Day 17: Saturday

Today was our first day to really take over the house from our contractor and do all of the work we needed to do. A quick stop at OSH to see if there were any good lawnmowers as they have a 15% deal on them right now, but we're debating about self-propelled and push and what brands are the best as well as not too expensive.

We then went to Lumber Liquidators and got all of our wood. 59 boxes in total as well as 15 rolls of Elastion (the stuff we'll lay the floor on). They loaded them into the truck with a forklift and the poor truck just sunk on it's wheels. We had a careful drive up the 5 and 605 to make sure we didn't lose anything. Then came the unwieldy task of unloading all the boxes. Wish I had a forklift that I could've used.

The rest of the day was spent prepping for painting, priming two bedroom ceilings, changing locks, and figuring out our sprinkler system so we could water our plants. I have to figure out what days we're allowed to water. However, I did discover that we have a dwarf satsuma mandarin tree which means seedless tangerines when they start to grow. Yes, this was the mysterious citrus tree and it was easily solved by finding the tag on the tree. I also found out that we have lizards or at least one. It's the little tiny ones that run aroundn Huntington Gardens. It doesn't surprise me, but I'm not going to want them running around on my feet.

Back to work for another long day at the house. And I promise picture next time!

Day 15: Night painting

After school today I drove home and made my routine stop at Home Depot. I'm getting to become a regular at the paint counter. I got a lighter purple to dry for the guest room and then Gobi Desert and Brown Teepee. Each brown is a good shade, one is just lighter than the other so we'll have to see what works best in the light of day. We only have a few lights in the house so lamps will be quite necessary.

I also got to see the house with all the tiles taken out and the ceilings smooth and finished. I'm excited at how good they look vs. the popcorn ceilings.

Gene and I are making our plans for the weekend. We're going to get all of the paint tomorrow night and be prepared for a productive day on Saturday. I'll have many more new pictures then.

Day 13: Updates

I was gone over spring break for my sister's baby shower, but am now back and ready to keep working on the house. However, things were being done by both Gene and our contractor while I was gone.

We now have new electrical panel (with 200 amps), ductwork without asbetos, our floor is gone and ready for hardwood, we wired cables through some of the ceiling, and almost have our paint colors finished.

As for paint, we're still searching for the perfect tan for the living room. We've found burnt almond in Behr paint which isn't horrible, but I think it's a little too dark. So we're going to try one more color (Gobi desert) and then see.

For the trees that we thought were avocados, we were wrong. The fruit looks like this:

We actually have loquats and we'll see whether or not Gene and I are a fan of them. We'll definitely have quite a few.

Gene and I have also ordered our washer and dryer (Whirlpool Duet) and have to pick up our wood flooring from Lumber Liquidators on Saturday. We're excited that we can get in there then and start working. The contractor plans on finishing on Saturday. Then all the work becomes ours!

Day 3 and 4: Colors

Saturday and Sunday were spent trying to decide on paint colors.

We're going with Behr paint from Home Depot and after hours in both the store and their online paint tool we've decided on these colors:

Master Bedroom: Rhythmic Blue

Guest Bedroom 1: Grass Cloth

Guest Bedroom 2: Deep Smoke Signal

Office: Melted Butter

Kitchen: Athenian Green (with white cabinets, but need to  decide if we're going to sand down to wood). Gene did a sample sanding here and really likes the wood. So we'll have to see if that's something that we can manage with everything else!

Bathrooms: Unknown

Living Room: We're trying for a tan, but can't find the right one yet. The search continues for a light, plain brown.

Trim: Ultra Pure White

We'll have some fun bright colors, but just trying to finalize all of these and imagine how they'll look with wood floors (Schon Brazilian Teak from Lumber Liquidators) and all of our furniture.

Day 2: Fruit, Glorious Fruit!

Gene and I arrived at the house today with many supplies in hand and plans to test out paint colors and work on the landscaping which has become way overgrown. The backyard has a big sloping hill for all the trees and landscaping and it looked like this when we first saw it:

All of the rain that California has been getting has made the growth a nightmare. We donned our gardening gloves and grabbed clippers and a saw and started on it. Gene attacked what we have called the banana tree (as we have no idea what it is) and went to work on taking out all the bottom branches.

Here's pictures of before and after:

Oh, look, there's a wheelbarrow under there. That will come in handy for us to hall away all these branches and leaves. We also discovered that there was a milky sap coming out from the branches when Gene cut them off--this led us to a quick Google search to discover that these are in fact two rubber trees! Now Gene and I just need to figure out how to process rubber. Actually, my plan is to find a hammock to string between the two rubber trees. It seems like the perfect place to read and sip lemonade.

Speaking of lemonade, behind the two rubber trees we discovered two fruit trees. You'd think we'd have seen these before, but had such a difficult time to get back to this side of the yard. We have one lemon tree with some small fruit on it already. The blossoms smell wonderful. The other plant we think is a grapefruit, but we'll have to see. I'm betting on either that or an orange of some kind. I also think that we might have some avocado trees as there's some small green fruit and I picked one up to open it and it had a pit and was green inside. Gene's not convinced yet that they're avocados, but time will tell.

Here's the trimming that we've done so far. There's still more work to be done, but we can see tree trunks now and individual plants. More about painting and paint choices tomorrow!

Day 1: We Got the Keys!

After 541 days of searching and waiting for a home, Gene and I finally got the keys to our new house. It's a mid-century ranch home in Duarte with views of the San Gabriel mountains from the backyard. We met our real estate agent, Judy, at Thinkwell and she handed us over the keys.

We have quite a bit of work to do on the house as it needs some updating from it's 60's decor as well as color on the walls to liven up the place from all white. This blog is going to show our journey from apartment dwellers to home owners as we dive into the world of fixer-uppers and DIY.

After getting the keys, I returned back to Pasadena and made a trip to Target. I started looking at possible lamps for the house (there's not a lot of overhead light) and weed killer for the yard.

Instead of heading out to the house tonight, Gene and I went to Home Depot and got supplies for our workday tomorrow. I headed towards the paint aisle to pick out seven colors of paint from Melted Butter to Pacific Sea Teal for small color samples. I love the little tiny cans and am excited that I can see the colors on the wall before I make too big of a mistake! Gene picked out landscaping tools, spackle, and a claw-like tool to tear up tile.

Check out the colors that will be on our walls tomorrow. I'll have more to update and pictures to show then.