may we borrow your shoehorn?

Our remodeling is flying along, and the reality is starting to sink in: we're going to be moving really soon.  You know, as in, moving ALL THIS STUFF.

 
Good grief, do we ever have a lot of stuff!  At least the dog can run up the stairs and into her new room... I don't think the couch and the records are gonna do that.  We're gonna need some boxes...

concrete sweet concrete!

Wow this thing is goin' up fast!  We went from dirt trench to rebar frame to concrete monolith in maybe a week.  Clearly the speed of concrete is faster than the speed of bureaucracy!

First our piling holes and our grade beam got filled in with concrete.  Should we just stop here?  We could shimmy up and down that rebar frame every day... nah, let's build it up a little more.

There's the ol' plywood frame...

Here comes the concrete truck!

Remember how excited I was about the "shock-crete" in the last post?  Well, I was wrong, it's actually called "shot-crete".  How embarrassing.  (I know it looks like "snot-crete", but I think that's just where a roach or something flew into the side of the truck and hit the "H".)  But doesn't "shock-crete" sound more exciting?  Perhaps they could electrify their image with a snappier name for the process.

This shot-crete wall is goin' up at last!  This is the moment we've been waiting a year and two months for!!!  I can't believe it's really happening!  Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives!!!

Man, I gotta say, this is just a tagger's DREAM COME TRUE.  If I was a tagger, I would literally do a spit-take when I saw this.  It's just begging for a ridiculous late-night misspelled graffiti scrawl.  No tagger could resist!  I have a feeling when I drive over there tomorrow, it's gonna look like a backdrop from Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo.  I'll be amazed if no one tags this all to hell.  After all, we are the new kids on the block.  Sarah and I were thinking of pre-emptively tagging it ourselves, just to get it out of the way... "SRAH & DNYL 4 EVA!"  Is it OK to tag your own home?

I get kind of emotional when I see this wall go up, even though it looks like the county jail without paint and ivy... I can't believe we finally got this far!  When we first bought it, we thought it would be a breeze.  THEN when we started realizing what all really had to happen to get it done, we started thinking it might never happen, and we would have to go get shopping carts and become homeless people.  But thanks to the folks at Alpha Structural, it's finally looking like the real thing.  Hurray!

wall to wall good times!

Yup... the old wall is gone and the new one is going up!  First we carved off all the old stuff...

Ain't no thing.  Look how unconcerned Wylma and I are.  Look at all those ancient layers of stable prehistoric stuff... just like the Grand Canyon!  Next we dug some holes for pilings...

By "we" I mean some incredibly tough guys who know what they're doing, not me & Sarah.  A bunch of concrete is going in there -- tomorrow in fact.  They call it "shock-crete" which sounds cooler.  I guess it's stronger (shockingly so) than regular concrete.  Then it's time for the grade beam, that goes along street level...

 

More shockcrete going in there.  Then a rebar frame up to the top...

 Whoops don't fall in!  Stay tuned for our next post... prepare to be shock-creted!

AT LAST!!!

We finally got that darn permit to rebuild the front retaining wall and stairs!  Good lord, was that ever a long and difficult process.  We really had no idea what we were getting into when we bought the house.  We could never have gotten that permit without the best wall & foundation people in town, Alpha Structural, who were at long last able to get all the various city desks to sign off on our project.  The house was probably built on top of a little hill in 1895, near the dirt farm road that later turned into Glendale Boulevard.  Then at some point somebody built Laveta Terrace, and paved it, and built the sidewalks, and gradually carved our hill into the steep little rise you see today.  And for the last couple decades, the house has been fronted with pipe & board walls and lopsided stairs, which finally deteriorated to the point of condemnation you see here...

You can imagine why the city would be reluctant to approve a new wall for this site.  Well, we can imagine it in hindsight... when we bought the place we didn't think it would be such a big deal.  But a big, year-long deal it was.  But finally, we got them to sign off on a rebuild, thanks to Alpha.  So first we cleared the vegetation, and removed the ratty palm tree that was growing up into our power lines...

Kinda looks like you could fit the whole house in that dumpster, right?  A trick of the photographic perspective my friend.  Anyway, we do prefer it without the palm tree.  We'll plant some cactus and stuff, you'll love it.  So right after this photo, we finally got the darn permit, signed sealed & delivered, and demolition commenced immediately!!!

So far, it's speeding along... if all goes well, our last month in the apartment will be March and we'll kick off the springtime in April at 335 Laveta.  There's still a crazy amount of work to do, we're not out of the woods yet, but we're almost there.  Stay tuned to this station for more photos as work on our wall & stairs proceeds!

the doors of perception

Sarah inspired us to get all crafty like and buy cheap, old, beat-up vintage doors for our back porch and the rental, and then sand & paint them and fit them in just like they do on home fixup shows.  I even glazed in one of the glass panels my own self.  True enough, it does add a lot of charm.  Bob Vila was right all along!

Our back porch door, in its original farm-fresh state.

Addin' a little paint & primer to the rental front door... neato hardware & handle too...

The third tone emerges!

From color pair to color scheme!  (Still gotta scheme on that one kitchen window a bit.)

ye olden farmhouse bed

We were looking for a neat old bedframe with really high clearance underneath for storage and stuff, and we found one! It's actually a rope bed, though we removed the wooden side rails with holes through which you would thread a network of ropes on which you would rest your mattress -- we replaced them with iron side rails. This, apparently, is the origin of the phrase "sleep tight" -- if your ropes are tight, your mattress rests firm & snug.

the haunted retaining wall

Well, we still don't have our retaining wall up yet... but we thought it'd be fun to celebrate Halloween at our house anyway, and give out candy to any trick-or-treaters who came by.  Sarah and Wylma decorated our front entryway with cobwebs...

And I got all dressed up like a wizard...

 

Sarah & Wylma dressed up too.  (That's my cardboard grandfather clock costume from earlier in the day... it was too hard to get up and down the stairs in, so we just left it on the porch as a prop.)

We put on some spooky records and got our candy all ready...

There's our first trick-or-treaters now!

Some local kids came by with some pretty neat costumes.

 

Our house does look pretty spooky at night.  Especially with a ghostly fox lady and a grandfather clock hanging out on the landing...

Despite all this groovy Halloween atmosphere at 335 Laveta, gangs of trick-or-treaters were booking it up the street right past our house without even stopping!  It seemed like they were headed somewhere important.  We finally realized that they were all headed to Carroll Avenue in Angelino Heights, just up the way, which is a whole street of awesome old Victorian houses.  We went over there to check it out for ourselves, and sure enough, it was a mega Halloween street party!

At least we got to scope out the competition... next Halloween we'll be ready.  We're gonna make Laveta the trick-or-treat capitol of the 90026!  Those houses on Carroll Ave. will be wondering why all the kids are heading south of the 101!