Empty House

Whew! A month has past and it still feels like we just bought this house, but looking at it from the inside you can tell a lot of work has been put in. I have put in a solid two weekends of work, but Matt and his mom Sally have truly paid their dues. They both get home early and on most days run straight to the house to tear something out, clean out a newly found rat nest or patch up a hole in the wall or flooring. I tell you, they are two extremely dedicated renovators!

I on the other hand am dreaming about cornsilk colored walls, brand new furniture and high tech kitchen appliances. By the way...if anyone has a food processor collecting dust in a closet I will be more than happy to take it off your hands! Unfortunately my dreams will not be realized until a long way down the road.

So what have we been up to you ask? We have ripped down all the ceilings, and let me tell you that is no glamorous task, this house had sprayed in insulation in the roof...imagine pulling down a ceiling board above your head and having what looks like old, moldy, grey pillow stuffing fall down on you! But oh no...that is not all that falls down! We had dead rodents fall on us, blocks of wood almost knock us unconscious and hundreds of old rusty nails come raining down. We were completely covered from head to toe in clothing, fiber filter masks on our faces, bandannas and goggles, which of course were fogging up and limiting our vision to that of a glaucomic old grandmother. Once all the insulation had fallen we of course we had to scoop it up off the floor into endless black garbage bags and then tote them to the dump. Needless to say this was my least favorite job. But Matt and his dad Paul had fun in the ceiling beams once eveything was cleared so not all was lost.

My most favorite job would have to be tearing down walls! Smashing a hammer into a wall has such therapeutic qualities. Along with the ceilings we have torn out all the fiber board and ripped down all the wood paneling, save the wainscoting. All linoleum has been torn up, the kitchen is completely empty except for the stove and we have even torn down an entire wall, opening up the kitchen more. The first picture shows where the wall originally was and the second picture shows it magically gone!

Last weekend was pretty dreary; the sun barely poked his head from under his covers before deciding to let the rain substitute for him today. So what better thing to do than cut a big drafty hole in the side of your house?! Yup, that's right we decided to create a new door going outside to the back deck. Paul, being the fearless leader cut right thru the siding without any reservations and presto! We have a door frame! Sally had picked up two beautiful pre-hung doors from Home Depot the week before, and all we had to do was insert into newly created hole, easy right....Wrong! Turns out it takes a little bit longer to install a pre-hung door than what we had anticipated and four wet, tired and cold people don't really work together nicely as a team under these conditions. Luckily, the door will fit in the hole eventually; in the interim we have a very attractive piece of plywood keeping the critters out.

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" as Newton so wisely observed, so to counter balance our door defeat this weekend we bought 1,320 square feet of bamboo flooring from Costco...Have I mentioned how much I LOVE Costco?! Only in America can you find a jumbo Super Store that carries a life time supply of Dixie Cups and a complete bedroom set all in one location! At the moment Costco Santa Cruz is carrying Golden Arawana Quality Bamboo Flooring for $1.96 a square foot. As you may know, Costco is one of those, buy it while it is there, type places because you may never see it again. So we bought our dining, living and sun room flooring and it is all sitting in a beautiful golden pile waiting for the day it will be walked upon. I guess going green doesn't always have to break the bank!

In the words of a great philosopher "ta, ta for now!"

The new house

Matt and I have bought a house. I would say a new house but considering the house was built in the 1940's that would be a bit of a lie. Most of the original houses out here in Ben Lomond were built as summer cabins and our house is a prime example of that. All expenses were spared during the building process. For example all the walls are fiberboard, if you don't know what fiberboard is think really thick cardboard, there is no insulation in the walls and all the windows in the house are single paned. There are leaks in the roof, the floor coverings are old - we found 4 layers of linoleum in the kitchen - and the electrical is a little on the scary side. But for what it is worth this is our house and we are in love with it.



The entire house is around 1,300 square feet and is located on 1/3 of and acre on flat sunny Ben Lomond land. Technically there are 3 bedrooms and a loft, but one of the bedrooms (pictured to the left) will make the perfect sun room so we are converting it. The room has large windows on three walls and french doors leading into the living room. Can't you just see this room filled with plants and sunlight?


The ceilings are all wood panelling as you can see in this picture of our living room. The wood panelling is too heavy to be on the ceiling so the previous owners "fix" was to nail 2x4's directly on the wood for support! The wainscoting will get to stay because we like it, but the ceiling is all coming down to make room for some sheet rock and insulation. I can't wait to start tearing down walls and giving this house the much needed love that it deserves.


Matt and I are going to be as Eco-friendly as we possibly can afford, unfortunately being Eco-friendly these days means forking out a lot of cash but we are going to try our best. Hand-me-downs and recycled goods are the best way to reduce waste in our landfills so once we have time to sit down and map out what we will need I will post a list.
Deconstruction starts soon and more pictures to come!