I never took a photo of the Secret Shed while it was standing, if you could really say it was standing. At one point in time, it was some kind of horse stall/stable thing. Over time, the former owner turned it into storage. Eventually, a branch came off a tree, hitting the shed, and knocking it askew. Since then it’s become less attractive, especially for our neighbors in the back who had to look at it every day. It was also dangerous. So we had a demolition crew come in and tear it down:

The views from up there are quite stunning. We need to trim some of our trees (to the left in this picture) to maximize them.

Also, the hot tub and other junk from the side of the house is now gone. The side deck lives, for now, because it offers somewhat convenient access to the side of the house but this will change soon.

No posts for a while, been lazy. Last weekend we hacked away a bunch of the sticky trees in front of the house, cleaning it up just a little bit. Need to remove the stumps. Also need to remove the trees from the side of the house, but we’re making progress. We moved a huge pile of leaves from the side of the house down into our Loam Farm in the slope down in front of the deck.

Leslie decided she wanted some raised beds and a larger garden on the west side of the house, where there’s room, and a lot of sun. There was some area, largely ruined ground with gravel beneath moss and leaves, and a dirt hillside obscured by a huge redwood hot tub and surrounding deck. Leslie decided she wanted the side deck gone. So this weekend kerz, Hixie and I removed much of the deck. We will have contractors finish the work but we got a lot done and the space looks transformed.

Before:

(This picture comes from the listing of our house, and was not taken by me)

The hot tub there is truly disgusting, but of an interesting design:

We had to make sure not to damage infrastructure like electrical, gas and water:

Our inlaw unit renovation, at the priming stage:

In the original plans, it looks like the house’s hillside site caused the designer to factor in some storage space under the house accessed via a cheap garage-style door. My suspicion is that the owner, for whom the builder was working directly, requested some windows to be added, and in place of some of the standard support posts and footings a jumbo beam across the expanse of the area occupied by the unit. A slab was poured, some plumbing run, and then the framework of the unit added. The construction quality is rather nasty, although the tile work is well done. The last photo is of the weird walk in “sleeper” closet at one end of the room. The drywall doesn’t even go all the way down to the retaining wall, resulting in dirt entering the interior of the closet from the crawlspace!

Almost complete with one coat of the finish coat today. It’s… yellow. Looks better than before though. Photos later.

Also, a photo of our new laundry sink:

It’s not the most attractive thing in the world but it’s steady on four legs, which is a plus.

Finally, a small field mouse which has visited us these past two nights. I found it being tormented by the cat both times (good kitty). I scooped it up and put it back outside.

It’s cute and all, but I’m pretty much done with all creatures great and small. We had raccoons at the last house. I think once we save up a little more I would like to institute a path of destruction 10-20 feet in width around the foundation of the house, pulling back all of the vegetation, tearing off old decking etc, replacing the siding etc. and sealing everything up good and tight so no more critters can get in or find refuge.

Over the past few weeks we’ve had two plumbing disasters. One downstairs and very stinky - clog in the sewer line resulting in raw sewage backing up into the inlaw unit, and the most recent upstairs: the laundry tub fell off the wall.

The first one I discovered a few days after it started happening since we don’t go downstairs all that much. Anyway it spawned a renewal project downstairs that includes new paint for the walls and kitchen cabinets, new vinyl tile, and some new fixtures. I will post some photos of our progress so far soon. We should be done in a few weeks.

The second happened just last night. I was sitting on the futon watching TV when I heard a creak and a splintering crack. I thought the washer might be having trouble rebalancing its load but it sure didn’t sound like it. I was going to get up and take a look but before I could finish the situation was punctuated by a huge crash, followed by a sheet of water flooding out of the doorway from the west hall. I leapt out of the futon and rushed into the hall to look: the laundry tub that the washer drains into was sitting on the floor, torn from its wall bracket, water flooding out through the hole in the bottom where the drain plug had once been. I shut off the washer to prevent more water from draining. Leslie brought towels and we quickly soaked up the water in the hall. Fortunately due to the unevenness of the floors on this side of the house the water drained away from the bedrooms down towards the rec room.

I went downstairs to check the ducting since some of the water had rushed into the cold air return, and found a couple of large puddles on the floor in the inlaw unit from where the floor above had leaked through the ceiling tiles. The G-Fab ceiling tiles are actually preferable in this case, since they are easily removed and replaced to inspect the underside of the floor above.

Plumber is coming back again today to take a look and schedule a replacement.

I’m hoping the worst is behind us now, but I’m touching wood.

Occupying a new space for a while quickly uncovers vantage points and angles you had not perceived earlier:

I love our living room - it’s my favorite room in the house but somewhat sparsely furnished right now.

This yard is going to require some work.

Oasis.

Not sure what to name this place yet, but “The Tree House” seems like a contender.

I had an electrician come by to ground a couple of outlets so that we could plug our computers in (through surge protectors). I learned a few things in the process, like the reason why many outlets in houses are installed (annoyingly) upside down is that the latest version of the electric code requires it - apparently if a plug begins to hang out of the wall if a piece of metal (e.g. a knife) falls on it then if the outlet is installed in the conventional fashion it’s possible for the knife to short the two connections. With ground up, this is impossible. I wouldn’t care, except a good number of electrical products that are still on the market have cords that are designed to hang down, not up, making them more susceptible to falling out which I would think would be its own safety problem…

But I digress. I also discovered (thanks to the electrician pointing this out) that the electric hot water heater that supplies the east wing of the house was “wired” using an extension cord plugged into an outlet on a lighting circuit. He fixed that.

But the other positive to come out of his visit was the removal of a fair bit of scary looking wiring:

Sadly I did not get a chance to photograph one particularly awesome looking outlet outside under the deck, where it was nailed to one of the outbound support posts, fully exposed to the elements, with no cover plate (not even the one that hides the outlet box), wired in by a piece of romex (indoor rated) wire that draped loosely across the top of the underside of the deck, again fully exposed. This outlet was used to power…wait for it it gets better…a water fountain on the deck above by means of an extension cord.

Another interesting element of the home-built outdoor/crawlspace electrical system is this power strip:

We weren’t sure, but felt it was possible this strip might power much of the lower level. It was removed. Time will tell what outlets and spotlights down there will no longer function.

Electric power was all the rage from the 50s onwards and showing the usefulness of electricity (especially nuclear produced electric power) was the hallmark of a mid century home. Designers tried to pack as much technology as they could into the houses. Here are some of my favorites:

Built-in butcher block, with diner-style backsplash:

Nu-Tone KitchenCenter (basically a blender/grinder/juicer etc built into the counter top):

Built-in toaster:

Triple Sink (all the more space to stack dirty dishes!):

Dual under-counter Sub-Zeros (not the most practical arrangement, but novel):

All of these come from the same 1959 house, which I think was high end for its time. Sadly I think it’s getting torn down.

Another place I saw had an ingenious electric cooktop system that stowed individual coil burners up towards the wall when not in use - flipping down when time to cook. Not necessarily the most usable contraption when space is needed for larger pans (especially woks) but novel all the same.

There’s less original novelty in our house - with the exception of the Mystery Hole, which will get an entry all of its own.

I blogged about this a little a few months back on my personal blog. We’d been looking for houses for about ten months before finding our house. Since most of the places we were looking at were of similar age (1950s) size (1500-2500sq ft) and location (mid century tracts around Los Altos, California), many of them had similar features. Most houses that came on the market would have one or more striking original features that characterized life or design from the era in which they were built. Many of these things were fascinating, and usually absent in the bland tract housing of today (although I’m sure people were saying the same things about these places back when they were put up!)

Here are some of the favorite details I noted in some of the houses I saw:

• Intercoms - present in a good many places built from the 50s. Ranch houses are low and wide, and in the Los Altos area tended to occupy fairly large lots by contemporary standards, so getting everyone together either meant yelling at the top of your lungs or using one of these systems. The best systems would have MusiCall control centers like the one to the right near the kitchen where the other units could be activated, and the radio could be tuned. Our house has a speaker that appears to be for such a system but there is no actual evidence of the rest of one, so not sure. For a house of the size we have, it would definitely be useful and save yelling though.
• Dutch Doors - one place we put an offer on had a dutch door to one of the bedrooms. Another place we looked at afterwards had one on the front door. These are truly the most wonderful contraptions. They let air in without leaving your house open for all the world to come in. My aim is to find a place for one to go in this house.
• Dovecotes - these are less useful but attractive. As are the faux swiss chalet details that are also popular on a lot of places.

I will keep adding to this list.

We’ve been here for two weeks now, and are almost at the point where everything is unpacked and put away. Not sure yet about the final locations for some things.

We have spaced out our furniture a little to put something in every room, but not sure it’s the best setup. The kitchen is large and feels like the dining table should be moved into the kitchen area more and the pendant lamp lowered over it, with a couch or something put into the family room area where the table currently is. Since we only have one extra couch - Leslie’s futon in the rec room, it’s not clear what to do.

Generally the house has been functioning pretty well. The water pressure is awesome, and there’s an old school (Leslie tells me it’s not low-flow) shower head in the master bath that has a massage mode that still works. Hot water for the east wing comes from a small electric water heater under the house, and the rest comes from the main gas fired water heater also in the crawlspace. The complaint we have about this system is that for some reason it takes ages for hot water to reach any faucet in the west side. Not true of the shower in the west wing bathroom though for some reason. Plumber is coming today so will ask him about it.

The house has scrubbed up pretty well - there’s still the standard wear and tear of an old house but for the most part it looks pretty swell. I’ve made a list of power equipment I need to get in order to keep improving the appearance and maintenance of the property - a gas leaf blower figures prominently since the surrounding oaks shed incessantly, and a shop vac to remove the cobwebs and debris from the outside walls and window frames.

We have run the furnace a few times because we’re sissies about the cold and haven’t got all our warm blankets organized yet. Before next winter when we run it more in earnest, we will want to figure out the curtain situation since the house has gigantic windows along the north side that will want to leach all the indoor heat away.

I write this from the deck on a sunny early afternoon in April. Life is good.