What would you guess this is?
Happy restoration!
This site celebrates the craftsman home. It is about making a home and learning to live a craftsman way of life. Simplicity, handmade, community, local, artisan: these are a few of the topics you'll encounter when reading about our journey.
What would you guess this is?
Happy restoration!
It seemed that the interior wood finishing of our dining room would never get to final finishing stage. To recap, the woodwork of our 1914 craftsman home was under decades of paint. We started paint stripping in 2019 soon after purchasing the house. The situation went from bad to worse. Turns out that portions of the millwork had been sanded back to raw wood sometime in the 1950s (approx). There were several coats of lead based paint in direct contact with the wood, which makes it next to impossible to to remove the paint. Therefore, we resorted to sanding almost all of the millwork back to raw wood in the dining room.
Our goal is restore the millwork back to the early 1900s finishes. It is becoming harder and harder for the DIYer to find the products necessary to restore woodwork with the finishes that would've been used during that time period. Todays stains, gels and polyurethane finishes just don't reproduce the depth or richness found in historical finishes.
In comes Dalys. Dalys is a small scale finish manufacturer/producer located in the Pacific Northwest. It always helps to know a guy when you approach a project like this. Brian is our guy. During the summer of 2021 we sent a small piece of millwork to Brian at Dalys for finish matching. We also sent a sanded raw piece of matching millwork to him so that he could test his match. From there, he sent us the following finishing products:
Here, you see the following products:
In 2021 we undertook a sizable project tearing out our front yard and reconcepting it as a native garden. We have a small front yard of about 800 square feet. The purpose of the project was to simplify, beautify and reduce water consumption.
We did this project using the Long Beach Lawn2Garden program, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to convert lawn to garden. The process was straightforward and we experienced no challenges with the process.
We kept the plant list to plan with few exceptions. A full list of the plants used can be found here.
Been some time since we last posted. Here are a few projects we've been working on:
First, for fun - the catio/passthrough! We have this single old casement window that was retrofitted into our sunroom windows. This window proved difficult because it opens out and therefore requires an interior screen. After two years of considering what to do, we built a custom catio/passthrough! The passthrough function allows us to pass through kitchen supplies and dishes between the indoor kitchen and our outside kitchen and dining area. We do quite a bit of outdoor dining and this will get used quite a bit when we host parties. In addition, it serves as a cat-patio for our two indoor cats. So far, the cats seem quite pleased with the results!
Lastly, we've enjoyed spending time in our garden and seeing the hard work from prior years pay off. Spring has sprung in Southern California! More garden photos to come throughout the 2022 growing/gardening season.
The focus this year is the completion of paint stripping and wood working/restoration efforts in our dining room. Late last year we received the stain matching products from Daly's based out of the Pacific Northwest. We have work to do to custom tint the shellac to try and replicate the luster this house was built with. No chance of getting bored anytime soon.
Very happy to report that the landscape lighting is in! Used Volt lighting that's available at a discount for Costco members. Very high quality - forged brass lights. Very sturdy and should last a long time. All low voltage 12v system, so pretty easy to install. It really adds a lot of drama to the space and makes it "dance" at night. Fun easy project with a quick payoff.
In early August 2021, we received approval to move forward with our Lawn2Garden conversion. More info on the application and process can be found in this earlier blog entry.
Once receiving approval, we quickly jumped into action to implement the following landscape plan:
We used a long bright orange extension cord to lay out the size and shape of the swales prior to digging. You can also use a water hose for this. I find this important as it will help you establish an interesting and organic shape for your landscape elements.
It is also worth mentioning that we pulled in a 12v DC low voltage cable to run future landscape lighting. We also plumbed the yard with water for any future landscaping irrigation needs. We expect that we are not going to add irrigation because we are working towards a landscape that requires watering on 30 day intervals or less. We still decided to plumb water to the area in case it is needed at some point in the future.
Once the swales and berms were established, we installed garden edging and selected landscape materials. We decided to use the following landscape materials: decomposed granite (DG), river rock (both small & large), bark mulch, and a dessert tan landscape rock. We will also use a number of small boulder rocks to add visual interest. We used a landscape edging made of carbon steel that will rust and disappear as a natural element into the landscape.
One of the biggest challenges with a lawn2garden conversion is how to get rid of the grass. We decided to use cardboard over the existing grass with both landscape rock or bark mulch over the top. The cardboard will kill the grass off underneath and it will compost into the soil. We determined this was the easiest and cheapest method for our project. We had been saving cardboard boxes for a good 6 months for this purpose. We supplemented our cardboard supply with a number of cheap moving boxes we picked up at Home Depot.
For the swales, we lined them with landscaping fabric prior to pouring in the rock. Pulling weeds out of rock is not a fun process and we decided that landscape fabric was the way to go for this area. However, we only used the landscape fabric in as few places as possible because we want the native plants to be able to spread and develop root systems without being impeded.
Before:
After:
We are extremely happy with the results. The berms adds a lot of visual interest and texture. We are excited about the swales and think they are both visually interesting and useful to capture rain water. The fence adds a beautiful design element that defines the space and harmonizes with the style of the house.
We are excited to begin planting. Earlier this week we reviewed our plant selections and will be making some changes. We found that the design on paper isn't an exact match to the physical space and therefore needs some minor tweaks. Be sure to allow yourself enough flexibility to evaluate your plan along the way. Seeing is believing and designs are meant to evolve. We expect to start planting in October and will post updates as that progresses.
From a timing perspective we have spent approximately 20 hours on our DIY front yard conversion. From a financial perspective, we have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 on fencing materials and hardscaping supplies. Most all landscape supplies were purchased at our local Lowes.
It is all working! We've had so many people stop by wondering what we're doing and asking questions. We’re doing Lawn2Garden of course! Amazing to see so many people interested, and we hope our project can act as inspiration for others considering similar projects. Save water and beautify all at the same time!
In addition to constantly working on our 1914 craftsman four-square, we do sometimes just step back and enjoy what we've accomplished. It seems lately that maybe we don't take the time to do that enough. Perhaps it is a pandemic related behavior?
The native plant landscape we planted in the Fall-Winter-Spring season of 2020/21 really leapt to life! Here are some photos to show the progress:
In line with our need to enjoy life more and not to just work all the time -- we built an outdoor bar as part of our botanical entertainment backyard complex :). This project tested our tile and woodworking skills and we couldn't be happier with the end result.
Hope readers are enjoying the summer as we are. Keep keeping on.