The House of Bamboo and Avocados

Happy Birthday to Me!

2012-02-26T16:05:00.000-08:00

My birthday celebration was at Disneyland this year and it was a blast! We kept where we were going a surprise for Finn and he did not figure it out until we got on the parking lot shuttle bus. The driver announced "Welcome to Disneyland" and the look of confusion turning into excitement on Finn's face was priceless! I couldn't have asked for a better gift than that!

Exiting Pirates of the Caribbean, our first ride of the day.

The Tea Cups!

Of course we had to check out the Jedi's in Training show.

Watch out for Darth Maul!

Finn's favorite ride was The Circus Train from Dumbo and The Story Book Boats.

Around 3pm when the crowds and lines for the rides were the most crazy we hopped onto the Disneyland Hotel Monorail.

A new tiki bar called Trader Sam's just opened up there this past summer and

we couldn't wait to check it out!

It was spectacular! Each time we ordered a speciality drink, the lights dimmed, waiters and bartenders started chanting and thunder and lightning occurred!

Here I am showing off my birthday gifts from Finn and Adam, a season pass to Disneyland and a tiki mug from the bar. Woo Hoo!!

We could have stayed at Trader Sam's for hours but after a delicious lunch there we were excited to get back to the park to go on more rides.

After several more rides, it was time for another break. Finn fell asleep in his stroller at dusk so we enjoyed beignets and coffee in New Orleans Square while he napped. After he woke up the first thing he said was "Rides!" so we headed over to the Haunted Mansion and the Tiki Room and ended our fun filled day with a 2nd ride on the Jungle Cruise.

We love the Tiki Room!!

It was so great to get away from the noise and mess of our remodel even just for a day. Big house progress happening again as our bamboo floors are being installed as well as the final exterior stucco layer. I think we really may be able to move in sometime in March, fingers crossed.

House updates with pics to follow soon!

Feeling the Love!

2012-02-14T14:49:00.000-08:00

Having so much fun with my sweet boy today!

Scored two awesome red metal bistro chairs at a Ross store yesterday!

Enjoyed crafting lots of fabric mini cake banners over the weekend with neighbor Sheila in her super cool sewing craft room!

Also made some fun treat bags for our playgroup's post Valentine's Day party tomorrow...

and really looking forward to dinner out tonight with my two guys!

Lots of love from The House of Bamboo and Avocados to you!

Kitchen Love!

2012-02-10T09:12:00.000-08:00

Tah Dah! Here is our next big reveal, our lovely brand spanking new kitchen! Can you tell how much I love it? It turned out even better than we thought. It has such a great flow, beautiful light streaming through the new windows and skylights and an overall nice, spacious feeling.

Here are a few more pics;

Check out the restored original wood ceiling that Mr. Bamboo spent so many hours brushing on a protective sealant that really brought out the richness of the wood. We love it! More to follow in a future post on all of the reclaimed wood projects throughout our house.

After debating custom cabinets vs. Ikea cabinets, we decided on the Stat Cabinets and butcher block counters from Ikea. Although the cabinets have a more classic cottage look, we felt that with our stainless appliances, bamboo flooring and original wood ceiling, there would be enough modern contrast to make it work for our style. They were also very budget friendly and we figured we won't freak out as much if they get banged up from Finn as we would with more expensive custom cabinets. Yes, I am lying, we will freak out no matter what! We have had all of our appliances delivered, we are just waiting for the bamboo floors to get installed in the next few weeks before they can be put in place. A bar height counter is also in the process of being built. We are using an Ikea base cabinet and extending it height and length wise to make it a comfortable bar counter. There will be open shelves on the right side for cookbook storage and two closed doors on the left that will possibly be constructed out of bamboo.

This will be a great hang out spot for morning breakfast and for afternoon happy hours with friends!

A few more new additions to the house....

A galvanized metal light fixture installed above out coat closet.

Our new Nest thermostat.

and we finally have working lights in our house, so exciting!

Lastly, we enjoyed watching our first movie and the Super Bowl on our new t.v. in the house this past weekend.

Thanks to all of our friends and family who have been cheering us on with compliments and support in the last few weeks. It has meant a lot to us and really does help us stay more positive as we are nearing the end of our remodel. Our energy levels are on the downside and we are pretty exhausted from this past year but we still have a few more big decisions to make and lots of weekend house projects to complete. To quote Madonna's "Don't Stop" song, we just need to keep moving and grooving, ha ha!

Have a good weekend!

Happy Anniversary!

2012-02-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

One year ago today our little yellow cottage by the sea was partially torn apart so that our family could grow and enjoy living in a more comfortable house. This pic of Finn and Jake was taken in our old hallway a few weeks before the remodel started. It's hard and also not so hard to believe that a whole year has gone by since this all started. So much excitement, stress, and change has happened this past year and it's still not over yet! Here are some of my favorite pics from our old house right before the big remodel and of daily life in our studio digs while we wait for the big house to be finished. We may have gone a little crazy living in 300 square feet for so long but it also was ( actually still is!) quite the adventure for us filled with many great memories....

And a very Happy Birthday Month to our awesome dog Jake! He is an unbelievable 17 years old and we are so thankful for every day that we have with him. We love you so much!!!

Before and after house pics and an amazing kitchen reveal to follow soon....

The Big Reveal.......

2012-01-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

So we finally decided on a new color to paint our house and the results are going to blow you away!

Goodbye mellow yellow house, hello sexy black!

So, does anyone think we are crazy yet? The story behind it all is that a few months ago a friendly neighbor up the street who is a landscape architect sent me an email asking me if we would ever consider painting our house black and she attached a pic of a two story black house set in beautiful countryside setting as an example. Our immediate reaction was, wow, what a cool idea but we really can't picture this working for our house and our much smaller lot. We thought it might look too dark and overwhelming. So she then suggested using the brightly colored Scandinavian fisherman cottages as inspiration for a fun color, which I have always loved. We tried to find a bold color that we both liked for our house but nothing was really clicking for us. We then went back to our yellow house plan and after trying several yellow swatches of paint, finally agreed on just using the exact yellow that we previously had painted our house 12 years ago! I was also quite attached to the idea of having our yellow house back again.

Fast forward to last weekend, the painters were coming on Monday and somehow the idea of painting our house black got back into our mind set. There is a newly built house in a very similar style to ours the next beach town south that had been recently stained black. It was a perfect example that helped us see how good black could possibly look on our house. After a frantic weekend of finding black house examples online, grabbing black paint swatches and testing them out and then gaining an extra few bonus days to decide because rain on Monday delayed the painters, we took the leap to black and never looked back! Interestingly enough, black stained wood and paint is commonly used on Scandinavian country homes and is also quite popular on modern houses these days.

So now we can classify our house as a Scandinavian modern, farmhouse industrial, beach cottage!

We love how the white trim really pops out from the black and the overall look of it. It is not overwhelming and in fact looks quite stealth blending in behind the avocado tree. Next up, picking the color for the stucco areas of the house which will get a final smoother layer in the next few weeks. We are hoping to use a medium gray. We are also trying to decide on a fun color for the front door which will be painted tomorrow so check back for the results!

Come visit us on the Dark Side soon....

The House of Bamboo finally has Color!

2012-01-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

Check Finn's room out! It is now painted a blue Benjamin Moore color called "Fiji". It was inspired by this bedroom found on the Pottery Barn Teen website:

Just before New Year's day a crew of painters started painting the interior of our house and a lot of quick color decisions had to be made.

We had to choose wall, ceiling and trim paint. For most of the house we decided to stay with shades of white to keep a nice, neutral and bright palette throughout. All of our paint is from Benjamin Moore, the walls are Oxford White and the trim and ceiling Super White. The blue chip above was for Finn's bedroom and the greens below for a feature wall in the mini office aka Mr. Bamboo and Finn's man cave. Here are some of the "afters":

Now heading into the closet and bathroom, we kept the entrance door wall, closet and bathroom walls white.

Finn's bathroom is really small so keeping the walls white and using white subway tiles in the tub area will help it seem bigger plus...

These multicolored glass mosaic tiles will be the colorful feature!

We used these tiles on the built in shower ledge, around the window frame and on the floor.

Sorry for the poor quality of this pic which was taken with my iphone right after the tiles were installed on the floor. As soon as it was finished, the floor was covered up for protection and we have not see it since! We used Hakatai tiles again like we did in the studio but a different color mix. While we were ordering the tiles for Finn's bathroom, we decided to order the all blue mix for the laundry closet floor.

Back to Finn's room, here are a few pics of items we have purchased for it over the past year. Decorating his room is incredibly exciting for me since he has never had his own and I wasn't able to go crazy with nursery style decor back in the day.

His new comforter is from Pottery Barn Kids.

Industrial Style metal letters above and crab pillow below from

Restoration Hardware.

Metal light sconce from Lowes.

Moen single lever tub and shower set.

Lillangen sink cabinet from Ikea.

and the Lillangen Mirror with shelves.

We pretty much have everything we need for Finn's bedroom and bathroom. Finally we can check one room off our huge project list!

Lastly, a few pics of the lime green man cave/office wall.

We love it!!

Finn rocking out on New Year's Eve with his cool RockShow music and lights machine thanks to his awesome Chicago cousins!

Also notice his fun super hero cape turned frontside, a very special xmas gift from his bestie Brixton!

It was quite the New Year's Eve celebration for us!

Happy 2012!

Sand, Sunshine and Santa!

2011-12-30T10:30:00.000-08:00

We started off our 2011 holiday weekend with our annual Cardiff Beach picnic. Normally we do this on Christmas Day but we had a early dinner invite to attend this year instead so we decided to do our picnic on the day before, Xmas eve. We kept our picnic simple with cheese, crackers, and sourdough bread but also enjoyed fresh crab, yum! Our good friends Rachel, Nick and Lily joined us and we all had such a great time eating, drinking and relaxing in the sunshine together.

What a beautiful day at the beach.

Christmas was super fun this year as Finn really understood the concept of Santa and his reindeer for the first time. He was incredibly excited to meet Santa a week before Christmas and asked for a tent full of toys. Santa had fun with that request!

The tent takes up quite a bit of space in our studio though but at least Finn finally has his own bedroom!

Since we are still living in our small cottage space and don't really have much of a kitchen, we were really happy to be invited over for Xmas dinner at Liz, Dan and Isla's house.

As usual, they were amazing hosts! The company was very enjoyable, the bbq ham, side dishes and desserts were so delicious and the decor magazine worthy!

I enjoyed making festive Poinsettia Cocktails for the party.

The sun setting after a fabulous day!

Hope your holidays were also festive, warm and bright!

Holiday Fun!

2011-12-22T20:49:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update as I am pretty pooped out from this week. The dreaded trenching of our driveway project finally started last week and finished today, yippee! Our driveway was partially torn apart and a trench dug through it that went all the way across the street into our neighbors driveway so that our electrical lines could be placed underground. It was a very disruptive process to our street and wonderful neighbors as well as ourselves but we are glad it is finished. We are now happy to put a big check next to that project on the remaining renovation to do list.

What a mess!

Due to many different reasons, we will not be in our house by Christmas as we had hoped. We may not be in our house till late January/early Feb. but we are trying to remain positive and keep our spirits high. Despite the house craziness we have managed to have some holiday fun these last few weeks. Here are some highlights:

Finn and I have loved visiting the xmas tree lots even though we will not be getting a big tree this year.

A kid free relaxing spa day at with my great group of "mom" friends.

A window from our house as well as our former vintage stove serving as displays at my friend Karin's festive craft fair!

My good friend Anto's beautiful pottery display. You can find her pottery and Karin's art work and other handmade goodies for sale at Barrels and Branches in Encinitas.

My crafting/wrapping corner in the studio and one of our wee little trees.

Wrapping paper painted by Finn and handmade ornaments featuring his official preschool picture.

A toddler cookie decorating party was really fun!

Decorating a driftwood tree with seaweed and shells...

turned into an unplanned xmas card photo shoot!

This next pic of Finn slightly worried when the water came in unexpectedly is kind of funny! Notice the water level is all the way to his ankles, yikes! Where are the lifeboats when you need them?

We also went to a cute pirate birthday party in Coronado and enjoyed a drive around the neighborhood afterwards to see all the great light displays. The one below was our favorite!

Here's our mini version!

It's been a pretty fun December despite it all.

What has been your favorite holiday activity this year?

Tile fun!

2011-12-14T08:45:00.000-08:00

Finn is now a certified tile expert after enduring at least a dozen trips to different tile stores in the last few months! Choosing tile for two bathrooms was harder than I thought it would be, probably due to the time pressure we were under. We had also already designed two bathrooms in our house so it was a little more difficult to come up with some new ideas as we didn't want to do the exact same thing. Here are a few pics from our one and only house bathroom before the big remodel.

About 10 years ago one summer we returned from a big vacation and decided to go ahead and demo our very scary bathroom. I wish I could share the before pics of it but I only have print photos from back then that are in storage right now. The bathroom had dark paneled walls and a really tight lay out. We ripped out the low ceiling and all the bath fixtures including the tub. We then added beadboard paneling on the walls, painted the exposed boards ceiling white, added a skylight, installed white hexagonal ceramic tile and bought a vintage clawfoot tub which we sanded and painted ourselves. We also bought a new pedestal sink and toilet. I had always wanted a cottage style bathroom and this was my favorite room in the house. I really miss soaking in the tub after a long day but happily this bathroom will stay exactly the same even though it is out of commission during the remodel. It has actually been the temporary laundry room!

The next bathroom that we designed was for our studio cottage. This was a huge undertaking as we needed to start from scratch with new plumbing. Because the studio was going to be more modern in style, we decided to use totally different materials in the bathroom compared to what we had used in the house. A glass tiled shower that we saw at a resort in the Bahamas was the inspiration.

Here are the before pics:

We decided to place the bathroom in the left back corner of the studio.

Pretty scary looking!

Lots of work had to be done and it took a very, very long time...

The bathroom is behind the kitchen wall.

Here are the amazing after pics!

Mr. Bamboo installed the Hakatai mosaic glass tile himself. His meticulous attention to detail in doing so was incredible as it was a huge challenge to get all the tiles to line up, especially around the edges and in the shower niche. It took him about 5 months working off and on during weekends to get it finished. The tile we used is called The Horizon Series and if you click on the link you will see our shower as the feature picture! The bamboo sink counter was also designed and built by the mr. as well. It is made of Plyboo, which is a bamboo plywood material. Overall the studio bathroom has a beach spa vacation feel to it and we love the way it turned out.

Choosing different tiles for Finn's bathroom and the master bath was a lot of work.

Some of the tile showrooms had playrooms which was really helpful!

Finn was a pretty good design assistant though!

After finding a limestone tile that we loved for the master bath floor and shower, we decided that we wanted a glass feature wall where the shower fixtures will be. It took a lot of work trying to find a glass tile that we liked and that was also different from the glass mosaic we used in the studio. After a lot of searching we hit the jackpot at the mother of all tile stores, Daltile! They have an amazing showroom in San Diego with very knowledgeable and helpful staff.

Here are a few tiles we ended up ordering.

I will share more details in the next post!

For now here are a few pics of Mr. Finn taking a bath in the clawfoot tub when he was much smaller.

What a cutie!

Come on in!

2011-12-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here is our new kitchen dutch door! A lot of progress has happened since my last post before Thanksgiving. The drywall plastering is finished and now we have walls waiting to be painted after the window trim is installed.

The view looking towards the kitchen.

The front door entrance area.

Here is the living room with tape marking off the area for a flat screen tv. We can not wait for the day that we will be cozy on the couch having a movie night in here!

Interior doors have also been installed.

The laundry closet door is the pic above and

the downstairs coat closet below.

Here is a close up of the front door.

It will be easier to see the details once it is painted.

Window trim is being added this week and Finn's bathroom is continuing to be tiled, look for a tile post in the next few days!

For now, here are a few inspiration pics of white living and dining areas.

Now that's a room with a view!

images from County Living, Southern Living and Coastal Living.

Gobble Gobble!

2011-11-23T19:50:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

This will be just a short post, so excited and ready to have a mellow weekend relaxing with my boys. We have had such a busy few weeks with finalizing all of our bathroom tile decisions as well as designing and ordering our IKEA kitchen. The drywall in our house has been finished and now interior doors and window trim are going up. We also had our super cool metal roof installed on the original side of the house and we are ecstatic about it! I will take a lot of pics this weekend to share soon. Meanwhile, the pic of Finn above was from a really fun and creative luncheon that we attended at our good friend's Liz and Isla's house this week. Here are a few more pics, who knew that Thanksgiving could be such a cute theme for a toddler party!

The kiddie table, so festive!

Toddler lunch inside the turkey!

The cute place settings.

Enjoying time with good friends.

Delicious tomato soup for the mamas courtesy of hostess Liz!

Notice the sweet blueberry pie pops in the back made by mama Melissa, yum!

Melissa and Liz have recently opened The Papered Nest on Etsy where you can find their creatively designed party goods, check it out!

Coconut cupcakes, absolutely delish!

There was even a fun turkey craft to make!

I am so thankful for the fun play group of mom and toddler friends that we have!

I am also so excited and thankful to be spending turkey day right across the street at our good friend's Charles and Sharon's house. Thanks for hosting us again!

We will be thinking about our family and friends that we will be apart from tomorrow and especially those family members that are no longer with us.

We miss and love you all!

We have so much to be thankful for and we are so grateful for all that we have here at the House of Bamboo and Avocados.

Thanks for visiting us and come back again soon!

Racing towards the finish line!

2011-11-10T08:05:00.000-08:00

Here we are, already well into November which is hard to believe. It's been such a hectic fall, especially these last few weeks with lots of tile and floor shopping and interior and exterior decisions to quickly be made. Before I share pics of the recent house progress, here are a few more from our very fun Halloween. We went as a family of race car drivers and I was the checkered flag girl.

The fall festival at Finn's preschool was really cute.

The trick or treating family event in our neighborhood.

Amazing carved pumpkins!

This was my favorite!

Finn's 1st time trick or treating in our neighborhood!

Now for the house pics, we have drywall up and almost finished!

The Living Room

We are so happy with all the light streaming through the new windows into the house.

Dining Room

Finn's secret hideaway!

The mini office where his hideaway is located.

Our bedroom

New transom window over the bedroom doorway which

helps bring in outside light from our bathroom windows.

Above is the entrance into Finn's room from the hallway.

Finn's room

His closet and bathroom area.

Here is the view coming down the stairs. I have dreams of us waking up xmas morning and walking down the stairs to see our tree all lit up in the corner of the room by the bifold doors. I even had a outlet installed right there just for a Christmas tree!

We are in a mad race towards the renovation finish line, the end is in sight and with a lot of luck we are really hoping to be in a "mostly" completed house

by xmas eve!

Finn's favorite xmas tree, girlfriend Reese!

Happy Wall' O Ween!

2011-10-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

It's getting pretty exciting around here! Not only is it the weekend before Halloween, one of our favorite weekends of the year, we also have big progress to share about the walls of our house!

Here are some before pics:

The living room

The view towards the dining room.

The walls were insulated last week and here are some after pics:

The view up our staircase.

Our new stairway/hall skylight.

The master bathroom skylight.

The master bedroom

Finn's bedroom

We used recycled denim for the bedroom walls. We really wanted to use it for the whole house but it is pretty expensive compared to standard fiberglass insulation. We were really happy to at least be able to use it in our sleeping areas. Seeing all this insulation in our new house is very exciting! Once Adam and I started living together post college, we always picked small, charming, older rental cottages that usually did not have any and our original house wasn't insulated as well. However, Mr. Bamboo did an amazing job drywalling and insulating our studio cottage so we have been very cozy and warm back there during our house remodel.

Finn with a fruit roll up beard!

What are you going to be for Halloween?

Finn's Barnyard Bash!

2011-10-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

Our birthday boy, Farmer Finn, who wanted to wear his fireman's hat the whole party!

Finn's 3rd birthday party at the pumpkin patch was so much fun! All of our favorite mom and toddler friends were there to help us celebrate. I loved the farm theme and had a great time finding decorations, cute favors and food to go along with it.

Recycled burlap coffee bean bags bought for $1 each at our local coffee place.

Bag lunches for 16 toddler friends.

Yummy marshmallow pops made by our good friend Liz.

Sunflower party favors

Fresh organic fruit.

So many creatively wrapped gifts!

Happy 3rd Birthday Finny Cakes! We love you so much!

Yeehaw!

Barn Light Electric

2011-10-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

I just found out that my favorite lighting company is sponsoring a fun giveaway. Barn Light Electric has awesome light fixtures, their tag line is "where vintage and modern collide" and that pretty perfectly sums up the style that we are trying to merge together into our new house. I have had my eye on their lights for some time. The one above, The Ivanhoe Dino warehouse pendant, is one of my favorites and I think it would look so good hanging in our craft room, which will now be in the downstairs original bedroom when the house is finished. Anyhow, in order to enter the giveaway you need to share your favorite lighting choices from their website on your blog. Here are a few more:

This cheery yellow pendant would be a great hanging over our staircase

and would make me smile every day!

I think this Gooseneck style light would look great in Finn's bedroom or bathroom.

This is a really cool kids bathroom!

This bathroom really speaks to me since I am on a huge red kick lately. It's partly due to the fact that I am planning red and green farm themed 3rd bday party for Finn's playgroup friends this week at the local pumpkin patch. We love barns and farmhouse style around here!

Farmer Finn!

The giveaway details:

The Prizes: Barn Light Electric is giving away one $1,000 Grand Prize and one $500 2nd Place Prize to two lucky winners who enter their homes. The two winners will each receive a Barn Light Electric Gift Certificate to purchase new lighting for their homes or to finish off that lingering renovation project.

SO once you’ve posted and submitted your link to Barn Light, that officially begins the contest. Everyone has from today through October 12th to enter.

Again, here’s how you can enter Barn Light’s Online Giveaway:

1. Look around online at Barn Light Electric and pick lights you’d love to own
2. Feature your lighting picks on your personal blog, and link to the lights if you can.
3. Copy/Paste these rules at the bottom of your blog article
4. Once your personal article is up, you must email your blog link to: contest@barnlightelectric.comto be qualified to win. The contest ends October 12th, 2011.

Happy Friday!

It's Finn's big 3rd birthday weekend so we are very excited!

Boo!

2011-09-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

It's starting to look like a haunted house around here! The house has been covered in plywood and wrapped in Tyvek, a waterproofing membrane. The black Tyvek is covering the side where stucco will be added and the white is where the board and batten siding will go. The black side is really looking spooky and some of the Tyvek paper flaps around a little at night which is a bit creepy! I took some pics tonight with rolling dark clouds in the background, here are a few more:

The back side of the house.

Our cozy studio accommodations.

The front sideview of the house, notice our new kitchen windows!

I also had some fun taking pics of the house when the sun came out for an hour or so earlier this afternoon. It's been overcast and gloomy for the past week so it was nice to have a little sunshine.

Our new front entry.

Our patchwork looking house for the moment!

A few fall decorations in our studio.

Lastly, I had to share this cute spider appetizer that my friend Rachel made for a recent toddler playdate. It is deviled eggs with olives used to make the spiders, very creative!

Happy Fall!!

It's legit!

2011-09-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

We have an official kitchen entry/stoop/overhang or whatever it should be called! The front entry and kitchen dutch doors have been ordered and should be delivered in the next few weeks. We can't wait to have a real kitchen door again! Right now we have a big piece of plywood that we slide back and forth to get in there so we can do our daily laundry and grab food from our big refrigerator.

During these last few months construction work has been focused on the original side of the house. This side of the house needed new framing and insulation. These are things that that our little 1930's cottage never had. Now it is beginning to feel like a "legit" house, our new favorite word! Originally, our cottage was built with single wall construction. Our builders have now framed it from the outside to save interior square footage and it is now the process of being filled with insulation and sheathed in plywood.

We are so excited for the walls to be finished and for the exterior stucco and siding to start.

We have now been living in our 300 sq ft studio for 8 months now, wow!

300 sq. ft is really feeling small these days.

We are more than ready to live in the "big" house as Finn calls it.

We probably have 2-3 more months to go.

To cope, we have been spending a lot of time on the beach with friends.

We love having the beach as our "backyard"!

Bahamas Inspiration

2011-09-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

Instead of a post about the boring stuff going on at our house (wall framing on the original side of the house being finished up so that exterior siding can begin), I thought I would be fun to write about one of my most favorite vacations ever, when we went to the Abacos Islands in the Bahamas. It has been on my mind a lot lately, due to Hurricane Irene. Luckily the Abacos were pretty much spared, just minor damage to some of the structures and a few sunken boats in the harbor.

I had been doing research on a last minute vacation getaway when I was about 5 months pregnant with Finn. It was going to be our last big adventure trip before becoming parents for the first time. I wasn't even looking for a spot in the Bahamas, just kind of stumbled upon the Abacos after finding some vacation houses on VRBO. I then started doing more research on these "Out Islands" of the Bahamas as they are called and it sounded like an ideal off the beaten path destination for us. We are not big fans of huge resorts and super touristy areas so this seemed perfect. The Abacos are a chain of small islands with limited flights in and out of them. We took a plane to Ft Lauderdale and then a much smaller, 20 person plane to Marsh Harbour on the main island. From there we were picked up by a small boat and taken to a tiny island to pick up our boat rental as this is the best way to get around. After a very brief how to on operating the boat (Adam has lots of boating experience so that was handy!) we then drove our boat on a 15 minute ride to another island, Lubbers Quarters, where we rented a charming Bahamian style cottage through Sea Level Resorts. We actually rented the owners former personal residence, which was a 5 minute boat ride from Sea Level Resort. Check out our cute cottage:

Here I am about 7 months pregnant, wow!

Even though the cottage was small, it's design was well thought out and has given us a lot of inspiration for the design of our new house: the high beamed ceilings, open floor plan, and large windows.
I really loved this cottage!

Our own private boat dock!

A nurse shark swimming under the dock.

The snorkeling was pretty amazing there, there were spots in the ocean that you just pulled your boat up to and tied it up to floating moorings.

You could also just pull up to isolated beaches and snorkel along the shore.

There were huge giant stingrays swimming all around the shallow water and I was a little nervous to accidentally get stung since I was pregnant but it ended up not being a problem at all. They were so big and the water so clear you could see them coming no problem!

We also took the boat to other islands for sightseeing and dining. These next photos are of Hopetown on Elbow Caye.

So many cute cottages here.

I can't wait to bring Finn back here when he is old enough to snorkel and appreciate island life!

I dream of an island vacation every day.

Abacos, we will be back, oh yes we will!

Happy 40th to Mr. House of Bamboo & Avocados!

2011-09-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

Adam is 40 today!!!

Happy Birthday!!

Finn and I are so excited to celebrate with you!

You are an amazing husband and father and we hope this next year is going to be full of adventure and fun as well as finally getting to enjoy living in our new house!

xoxo Tina & Finn

Escaping the construction craziness!

2011-08-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I have done a blog post. We went on several mini getaways after our return from our big Lake Tahoe vacation in early August. A last minute opportunity to have an overnight stay at a good friend's family vacation house on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Laguna Beach was amazing! The pics above were taken in the backyard of the house, such stunning views.

It was a moms and kids overnight with some very good friends that I have had since my mid-twenties. We all happen to have kids that are close in age so it was a really fun getaway for us all. We enjoyed a relaxing afternoon spent at the private neighborhood beach. I loved that many of the residents have their own golf carts to get them there!

Finn was the only boy staying at the house and as you can see he loved it!

A week later we were headed south to attend the annual Tiki Oasis tropical music festival that we go to every year at a hotel near downtown San Diego. It is such a fun event and this year we splurged and stayed two nights at the hotel with a stage view balcony. It was such a great escape away from our crazy construction zone living.

It was a South of the Border latin music theme (I know that probably sounds weird for a tropical music festival but won't go into the full explanation of how it all ties in but it does!) hence all the poncho and sombrero wearing.

Loved the pool, we swam in it for 3 days straight!

Following along with the south of the border theme, our "La Cantina" bifold doors were installed, check them out!

More house updates to follow soon, Adios!

What's for dinner?

2011-08-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

This is the current kitchen set up that we are working with, yikes! Our pantry is the top pic, the middle shows our only counter and cupboard space in our studio digs and the last pic shows the 3 appliances that we are using. The bbq is also used quite a lot to help cook meals. Right now, meal prep is not very easy nor fun. I think we will be eating out a lot more in the next few months.

Luckily we were able to escape this madness for a week while we were on our annual family Lake Tahoe getaway, more on that to follow. Right before we left the big kitchen demo happened which was very exciting!

Look at the funky wallpaper that was behind our wall cabinets.

This hallway cabinet was also part of the demo.

We saved the cute barn style doors to be reused later.

On the left side of this cabinet facing the kitchen area was our pantry. It was built back in the day with slatted wood shelves to keep more perishable types of foods cooler, hence it was known as a California Cooler. I was sad to see this go but we wanted the kitchen to be more open to the future living areas of the house.

The black and white ceramic tile floor was one of the first big do it yourself projects that Adam did to improve our kitchen. It was a really fun floor to have in there but now the style doesn't fit in with our new and improved modern cottage kitchen plan.

We also had the low kitchen ceiling removed and will have an exposed ceiling. These douglas fir roof planks are original to the house and have so much character. We will probably have them painted white to brighten up the area. We are also going to have two western facing skylights installed.

Our new blank slate!

View from the kitchen to the new side of the house.

View from the living/dining area to the kitchen. We are loving all of this open space!

A few pics from the Truckee River, Finn went rafting for the first time and had a blast!

Finn and his cousins on the lake. Wishing we were still there!

Have a great weekend!

Summertime where the living is easy...

2011-07-22T16:23:00.000-07:00

Actually this has been kind of an exhausting summer for us. The remodel has been really rough these past few weeks but we are trying to keep calm and carry on through it despite losing our kitchen and having a toddler who seems to be over our small studio living! However, summer is my favorite time of year and it's the little things that are helping to keep my sanity right now.

Yummy vegan cupcakes from The Lotus Cafe.

Watercolor painting with Finn.

Making lanterns for a friend's hula girl themed 1st bday party.

More Cupcakes!

Finn's cute beach hair!

Lots of beach play dates and time spent with good friends!

What are some favorite things that you are enjoying this summer?

I also appreciate being able to park in my generous neighbor's driveway during all of this remodeling craziness. Thanks so much Charles and Sharon! This really has been the biggest luxury for me!

Decision Making Madness!

2011-07-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

Our Final Master Bathroom choices!

Sorry for the delay in posting, currently we have entered the hardest phase of our remodel. The work has begun on the original side of the house which means we are in the process of downsizing even more and having much more limited use of that part of the house including the kitchen. We also have to pack up everything that we stored in the bedroom and kitchen and haul it all over to our already full storage locker, ugh. Last weekend we had the super fun chore of cleaning out and packing up our driveway storage shed, double ugh. But, we are getting a brand spanking new & improved shed that will house our new water heater and will be storage for all of our camping gear and surfboards.

During all of this crazy cleaning & packing madness, we also needed to finalize our electrical plan which was a lot of work but it's done, yippee! We needed to decide the placement of all of our interior and exterior lighting as well as exactly where we wanted all of our light switches and outlets. We had the hardest time figuring out lighting for our kitchen as we took out the low ceiling and now have a higher one that follows our roofline. After much debate and some great opinions from our contractor Ron, neighbor Steffani and our electrician John, we finally figured it out! We just ordered these really cool lights from Sundance for our kitchen.

Meridian Pendant

We ordered 2 to hang over the breakfast bar counter and 1 for over the sink. I have had these lights in my idea file for over 2 years so it is exciting to finally be able to order them! In addition, we will have a cable lighting system spanning the length of our ceiling.

We also chose two different sconces for our master bathroom.

This is the Maritime Cage Sconce which will be featured

over the interior master bedroom/bathroom main doorway.

The next one is called the Modern Sconce which will be above our master bath sinks and one on the wall above the toilet. Both of these sconces are on sale right now at Restoration Hardware so we snapped them up in a hurry!

These lights were our big splurges, the rest of the house lights will be recycled ones that we used in our house before the remodel as well as cheaper ones from IKEA. Adam and I will probably be giving each other upgraded light fixtures as gifts for the next few birthdays, anniversaries and xmas holidays! We actually funded our lighting splurges with the recent sale of two of our favorite things, our vintage stove and Adam's minifish sailboat. We were sad to see them go but they both went to great homes and we had made the decision to sell them a long time ago. My friend Karin who has a really neat house full of vintage style ended up purchasing the stove for her future kitchen remodel. I am so stoked about this as I can still visit my stove and we have already talked about having some baking parties, woohoo! It was a really difficult decision to sell it after using and loving this stove for 13 years it but it wasn't heat insulated so it was dangerous to have the oven on with a small child in the house. It also didn't fit in that well with our new plan for a more modern and streamlined kitchen.

Last year the stove made a great bar for our 4th of July Party!

As for the minifish, Adam bought is several years ago to use during our annual Lake Tahoe summer vacations but it didn't get much use during the rest of the year. Plus we didn't have a good way of transporting it around so it was time to "get it out". It was bought by a really nice guy who sails with the Mission Bay Yacht Club so it will be well used.

Mission Bay 2007

Tahoe 2007

Cheers and a fond farewell to the boat and stove!

Open, close them, Open, close them; give a little Clap, Clap, Clap!

2011-07-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

Master Bedroom Windows

Master Bathroom

Sink area with mock up of medicine cabinets.

Staircase

Finn's bathroom

Looking into Finn's bedroom from his bathroom.

The front of the house.

The driveway side of the house.

The backside!

Living room window on left, craft room on right,

Finn's bathroom window is above it.

Finn watering the sunflowers that the birds planted for us!

Happy Weekend!!

Parades, Parties and Plumbing, oh my!

2011-07-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

The pics above are from one of two 4th of July neighborhood parades that we participated in. For those of you that think 2 parades is a lot to do in a day, last year we did 3! Wisely, we decided to limit our participation this year. The first parade was at 10am and was for the younger crowd, kids of all ages were on decorated bikes, wagons, scooters and skateboards. It was a very cute. The second parade was at 3pm and was much bigger with participants of all ages, vintage cars, a few floats, and even a woman on a unicycle! A few of our friends joined us for this one and we had a great time.

The Dolphin Stroller always gets a ton of compliments!

King Neptune!

So I actually had a few families over for dinner afterwards which is a bit crazy considering the small space we are currently living in and our limited kitchen facilities but it ended up being lots of fun!

One of our guests brought the yummy pie made from scratch!

I made homemade red, white and blue layered cupcakes.

Parade parking.

Turning our studio bar sink into a cooler worked out great!

We also spent the weekend making pretty much all of our bathroom plumbing and fixture decisions. Here's a sneak peek at what we chose for our master bath after a lot of obsessing and debating.

Hangrohe Raindance Showerpipe

I am so excited for the day that I get to finally enjoy this!

More remodeling updates coming soon!

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

Pics above are from our Crystal Cove vacation last weekend. It was the perfect summer vacation with good friends, super cute kids, a beautiful beach and awesome tide pools not to mention delicious watermelon, festive drinks and bbq's on our ocean view deck.

This has been a busy weekend for us with many house decisions to make regarding our plumbing which is being installed this week, yikes! We had to do a lot of fixture research and shopping, in person and online, but I think we finally have all of our major decisions made. I will be sharing pics of the fixtures we chose sometime this week. But for now, I need to start getting ready for the neighborhood parades today! The dolphin stroller needs to be decorated and we have a few friends coming over for dinner. Yes, even our our small studio digs I couldn't resist entertaining a little! My entertaining in a small space inspiration pics are below:

Hope you have (had) some good fun on this holiday weekend!

The Upstairs Bedrooms and Bathrooms!

2011-06-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

I am very excited to finally share our upstairs interior layout! All of the walls up there have been framed and now we have such a clear visual of how big the rooms are and how it all flows together. This is the basic architect's drawing of our floor plan, our master bedroom and bathroom is on the bottom and Finn's bedroom and bathroom on the top half. There is also a laundry closet located in the hallway. We also ended up removing the master bathroom linen closet so that we could have a more open and spacious bathroom.

Walk up the stairs and the hallway is on the left.

The master bedroom & bathroom entrance is on the right.

The entrance into our bath & bedroom.

As you walk into the master bath, the door to the bedroom is on the left.

This wall separates the master and Finn's bedroom.

This is from the master bedroom door, looking into the master bath. There is a half wall that serves as a transitional mini hall when you enter from the main hallway.

Our huge shower!!

This is the view looking from the shower towards the bedroom.

This is the laundry closet on the left and the entrance to Finn's bedroom

is on the right.

Finn's north east bedroom walls.

The wall between our two bedrooms.

The view from Finn's bedroom toward the hall on the left and his closet & bathroom area on the right.

We just returned from a 3 night vacation in Laguna Beach. We rented a historic, ocean view cottage with 2 other families, the sign above was outside of it. I loved this sign, I want to make one for our studio! It was so relaxing and fun, more pics to follow in my next post. Finn and I are off to shop for bathroom fixtures today, hoping to find some good holiday weekend deals. Wish us luck!

Our New Neighbors!

2011-06-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

We have 8 new neighbors that just moved in! The family next door just built an amazing chicken house ( I need to get a pic of the whole coop to post soon) and just added their new chickens. They invited us over yesterday to look for eggs. Finn was so excited to do this! With the help of his friend Dana, he pulled out 2 freshly laid eggs.

They donated two more eggs from the day before and Finn proudly carried the eggs carefully home. We made breakfast burritos for Adam's father's day brunch, yummy! They were so delicious, I think there is a small chicken coop in our future too. Thanks Steffani and Dana! I was finally able to use my vintage egg basket that I bought at a Paris flea market for it's original purpose!

House Update: The second floor bedroom and bathroom walls are almost completely framed, pics to be posted in the next day or so!

Raising the Roof!

2011-06-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

Big news around here, the construction of our roof started this week! It's been a very, very long week with lots of sawing and nail gunning and dust flying everywhere. There are so many boards that make up the structure of our roof. You can see the side by side comparison of our two roofs above, the original cottage on the left and the new roof on the right. We decided to go with a more modern hip style roof on the new half that is barely visible this close up. You see it more when you walk up or down our street a few houses away. Right now the two parts of the house look very different and it has taken me several days to get use to it but once the siding and stucco goes on them with new matching windows, they will tie in quite well together but still maintain the vintage vs. modern side by side smackdown between the two! In designing the exterior of the house, we actually didn't want it to look like the new addition has always been there, we wanted it a bit obvious that this was the newer, more modern side. Here are some more pics of the roof, sorry for the quality, we are experiencing San Diego's typical June gloom right now:

The center of the roof.

Looking towards Finn's bathroom

Looking towards the master bath.

The master bedroom.

Our upstairs ceilings will be following the slope of the roof for the most part which will help our little rooms up there feel larger and also add so much visual interest.

This is the skylight opening that is located over the stairway. This is really going to help add some extra light to the first floor.

These are some of the completed roof rafters with the straight rafter tails we decided on. I love the modern, lifeguard tower, beach house feel I get from looking at them.

The second story is now really resembling a treehouse perched in our Avocado tree!

L.A. Field Trip!

2011-06-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

Finn and I took a very spur of the moment field trip yesterday to L.A., Finn's first visit there! A couple of friends, Liz, Hannah and Finn's little girlfriend Isla, were going to go to the The Getty Museum and we decided at 8am monday morning to drive up and meet them there. We left about an hour before they did so we could go check out this boutique hotel and cafe that looked really neat. I had read about The Farmers Daughter Hotel in West Hollywood years ago and decided that their adjacent cafe called Tart would be a good breakfast stop on the way to the Getty. There were so many cool, funky farmhouse style design details to enjoy looking at, I am so glad we stopped by for a visit!

After enjoying a yummy breakfast of whole grain french toast and fruit, Finn and I walked around the little outside patio and hotel. It was very empty on a monday morning but I am betting it is quite the fun scene on the weekends.

Lots of outdoor lights strung across the patio.

Cowboy Finn taking it all in while his crazy mama enjoyed her photo shoot of the place!

The whole glass wall of the reception area opens up to the patio.

This wall was covered in reclaimed wood, a project we are hoping to do in our new house with our salvaged ceiling boards.

Just as we were about to leave, my friends called. They had just arrived at the Getty to find it closed!!! Whoops, no one checked to make sure it was open on mondays. It was a big disappointment for us all, especially since Hannah was visiting all the way from New Zealand. But, we regrouped and quickly made other fun plans to meet on the Santa Monica Pier, probably the only pier in California that I had never been to! We had such a nice time enjoying the scenery and gorgeous weather.

The amazing view from the ferris wheel.

Finn's favorite, the airplane ride.

It was fun to spend the day in L.A. despite the crazy traffic and long drive. I haven't been there in a very long time and we even managed to squeeze in a quick visit with friends who live in Long Beach on the way home. It was also nice to be away from the construction noise going on at our house. Currently the roof framing is almost done, an update with pics to follow soon!

Bye from sunny Santa Monica!

Our Neighborhood Beach!

2011-05-31T15:56:00.000-07:00

Our neighborhood beach is called Stone Steps and is named after the numerous cobblestones that are found on the beaches here. As you can see Finn really enjoys playing with these stones! It is our tradition to walk to this beach on the big holidays, no parking to have to deal with! We love this beach, mostly because we always run into neighbors and friends here and it isn't as crowded as Moonlight Beach. Finn was so cute in his surf trunks and awesome octopus hat.

We did have some house homework this weekend to do, figuring out our interior door sizes as we found a door we liked and it is only on sale until June 1st.

Masonite Saddlebrook Interior Door

This door goes quite well with the beachy farmhouse style of the house and has clean lines that keep it a little more modern. We also had to make some decisions regarding the ends of our roof rafters that will be visible under the eaves of our roof. Did we want them straight or cut at an angle or notched, etc. the decisions to make are never ending! On our walk home from the beach we took some pics of houses that had the rafter tails we liked.

Straight rafter tails

Ok, so our house is not going to be quite this amazing but there are lots of ideas that we are hoping to incorporate on a smaller scale! Our house will look more like this one:

We took the secret path home from the beach shortcutting through neighbor Charles and Sharon's backyard, notice how passed out Finn is!

Look at these huge watermelons hanging on the side of their fence.

Summer is officially here in my opinion!

The vintage dolphin stroller even made it out for a walk!

Treehouse Views!

2011-05-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

This is our new master bedroom second story view of our amazing Avocado tree! I really love the feeling of being in a treehouse. The views reminds me of the treehouse we stayed at in Hawaii for our honeymoon which was really cool (except for being in a super isolated location with very smokey brush clearing going on and experiencing a major mosquito attack but that is another story!) Previously we were one of the lowest houses on our street due to the elevation of the land but now looking out of the second story we have been lifted up into the clouds with great treetop and neighborhood views! After rain and lumber delivery delays in the last week, the second story is really progressing now. Follow me up the stairs to have a look.

Our east bedroom window

Finn's east bedroom window

Our bedroom corner

The west facing stairway wall

Finn's bathroom wall

It is very exciting to see the upstairs layout taking shape. The bedrooms will be small and cozy, space up there is limited and we are also squeezing in a master bath and a wee little bathroom for Finn, but with the views all around and high ceilings I think they will feel roomy enough. Considering that we lived in a 550 square foot house for 13 years, all this new space is going to be incredible!

Thanks for all of your recent emails and comments. I love comments so keep them coming!! We are just about to order our front door, I will let you know what style we decided on soon! I am also enjoying the live traffic feed on my blog now so I can kind of guess which friends have been visiting and also see visits from other people who have somehow made it onto my site, there even have been some international viewers lately! It makes it way more fun to write my blog knowing I have some actual readers!

Adam and Finn taking a cruise by our house.

Happy Weekend to you all!

A Sneak Peek at the New House Exterior!

2011-05-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a drawing of what our remodeled house will look like. The left side is the original part of the cottage that we are adding on to while the right side will all be new! Missing from the drawing is the board and batten siding that was the original exterior of our house. This will be redone on the left side and added on to the upper half bedroom bump out. The rest of the house will be a smooth stucco finish for a more modern look. We like to call our future house a mix of modern, industrial, farmhouse, beach cottage style!

Right now we are in the process of deciding on a front door. We love the modern look of this one above and want to combine this look into the Dutch style door below:

I wish this was going to be our view!

This is our front door before the remodel, it was one of the first things we bought for our house when we first moved in. It actually replaced a really weird Dutch door that had no windows and was very dungeon like. We bought the newer door from here! We saved this door and it will possibly be relocated to the kitchen side entrance.

For fun, check out this cute cottage rental in Venice Beach that I found while searching for Dutch doors.

I love this entryway with built in storage.

I like the bottom half of this door and would change the upper part to clear glass instead of divided windows.

Here is a Dutch door with a simple bottom half.

What do you think?

Our House!

2011-05-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

Every time I come home after being gone for part of the day with Finn, I am amazed at how much progress can happen in a day. Lately, the song "Our House" by Madness has been popping into my head when I look at all that has been done.

Dining room windows

Woman Cave aka craft/mini office window

Hey, what are these boys doing in my cave?

Living room corner, future built-in shelves will be here.

The beginning of the stairway!

Back wall overlooking our tropical oasis!

I think this makes a good theme song for us because:

1. Our house is in the middle of our street.

2. We will be able to see the train from our future second story.

3. I use to play the saxophone in high school.

4. I like it when all the band guys are crammed into the small living room,

kinda like when we use to have parties in our small space before!

Enjoy, thanks for stopping by!

Walls, Windows and Waterfalls!

2011-05-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

It's finally happened! We actually have walls up!!

It was crunch time this week for making our final window placement decisions now that framing has started. The 2 big openings in the wall pic above will be where our dining room windows will go. They won't be as big as the openings are now but they will be quite large. We made some changes to our original design plan and have decided to put transom windows on top of all of our 1st floor windows and front and back doors. This is an example of the style, we will be painting our wood trim though:

We love this look, it reminds us of tropical cottages we have seen in the Bahamas.

The last pic shows the opening on the right where

our La Cantina folding glass door will go.

The whole wall will open onto a deck someday!

It will look similar to this:

This is going to be an awesome entertaining space!

The lovely Lily getting a tour of the site from Finn.

This is not the most toddler friendly area!

This is safer and way more fun, Finn's new waterfall play area!

Happy Friday,

Have a great weekend!

More Demo!

2011-05-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

These happy little corners of our house no longer remain:

The entire east wall of our house had to be removed!

Then a temporary wall had to be built so that the roof of the old part of the house would be supported during the framing of the new side of the house.

This new wall was built about a half a foot in from the old wall and has made

our inside hallway look like a little gopher tunnel.

But we still have use of our kitchen!

Ahh, life during a remodel. We have survived two months so far!

A Historical Day!

2011-04-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

A historical moment for the British Royal Monarchy!

A historical moment for us!

We got to enjoy a festive beverage while sitting in our new living space for the first time!! This of course lasted all of 5 minutes before Finn decided to start running around like a crazy boy so we had to unfortunately abandon our palace for now.

Prince Finn having a lunch fit for royals at his Gaga's house during Spring Break.

Happy Friday!

Bunnies and Steel Beams!

2011-04-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

Bunny Jake

Hi friends and family, how was your Easter/Spring Break holidays? We returned home the night before Easter from a really fun road trip to SF, Marin County and Morro Bay to visit family and enjoy some vacation time. After a week away, we came back to some great house progress:

It was very exciting to see the framing for the floor done. Easter day was spent unpacking from the trip and having lunch at our favorite taco spot, Bull Taco, in the San Eliijo Campground. We then proceeded to invite ourselves over to neighbor Charles' house for a last minute egg hunt for Finn.

Finn's awesome custom made tie by M.O.M in Encinitas.

Don't worry, the brick wasn't a bum Easter prize for Finn, ha ha!

Then, on the day after Easter, a special present was delivered:

Our new 800lb support beam, isn't she a beauty! Yes, that is going to be the height of our living/dining room ceiling, 9 feet! The rest of our little cottage looks like a rabbit den compared to this side right now. Tons more progress happening this week, stay tuned!!

Finn's Final Foundation Friday!

2011-04-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

Look closely through the tropical jungle, something is missing.....

The gas meter has been removed! We are giving many thanks to the tiki gods!!

The foundation is finally finished and the crew is starting to frame the floor today.

We are very excited!

Happy Friday!

Living Large in the Studio!

2011-04-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

For this Friday's blog post, Finn and I thought it would be fun to give you a tour of our 350 square feet of studio living. As many of you know, we have a garage that was converted into a studio workshop/apartment/band practice room/storage area throughout the years. It was an absolute mess when we bought the house, with no foundation, many types of floor and wall coverings, no insulation, etc. We just used it for storage for many years with the idea that one day we would remodel it and it could be temporary living space for us when the big house eventually went through it's expansion. So about 6 years ago we started the project and through the amazing construction skills and hard work of Adam and me as design assistant and cheap labor, we added skylights and new roof shingles, a new concrete foundation with radiant heat flooring, insulation, new walls, doors and windows and a bathroom as well as custom made (by Adam of course) bamboo cabinets. It really was a never ending project that took much longer than we could have ever imagined but now that we are living in the awesome results, it was so worth it! So first, some before pics:

Doesn't this look like fun? Good times!

Pretty scary and way too much work! Here are the after pics:

As you can see, Finn is pleased with the results! We have been living back here for over a month and it has never really felt too small. It is way more comfortable and efficient than the front house ever was and the studio also has a very tropical, island vacation feel to it, except when I look out our windows and see this:

This is not Tahiti! Happy Friday!

Finn's Foundation Friday, part 2!

2011-04-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

As you can see, Finn is ecstatic with our foundation progress! All of the concrete blocks have been placed and now we are awaiting inspection before we get another visit from the concrete truck. Once that happens, then it's time for the floor and framing to be built. Except for a possible slight delay:

We are hoping that SDG&E will finally cap off our old gas line, remove our meter and reroute the new line. It's been paperwork, and checks, and numerous phone calls in the making (Don and Sheila, I know you are totally relating to this!) Not much framing can happen until this is taken care of, unless we want to leave the old meter in place in our new dining room as some sort of hip art installation, hmm....

Please help us pray to the tiki gods that we get a visit from SDG&E soon!

Spring has arrived!

2011-03-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

We actually had a huge rainstorm with hail and thunder this past monday morning. I took a little video of the action, excuse my "mom" voice! The good news for us was the rain stopped by the end of the morning and our foundation work resumed the next day. The guys are almost done laying the blocks and should be done by today or early next week and then we get the concrete truck one more time to finish it off.

The weather was off and on all week, sunny one minute, cold and cloudy the next but Finn and I had Spring Fever and here are a few pics of our outdoor adventures around the hood:

There is a pair of horses that we like to stalk on a "semi private" road off of Quail Gardens Drive. I think we will have room for one of these once our construction is done, right?

We enjoyed visiting the beautiful flower gardens of our neighbors Charles and Sharon. It is so nice to have a garden across the street that Finn can explore and run around in since our yard is such a mess right now. Looking forward to an Easter Egg hunt here!

We also went to the SD Botanical Gardens with Finn's Grandpa How and Kerby. Finn had a great time with them, playing with boats and trains and running around the amazing children's garden areas.

Lastly, we explored a neat little succulent and cactus nursery called Glorious Gardens on Leucadia Blvd near the freeway. This is the place that has the old rusty truck parked on the side filled with plants. I loved this place, it was so full of creativity! We picked out some nice succulents to give to Grandpa How and Kerby who have been visiting here for the week.

Hope your first week of Spring was a good one too!

Pre-demo entertaining!

2011-03-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

On this rainy monday morning, I thought it would be fun to share some photos of a few small parties we had in the month before the big house remodel started. I have loved hosting parties in our little house over the years and managed to squeeze in a few more during the chaos of packing and getting the house ready for its makeover. I can't wait to have a larger indoor living space for future entertaining, already have some fun ideas for a housewarming party!

We hosted one last brunch for our Tiki Tots and Hula Mamas toddler play group,

We also invited a few neighbors and friends over for a small, very impromptu farewell

to the cottage happy hour.

Now we are limited to having only a few friends over at a time with our smaller indoor and outdoor living spaces. Adam just finished making a new fenced in patio in our driveway so I still have entertaining possibilities! We hope to have you over soon!

Finn's Foundation Friday!

2011-03-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

It was a very exciting Friday for Finn as the concrete trucks showed up at 7am sharp (sorry neighbors!) to pour our new foundation!

Finn in his robot pjs was ready to supervise!

Finn decided to jump in and lend a hand with the troweling.

Ahhh, fresh concrete!

Now we are ready for 3 feet of bricks to go on top of it next week.

Stay tuned, I know this project must be keeping you all on the edge of your seats!

Our vintage gate

2011-03-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

A few days before our driveway fence was moved to make way for construction trucks, I did a little photo session with Finn and Jake in front of our front gate. I am not sure how old this gate is but I love it's rustic farm style charm. It is now in our "to be reused" pile in our yard, perhaps a future trellis someday? Any other ideas? Leave me a comment!

Hope you had a great weekend! We are awaiting an inspection for our recent foundation framework and then the concrete will hopefully be poured sometime this week. So exciting!

p.s. Thanks to neighbor Charles who started our weekend off great with cocktails at his house after reading my friday post!

Dreaming of a landscaped yard and patio...

2011-03-11T07:47:00.000-08:00

Foundation work started yesterday, yippee! We now have a clear visual of the new house lay out and our shrinking yard size. Of course there are pros and cons to everything, but it is hard to see our lovely yard get smaller. The hardest part for me is to see the debris and destruction outside that happens with a renovation project.

To cope, I have to focus my attention on our future hip, modern and clean deck, patio and yard spaces. I am dreaming of something like this:

Thanks Honey, for sharing this awesome blog that I am addicted to! (http://blog.mrslilien.com/) Image above courtesy of it.

Friday afternoon cocktails anyone?!

Demo Day!

2011-03-07T08:31:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics from the big demo day last tuesday. The top pic shows a before of our cottage and the rest of the pics show the very quick progression of our roof, walls, and foundation coming down. We had a team of about 12 guys working on it and it reminded me of that show "Extreme Home Make-Over" when they came walking down the driveway wearing matching shirts and carrying sledgehammers! It was a little overwhelming to say the least but now it's done and we are relieved since we had been dreading this day for so long. Our cozy living room gave us 12 years of wonderful memories but we are really looking forward to having more space to entertain friends and family in the future. Foundation work is suppose to start this wednesday and take about 3 weeks. I am ready for the big hole in our yard to go away and for it to start becoming our new home sweet home!

Thanks to all my new blog followers and for your fun comments, much appreciated!!

Kicking it in the new studio digs!

2011-03-03T09:18:00.000-08:00

We are in recovery mode after the big demo day. It was very emotionally exhausting and we just can't seem to get going in the mornings these last few days. So we are just taking time to chill out in our new studio digs before the next big phase of foundation work. Yes, Finn is wearing a gnome hat, a recent party favor! Check out my sweet avocado green couch too, a great Macy's furniture find last year!