied between driving to various camps and canning tomatoes. I'll let you know how it turns out! Before long, it'll be time to work on the exterior paint, and that will mean more research.

New Kitchen Floor and Chicken Update

We moved into this house almost thirteen years ago. Built in 1949, it had great bones, but some really crappy features, such as chain link fencing, weeds as high as our heads, a wall heater (no ducts!), and a badly installed kitchen tile floor. We've dealt with all of these things as we were able, but the tile floor had to wait until this year; it was so cracked and broken that it looked like a jigsaw puzzle.

The old, broken tile floor

It was so badly broken that we could lift up pieces of tile and look underneath, where we saw the plywood subfloor. The grout was coming out piece by piece. We were always a little worried that someone might cut a foot. The cracking started by the refrigerator, but began to spread outward from there, until the entire floor looked like a spider web.

The last few years, the bulk of our 'project' funds went to outdoor improvements, but this year we were determined to do something about the floor. I knew I didn't want tile again, for many reasons: It's cold in the winter, it's hard to clean, and it's rigid and unyielding, giving us bad back and leg aches while cooking, especially during longer kitchen projects. We'd been researching more sustainable flooring materials for quite a while, and long ago decided on cork flooring for the kitchen. Cork has some give, and therefore is easy on the bones. It's warm, even in winter. It's easy to care for. Best of all, it's made of a renewable resource.

Cork Oak Tree - photo by Chris McAuley

50% of the world's cork comes from Portugal. My folks visited the cork oak (Quercus suber) plantations years ago on a visit and were very impressed with the way the orchardists tend to, care for, and harvest the trees. The cork oak pastoral system is called a 'montado.'  The primary growth period for these oaks is in spring; in the summer, pigs and goats are shaded by the canopy of trees. In the fall, those same pigs eat the acorns that fall from the trees. The leaf litter helps keep a deep layer of humus on the land, therefore conserving water and adding resources to the soil. The cork is stripped every nine years from the tree, leaving the living tree intact. The cork strippers - tiradors - work in teams of two, stripping the bark by hand with steel axes. (For a video of the process, take a look here.)  These laborers are among the highest paid agricultural workers, with healthcare and benefits provided. When my parents were there touring the montados, they were urged to drink wine with corks rather than screwtops. This agricultural symbiotic system has been in place for hundreds of years and provides a living to thousands of people.

So you can see, other than the fact that this product comes most often from across the sea, cork is a renewable resource that can be considered sustainable.

We decided to have Floor Coverings International do the work for us, rather than trying to do it ourselves. There's a difference between being handy and being highly trained! We were very satisfied with the entire process. We learned a lot along the way, from the knowledgeable folks at FCI - like the way our oak floors, original to our 1949 house, were made and installed. And how our tile floor had obviously been installed hastily and, in fact, completely wrongly, right before we bought the house (hence the cracking and breaking). The person that installed our cork floor knew a lot about old houses, and gave us a lot of ideas for how to redo the cabinets and countertops (the cabinets are particleboard, gross, and so ugly). It turns out our countertops are actually lower than standard, leading the floor guy to believe that they had been put in more recently (if you consider the 1970's recent that is).

It's such a pleasure to walk on this new cork floor. It has a tiny bit of give, a slight springiness, and it's comfortably warm to bare feet. The best thing is that we don't have to be embarrassed when people come over; instead we are proud of our new floor!

Chicken update: As you can see from the above photo, I've caved. Today I let all the chickens out to free range. 

Here's why: The new chickens were coming down to the floor of the coop very infrequently, spending most of their time in the hen house. This is because the other chickens were being kinda mean. Not Molly, our big Rhode Island Red, who is the Queen Mother. Molly actually protects them, keeping the other chickens in line. But it wasn't enough, and they were getting picked on a lot. I considered just letting those two out to free range, but they'd need to get in and out to lay eggs (not an issue with Ginny, who is definitely not laying anymore). I sat in the coop for an hour this morning watching how everything was going and keeping the old hens away from the young hens and I finally shouted out loud "SCREW IT!" and just opened the door. And wow, it's going great. Everyone is having a good time. The old hens are scratching around in the bark and eating all the bugs; the new hens are reveling in having the coop to themselves, taking dust baths, eating everything in sight, and occasionally heading out to the kale bed in the garden for a nibble (no one has given the tomato plants a second glance). Molly presides over all, making sure everyone is ok. Ginny is hiding, literally, behind the four-foot-tall yarrow. She is not sure this is all such a good idea.

Scrappy and Goose lounging around the coop, enjoying some alone time

I'm feeling much better about everything. I didn't realize how stressful this chicken situation was - I have been very worried. I think this will keep everyone so busy in their own spots that the fighting will be kept to a minimum. HOWEVER. If tomatoes start getting eaten, it's gonna be a big problem. So Tom and I will probably try to rig up some sort of corral. Stay tuned for more on this!