Summertime Highlights

 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:

View from the side-yard entry gate coming into the yard.  The potted Burroughsia Fastigiata is hands down one of my favorite plants.

This photo features much of the hardscaping that we did ourselves in 2020.  My back still hurts.

In the background, our vegetable garden with higher-water demand plants.  In the foreground, an old peach tree underplanted with California natives.

A vegetable garden closeup.  Mid-right side is the Baccharis emoryi which is a wonderful bee attractor.

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.  

Bar side: notice the shingles that pattern match the house.  We're very pleased with how that turned out.

Redwood construction.  The door panels are common redwood fence boards that we ran through the planer for a more artsy finished look.

The beautiful tile work that my partner completed.  Very vibrant and perfect for the space.

And yes, we're still working on the indoor paint stripping.  In between paint stripping shifts we like to go  outside and enjoy a cocktail or two.  Or three.  Rarely five.  We have made tremendous progress on the dining room woodwork paint stripping and will soon begin dying, staining and shellac'ing.  We recently sent a piece of originally stained trim in to a stain match expert I've worked with in the past when completing other restoration projects.  Receiving the stain has been delayed because there is a national paint can shortage that is severely impacting small producers.  Who knew!?!?!  Like everything in 2020 and 2021 -- one must apply patience and learn to go with it and not against it.  The delay is allowing us to enjoy more drinks at our custom built bar!  See.... there are benefits to being delayed.  It is helping me be more in touch with the concept of mañana ~ maybe tomorrow and maybe never.

Hope readers are enjoying the summer as we are.  Keep keeping on.

Lawn2Garden

 Earlier this year I wrote about the Lawn2Garden effort to convert our remaining grass lawn into planted landscape area.  Since then, I've decided to leverage the Long Beach Lawn to Garden program to complete this conversion and to see what the process is like to leverage this resource.  The conversion was something we were planning to do with or without the official city program, but I felt that it would be worth it to document the experience so that others can benefit from this information.

In June of 2021 I submitted the Lawn2Garden application for our 271 square feet of grass and it was quickly approved.  California is in the throws of a very extensive drought, and I cannot in good conscious continue to pour water on the lawn.  I personally don't find the aesthetics of a lawn to be very appealing in Southern California as it doesn't match the landscape or draw cues from it in any way.  At the same time, it will allow the front-yard to match the work we've done in the backyard so that there is more cohesion.  

With the approval from the Long Beach Water departments Lawn2Garden conversion in hand, we set off to complete the final drawing for the front-yard conversion.  We leveraged most of the same plants we used in the backyard when we worked with Randi at Tree of Life nursery to complete that design.  The numbers on the design correspond to the ID numbers on this plant list, which also shows watering requirements.  On the plant list, reference the 'Front Yard' sheet.  The plant selections changed very little from our backyard plant palette and that was completely by design.  First, we've had very good luck with all the plants we used in the backyard and have lost very few.  In addition, using most all of the same plants will help ensure a high-level of cohesion from front to back.  

Enough talking and more pictures:

Why such good luck with the backyard plants?  We planted in November of 2020 right prior to what rain we did receive that winter.  That proved to be very smart.  The plants thrived in the cooler temps and set roots very quickly.  Many sprang up and grew like crazy during the spring of 2021.  Some of the most vigorous were as follows:

• Dana Point Buckwheat
• White Sage
• Yerba Buena
• Calylophus Hartwegii
• Ray Hartman Ceanothus

If fairness, all of the plants we've put in have performed like rock stars.  The above are some of the most vigorous.  Since May, 2021, we have set the low-pressure irrigation system to water 10 minutes (two five-minute cycles) every 15 days!  The watering requirements have been so minimal that it is making me consider not installing any irrigation at all in the front-yard landscape.  I have found that minimal water is required to nurse these plants to full health when planted in the fall/winter which prepares them to grow vigorously on what very little water they receive.  I intend to follow this model in the front-yard.  I will likely need to add minimal irrigation for the existing Japanese maple that is currently planted in the front-yard.  This tree has already reached full-growth or we would consider replacing it with a low/no water varietal.  There was a secondary non-native tree that had been planted that we removed.  Instead, we replaced it with the Ray Hartman (pruned up as a tree) which will better match our backyard design.

One of the big features in the submitted design is the addition of a swale and a small berm.  We added this feature on both the left and right side of the design.  In 2020 we installed gutters and drainage to funnel roof water to pop-ups in our front yard.   Based on the winter experience in 2020/21, we noticed that much of the winter rain flooded the front-yard and then ran onto the sidewalk and down to the nearest storm drain.  We plan to capture more of this precious water so that it soaks into the landscape.  The swales will prevent more of the water from entering the storm drain, and provide more growth potential for our native plants.

We anxiously await the Lawn2Garden approval of our submitted design.  We will be doing most all of this work ourselves in the September/October timeframe with the hope of planting come October/November of this year.  With any luck we will receive plenty of rain this winter.  If we don't, then at least we'll know that our landscape can tolerate what little supplemental water it will receive in spring/summer of 2022.

Yep, more paint stripping

 In October 2020 we started the ever so fun job of paint stripping our dining room.  Here we are, June of 2021 and slowly but surely we're making process.  We started and completed numerous other projects in this time.  Paint stripping is one of those projects that just keeps giving week after week after week after week.

Earlier this year we discovered that the wall frame and panel was solid wood.  That significantly increased the scope of surface area to be paint stripped and refinished.  The following are the most recent progress pictures.

We dream of having this room fully done sanded and refinished by December, in time for a nice holiday party to show off the hard work.

Slow Painful Progress

 

We are making slooooooooooooow painful progress stripping the original built-in cabinet.  Progress is extremely slow even with the Speedheater.  We learned during the process that the entire cabinet and all of the surrounding trim on the wall had been completely sanded down to raw wood.  We guesstimate this happened sometime in the 50s or 60s based on the nature of the oil based paint layers.  The extremely strong oil based paints made a VERY STRONG bond to the wood grain making it next to impossible to remove the paint.  

Throughout this process we have been using the Speedheater to remove as much paint as possible without damaging the wood.  When we scrape with too much pressure we gouge the wood, which we've  done in a number of places.  That will lead to more sanding and difficulty during the finishing process.  We have resorted to using chemical stripper to remove the final layers of oil paint that have adhered to the raw wood.  We are using Multi-Strip Advanced, which I have used in the past.  It is less toxic, but still pretty strong stuff.  The trick has been to leave the stripping paste on the surface for at least 10 hours before the final scrape.  It leaves quite a bit of paint residue, but we expect to be able to sand most of it out during the final finishing stage.

The good news is that we did a test run on the box beams and surrounding trim in the dining room and the original finish was not sanded off.  The Speedheater penetrates through the paint layers, softens the shellac layer, and the paint slides off like butter.  We are hoping that this cabinet and surrounding trim is the last of the sanded wood work.  Why would anyone bother to sand all of this and then cover it all up with paint?  Not sure we'll ever understand exactly what happened here.  The mysteries of an old house!

Another Win in the Finish Column

 

We took another project over the finish line this weekend!  This one wraps up the workshop makeover we started in January.  We got the workbenches and a really nice tool chest installed which mostly completes the space.  This small space was a big challenge, but we couldn't be happier with the outcome.  It is bright, well organized, and allows us to easily set up different tools depending on the type of project we are working on.  It is really nice to have this complete!  The sad part of finishing this means we have to stop procrastinating and start paint stripping the woodwork in the house again.  I'd rather do just about ANYTHING else .... :-)

Lawn to Garden

 

After numerous walks around our neighborhood we have been considering a lawn to garden conversion.  There are quite a few people in our area that have done this.  Anyone else reading this blog been through this process in another city or in Long beach?  The city here offers a program to do this which includes a 3$ per sq ft grant.  The city recently replaced our street and curbs, and our front strip got pretty torn up in the process.  In addition, they took out the 40 foot tall eucalyptus tree that was located in the front yard along the sidewalk.  This has been an invitation for us to consider what to do with the small front-yard space.

I did a first draft landscape drawing of what it could look like should we choose to go this route.  Plants corresponding to the numerical identifier on the drawing can be found here.  I can't help but think that this would be much more visually interesting and require a lot less water.

Trying to convince myself not to do the conversion this year, but who am I kidding.  I might have this done next week :)

Final Push to the Finish

 Why is it that the final 10% of work on a project always takes such a massive effort to finish?  Perhaps because it is always detailed, or maybe it's the mental difficulty of pushing past the finish line.  Nonetheless, our studio makeover project was no exception to this rule.  It was one of the first projects to be started in January of 2020 and yet we just pushed it over the finish line this month!  

I am proud to report that all the door and window trim is in!  Even the baseboards are hung :). We trimmed the doors/windows using poplar and left it natural with a shellac finish.  We used the newly acquired planer to custom mill the board depths to match the craftsman detail of the house.  Overall, very pleased with the outcome and happy to have this marked off the list.  The project was an excellent test of the workflow of the newly remodeled workshop and we are pleased with the result.  Looking forward to moving on to a different room now...