Bungalow Done

Yard: Grass removed, mulch laid, ficus removed, fruit trees planted, electronic gate installed, water heater shed rebuilt, stucco patched.

I hope all this work was worth it. I sure learned a lot! Kloe now does remodeling!

Bungalow Done

Kitchen: New appliances, painted.


Laundry room: Cabinets, heater installed in closet.


Bathroom: Three walls and floor reconstructed, shower installed, toilet and sink repositioned, window installed. The room is totally transformed!

Bungalow, Done

Living Room: Fireplace scraped, enough for now. Sconces rewired. Painted.


Dining Room: Mural painted. Wallpaper scraped. Broken windows replaced. Painted.

Bungalow, Done

Here are the “after” photos.

Front: Bamboo eradication in process. Bougainvillea planted. Tires removed, mostly. Trim painted.


Entrance: Concrete paint removed. Doors restored and stained. Windows scraped (glass was painted). Lighting and alarm system installed.

Last of the “Before” Pics

I’m ready to be done.

Trade Show

Bungalow is in its final stages. In only one month most of the renovations have been completed. It’s been my job to oversee the workers, be the cheerleader and check writer.
But I’m also working on another project, and art exhibition that I will take to Turkey in the Fall. “Trade Show, California – Turkey” is a swap of artworks between 100 Californian artists and 100 Turkish artists. The artists use a two-dimensional, 6” x 6” format to address these questions:
“What do I value?
What would I trade?”
The work can be in any media. So far I’ve gotten drawing, painting, photography, collage, digital prints, embroidery, and mixed media.
A colleague asked me, “Kloe, why are you doing all this work?” Because, of course, there’s no profit in it. It’s a cultural exchange. But I’ve run into some minor problems, with the exhibition venues, with making mistakes in the promo material, with stepping on some toes.
Anyway, first show is less than a month away.
Artists: send me your work! (If you’d like to participate, leave a comment or email me directly.)

First exhibition venue:
Garage Gallery
4141 Alabama St.
San Diego
July 1-31
Opening: July 3, 7-9pm

Green Plague

I now understand running bamboo for what it is: the major menace of the 21st century.
There is almost no way to kill it. Or remove it. Or poison it unless you want to permanently decimate the entire yard. If I were to get a backhoe and dig out the dirt six feet down, throw it all in the dump, refill with good top soil, the bamboo would come back. Because it has gone into the neighbor’s yard, and boy, are they grumpy about that fact.
Never, EVER, plant running bamboo, and I don’t recommend the clumping kind either (may be mis-labeled).
The American Bamboo Society advises to simply cut it down. And cut it down, and cut it down again. For years. Til the rhizomes (horizontal roots) are dead.
Meanwhile can I plant the bougainvillea I want in their place? Stay tuned.

Peacock Mural

Finished it today. The mural, where there was once a window, is based on a Stickley design. Tried to make the texture resemble the fireplace in the next room.
Trim painting in this dining room is almost done. It’s a rich chocolate brown, painted where there was paint, stained on raw wood.
UNIFY.

Need I Say More?

Seriously, it's getting serious. I need to sell some paintings or find a pot of gold in the backyard instead of rocks. So if you've been waiting to own your own Kloe, now's the time...

Punching

Out the bathroom window. It existed once and will again! Other small window is false and will be stuccoed over.
Hoping the major work is finished this week. That’s one thing about employing a contractor during a recession—the crew stays on task.

Progress

Today I could finally envision how the house will look done, and I’m VERY happy. We cleaned up enough to see through the junk and debris (dump runs), and this little bungalow is beautiful—it was just waiting to be simplified/unified.
I planted the first tree, a Meyer lemon, and a few drought tolerant shrubs. The front will be bougainvillea and bamboo. No lawn anywhere. Two large trees unfortunately have to go: one is a ficus, the other, possibly a bottle tree, is leaning dangerously.
Here’s the front entry before any work was done. The black and white checkerboard will be sprayed off. By next week most of the major work will be finished!

Bathroom = Cave

First photo shows the tub on a platform with black and white tile (not original, and not my favorite). We debated on whether to take it out. And then we started to find leaks in the walls, so took out the platform too.
A good thing, as the first filled bath probably would have resulted in the tub falling through the floor into the crawlspace.

Built In

The house is a constant swirl of dust as walls are scraped, non-original tile is ripped up, wiring is rewired, and heating system installed. Every wall in the bathroom had leaks in it, and the platform the tub was resting on was about to collapse.
This is the only remaining built-in in this bungalow. It was full of original glass fixtures, wonderful stuff.
The house has a tragedy in its history, though. Now I understand more about its closed-off state. Seems a teen died, the only child of the owner. Very sad.

Stripper

Here’s the fireplace, a big project. It’s apparently sort of valuable, a Batchelder or similar. The decorative pieces have peacocks on them, but I can’t tell how they were cleaned or if they’ve been painted. Anyway, there’s thick coat of white enamel coating most of the tiles.
I am a happy scraper.

Caviar and Sconces

For our MDay lunch, my kids and I shopped at the local gourmet grocery, buying whatever we wanted: beef and salmon jerky, mango salsa, fava beans in olive oil, Humboldt Fog cheese, proscuitto and melon, Indian salmon, truffle pate, and multiple desserts. But the biggest splurge was a jar of caviar. My foodie thought he might like it, and now I’ve created a monster…
After a long lunch outside I worked on these crazy brass sconces. Everyone said, correctly, they were too much trouble to clean up. But when I went to the antiques shop to find replacements (as you can’t just plug up a live hole in the wall), I found they are worth several hundred dollars a pair! One of my sconces (not pictured) is fully cleaned, and it looks like plastic, so I’m going to leave the others shabby chic-ish. That’s what you get when you’re working on a house with a history, and it’s fun!
Hope you had a good Mama's Day too.

First Days

Our first projects included the following:
• Stripping layers of wallpaper.
• Priming all the black molding (it will be brown, I’m not stripping all that. I know, it’s sacrilege but there are limits).
• Thinning out the bamboo in the front.
• Realizing there is no heating system and figuring out where to put one (yes, we do need heat in SoCal). Crazy, a house with no central heat!
Those windows are not original. For now I’m planning to paint a Stickley-inspired mural up in that lunette.
Kloe is very, very tired!

Summer Projects

I’m not teaching much this summer, so to fill my time I’ve taken on a few little projects. OK, maybe not so little.
Here’s one: renovation of a 1920s Spanish style craftsman bungalow!
I’ll take photos as I go along with this baby. I’ve never been in charge of a building before, so will share with you my successes and failures. Anyway, as you can see, the yard is a bit overgrown…
Can we say, clumping bamboo?