too hot to handle!

Sarah flew off the handle and ordered this online to go with our awesome vintage door.  Door photo coming soon.

green pennies & almond toast

Look Wylma it's our brand new green penny tile!  If we had a penny for every tile, we would have... almost fourteen dollars!

This tile is so money!

Needs grout though... that's coming soon.

Our back bathroom wall, soon to keep things waterproof behind our tub and shower rail.

Gettin' ready to start painting the inside.  We have several colors but the main one is Sarah's favorite, "almond toast".  In "eggshell" finish... sounds kind of like a yummy breakfast huh?

I was trying to take a stealth photo of the guys working but the flash went off... busted!

Some toasty corners!

this guy fixes tubs, AND sings celine dion

Here's the guy from Square Deal Plumbing standing proudly next to our vintage tub he just finished re-porcelaining.  When we first pulled up to the shop, he was singing some Celine Dion song really loud (I think that's who it was).  It was very entertaining.  He was also rebuilding a pickup truck engine and turning it into something that looked like it would be driven by Mad Max in Beyond the Thunderdome.

Who wants to take the first bath in this mean machine?

Nobody wants to take a bath in this mean machine.  You may remember our tub in its previous, super-mean state, here on our front walkway.  An amazing transformation!

suntan sink and penny tile

There it is! Our very own 1950's pedestal sink in the shade "Sun Tan"! (It says so on the stamp underneath the sink, what a cute name for a sink color). We found it this past weekend while rummaging at Freeway Building Materials in East LA.  It's a really great salvage yard full of fun stuff, including a giant wizard statue that Daniel found out was "not for sale"... oh well, I guess we didn't need a giant wizard anyway.

We've also been working on finding tile for the bathroom. The above picture is of the "penny tile" that arrived on our doorstep tonight for the bathroom floor. It's called penny tile because each tile is just the size of a penny. It's an older tile design that isn't too popular these days, so we had to special order it. Luckily delivery didn't take too long. And the picture makes it look a bit more green than it is in real life... but you get the idea. On the tile note, we just returned from a midnight run to Home Depot (seriously! they kicked us out because they were trying to close!) We purchased tile for the back wall of the bathroom as well, but I don't have a picture to post of that yet. It's still sitting in the back of Daniel's Jeep, ready to be taken over to Laveta tomorrow. Finally, a picture of Wylma in the rain today.. just because. Thanks for reading!

drywall... it's better than wetwall

 

We finally have a real ceiling again! Although we will miss the cathedral ceilings we once had, it's nice not to see the sky through our roof anymore. Especially now that it's started raining again!

 

Here's the corner where the chimney once was... it's all ready to be filled with Daniel's records now! Well, almost ready....  

Action has slowed down on the remodeling right now with the rainfall and the wait for the "mud" they put on the drywall to dry. Thus, this post is kinda dull.... but what can you expect from a post about drywall I guess!

buildin' it up...

We're not using just any old drywall... this is NEXT GENERATION drywall!
It's drywall from the future.  We time-travelled to the future and brought it back!

This typewriter we found in the water heater room, though, is definitely from the past.  I think William Burroughs used it to write Naked Lunch.

Guard that plaster tub with your life, Wylms!

Be sure to come visit us in our secret TV room underneath the rental... it's got a handy bench that's good for sittin'!

TRASH DAY!

After all that remodeling and cabinet ripping-out and wall-destroying and concrete jackhammering and tree removal, our backyard looked kind of like this.

It got even crazier as the week went on... they found crazy stuff.  Some owner at some point built a back retaining wall by burying old water heaters, which our guys dug up.  Many dead trees and the awful entirety of our white tile floor were added to this pile.

This device came in handy.
 

After a week of negotiating with Kafkaesque L.A. bureaucracy for a dumpster permit, that glorious morn did dawn... trash day!  Time to get it all out.  Eight or so guys lugged all this concrete and assorted junk down our dilapidated stairs for two days.  Much better!

Someday, my Wylms, grass will grow here... it will become a verdant wonderland!
See, it's practically that way already!

cathedral ceilings!

Let's see, how awesome are our ceilings underneath that cruddy drywall?  Well, not too awesome...

So, they're getting redone.  Huge attic space above, which we will use for storage and secret hideout.  There's the skylight where our chimney used to be... and where the range vent went to.  It looks so neat this way, we're thinking of leaving it... we could have cathedral ceilings in every room!  Well, just one big cathedral ceiling for the whole place.

Or, it could be... Daniel & Sarah's Fun Land!
Or, Wylma's Fun Land!

Maybe Wylma should live up here.  They say it's lucky to have a choodle in one's attic.

I poop on that idea.  Next!

tearin' it up!

Well, the ugly cabinets are gone... and so is most of the kitchen wall!  This little window was hiding behind the sink.  Dig that 1895 woodwork!

There's the dining room corner, where the chimney used to be... too bad we'll never know how it all looked with the fireplace and everything.  One thing we do know, it'll really look better with new drywall and new wood floors.  Someday, it may be... Daniel's record zone!

Say goodbye to this tree, and to this concrete backyard.  Why does Daniel look like Mr. Magoo?  Perhaps our house is haunted by the spirit of Mr. Magoo... Let's see, checkbook, screwdriver, coffee... yup, ready for another day on Laveta!  

Soon to be our cute, tiny, vintage bathroom... believe it or not!

Wear this mask when entering our home sweet home!

and here we go!

The same day as I discovered the claw foot tub on the lawn, I was greeted by this evidence that the remodeling had begun (and only a couple days after we had been given the keys! hooray for competent contractors!)

So I ventured inside, and sure enough... walls had come down!

The lightning speed crew had already torn the wall down that separated the bathroom from the adjoining closets. Our plan is to move the wall back to give us a little more bathroom space, and turn two small adjoining closets into one larger walk in for all my clothes (and maybe I'll let Daniel hang a couple of shirts as well).

 

Here's the other side of the bathroom.... yikes.....!

As promised, the gag inducing cabinetry is gone! And ALL this work was done in less than 2 days... you can only imagine how far along they are now! My posting needs to catch up!

the tale of the tub

As you may remember from the previous post, our bathtub was in dire need of a switch-out. I had my heart set on a claw foot tub. Anyone who has ever lived with me can attest, I love taking long leisurely baths, and to have a claw foot tub to do that in would be just dreamy! The problem was that the bathroom is impossibly small, and the current tub was an unheard of 23" wide! There was no way I was going to find a claw foot tub that narrow. The norm is 30" wide in tubs, and finding something skinnier didn't seem like an option. So I'm feeling kind of lost at this point, and I start to resign myself to the idea of a normal bathtub. Boring, built in, not claw foot... 
So imagine my surprise when I walk up to the house after the work crew has gutted the bathroom, and find this on the lawn...

That's right! That narrow little 23" tub that was in the bathroom WAS a claw foot tub! Some previous owner had just, for some unknown reason, walled it in blocking it's claw feet! I know it looks pretty awful in this photo, but it's now in the skilled hands of a professional restorer, who will deliver it back to us all fixed up like new! So I get my claw foot tub after all, and the original one to boot!

in the beginning...

Welcome! We're in for quite the adventure, so I'll start at the beginning...   It was just a few months ago that Daniel and I decided we were ready to move out of our apartment and take the home buying leap. We've both been long time renters, and although it has worked out in the past we're ready to move on (literally!). We started looking for a house... something near where we live now (in Silver Lake, Los Angeles), something in our price range, and most importantly- we both wanted an OLD house. And look what we got-- a house from 1895! After a lot of back and forth, a few shady dealings, and a ton of paper signing, the tiny abode on Laveta Terrace was all ours! In this first post I'm going to share some of the original pictures from the real estate website. It's not all a pretty sight, but rest assured we are knee deep in renovations and soon we hope to have whipped this little beauty into shape! Without further ado... welcome to our house!

In the above picture you can see some of the wood detailing we truly love, and the Home Depot "house flipper special" front door that we truly despise. It may not look that bad in the picture, but that door has got to go! We're off to the architectural salvage yard again this weekend in search of a new (old) door!

This is the view as you enter the house, or rather, was the view. Our contractor and his crew have already amazingly torn up all those ceramic tiles, in preparation to lay a new hardwood floor. We had hoped to restore the original hardwood flooring that is below the ceramic tiles, but unfortunately it hadn't been cared for very well in the last 115 years. New floors it is! Also, the wall heater has been removed since this picture, and we've got a new heater trick up our sleeve. You'll just have to wait for a later post to find out!

 Ahh, the bathroom... We've got our work cut out in here! It's a really tiny bathroom, so as part of the remodeling process we're enlarging it a bit. Also, new toilet and sink to come!

The other side of the teensy bathroom. I had to include a picture of the tub, because there's quite a tale to be told! But that will have to wait until a different post... Just keep this image in your mind.

Oh the horror! I know I know!! At first, Daniel didn't know why these kitchen cabinets made me gag but I think he's come around now. As of right now they sit in a trash heap in the back yard (hooray!) as the kitchen awaits the pretty new cabinets we've designed. And a vintage 1950's O'Keefe and Merritt stove, my dream come true!

I'm skipping over quite a bit of the house (we have over 25 pictures total!), but you get the idea. Here's the backyard (notice the cement, what were they thinking??) and the little studio we'll be renting out once we move in. The backyard is already cement-free and a lot less overgrown at this stage, so expect pictures to come.

We look forward to the day when all this renovation is complete and we can sit on our front porch and enjoy this downtown skyline view. Till then, I'll be trying to keep this blog up to date with our progress. I can't wait to share the transformation with all of you!