CAT-SICLES!

Hope the new year is treating everyone well so far. We are still working on the office re-vamp...I've mentioned before that Dan and I work reeeally slow, plus a few weird obstacles have arisen during the seemingly endless job to make it feel like we'll never get done....so, I haven't posted for 6 weeks, not that I've been sitting around doing nothing! We have been quite busy working on the office, and got through the holidays unscathed.

But anyway, today I want to address certain things we deal with as the lucky guardians to a few feral cats who live in our yard. It was freezing a few nights last week with really cold days in the 30's (weird for Texas), and now it's raining, so we have been more than slightly concerned about these homeless felines. These kitties are the less fortunate "outsiders", as we call them. They are all feral cats who came with the house when we bought it. Our neighborhood was jumping with feral cats so some of the neighbors and I systematically rounded them all up, got them spayed/neutered and in most cases adopted. Since these cats were already here when we moved in, and since this was their home before it was ours, here they stay, and here we are taking care of them to the extent that they let us.

We have been worried for awhile about how to keep them warm during the winter. We have tried baskets, boxes rigged with plastic and blankets, and tarps to keep wind off the porch (the porch seems to be a favorite hang out). Last year we discovered the Mylar pad. This thing radiates body heat so when a cat (or a cold human butt) sits on it it gets warm. It seems to work pretty well with a couple of blankets to make a little cat nest. There is usually some kitty sleeping here day and night when the weather gets cold. We also have a regular pet basket with a sheepskin pad in it, also usually occupied. But this year we decided to go higher tech and we found this amazing product:

This thing is called a Snuggle Safe. It kind of looks like a big hockey puck with some kind of goo inside it. Throw this baby in the microwave for 5 minutes, put it in the kitty nest, and you will have a warm and happy cat for up to 24 hours. Below, see it in it's flannel paw print cover with the kitty bed blankets that are on the porch love seat.

This certainly isn't as great as having a nice cozy indoor chair or bed to curl up on, but it seems to do the trick pretty well and I'm glad the cats are using it.

Now, without further ado, may I present the Outsiders:

This is Onions. His name used to be Balls, but after he was fixed he needed a name change. Dan named him Onions and the name just somehow stuck. Balls was a tough, beat-up street punk who is probably the sire of all the cats in Texas. Once mean, skinny, and miserable, he is doing much better by simply getting fixed and being fed regularly. He's probably about 10 years old but has had a pretty rough life leaving him blind in one eye and with bad teeth. We attempted to catch him and take him to the vet but that didn't get very far! He looks pretty happy on the Snuggle Safe in this picture:

This is Calpurnia. She is calico, hence the name, aren't we so clever. She is a small female, very sweet. She was probably someones pet at some point because she's pretty friendly, and is so cute I can't imagine someone not wanting her, let alone leaving her to fend for herself. She is probably around 8 years old. Someday we hope to lure her into the house and make an honest woman out of her.

Then there is this poor guy, the latest cat who appeared in the yard yowling like a siren, looking for food and a sponsor. We named him Carlo after the freeloading "artist" in the movie "Our Man Godfrey" (great movie..if you haven't seen it you should). He is some kind of weird Persian/Siamese mix, with crossed-eyes. I like Carlo but he doesn't trust people at all and keeps his distance at feeding time. His fur gets a little matted but there is no way in hell he'll let us near him, so sometimes he looks pretty ratty. Too bad, he could be quite handsome if he was cleaned up a little. You can see him hiding in the bushes if you look close.

So there you have them. Although these cats are not actual "pets" we do consider them to be part of the family. We are die hard cat lovers and really if we don't keep an eyeball on them I don't know who will, especially in our dog crazy neighborhood.

I love dogs, too, but I love cats more.

Like A Trip To This Islands: Tropical TV Lounge!

Listening to The Arteries....fantastic UK punk that will rock the hell out of you!

I have not posted for 2 weeks because I have been busy with our office re-vamp and have not finished it yet, of course. We tend to work reeaallly slow but I will post the office makeover when it is totally done and you will be absolutely amazed! Until then I thought I'd share our Tropical TV Lounge.

The hula dancers and guitar player, below, are cake decorations. You get your inspiration where you can!

I am not crazy about tv's in living rooms or bedrooms. I know many many people disagree with this but I find a tv in the living room to be a big ugly black hole that grips your brain and sucks you in, and it's always a design challenge. The best solution I have ever seen for a living room tv was placing the tv in a no-longer-used fireplace. This is smart because an unused fireplace is a big black hole in itself. This is a good solution. And if you have one of those videos or dvd's of a roaring fireplace fire to pop in so much the better....it's almost like having a working fireplace without all the mess! Additionally, a tv in the bedroom is forbidden in my book. I like our bedroom to be a quiet, calm and relaxing place for winding down and maybe reading before falling off to sleep. I cannot sleep with blue tv light and all that blaring noise.

But I do like tv, and Dan likes tv...I just don't want it in my face. We decided that one of the 3 bedrooms in our house could be turned into a tv room/guest room. We have some Hawaiiana collectable stuff that we wanted to get out of boxes and display, so voila, we created our TropicalTV Lounge!

The first thing to figure out was our color scheme and furniture. The typical Hawaii beachy colors that came to mind are greens and blues, but we thought that color pallette would be a little cold for a lounge-y vibe. So we looked to our collection of tiki mugs for color inspiration. They are mostly brown, yellow and tan. We thought of the colors of driftwood, sand, palm trees, flowers and natural fibers. Our color pallet choices became yellow, brown and green with pops of red and orange.

We chose a warm gold for the walls: Behr in Soft Gold. And we wallpapered one wall with a warm toned grassy wallpaper. Dan and I had never put up wallpaper before but it was really pretty easy with the two of us and with Dan's long wing span. We measured the height of the walls, and cut it 2 inches longer. The wallpaper was pre-pasted so all we had to do was dampen the back with water and a paint brush, position it on the wall, and smooth it down with a big sponge to get all the air pockets out. We trimmed the top and bottom edges with a razor blade. Very easy and we think it adds some nice grassy texture and interest to the wall.

We wanted some kind of tv stand that would also give us storage for our dvr, cable and dvd equipment. We wanted some glassed in shelving to display all out tiki mugs and collectables. We were not real keen on a big entertainment center thing because we find them too big, ugly and $$$. So,we turned as we often do to IKEA. We ended up getting 2 Billy bookcases with glass doors, a cabintet for the tv, and some of those floating shelves for various goodies to live on. The result gives us lots of storage with out the heavy weighed down look of a big old entertainment center.


Here, above, is our IKEA Billy and shelf combo. And here are some of our tiki mugs. And speaking of tiki, if you are ever in San Francisco and want to get a drink with an umbrella in it, climb Nob Hill and go to The Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel. It will be worth it and you will burn a few calories climbing the hills. The Tonga room is way rad, you will like it!

The daybed is also from IKEA and can accomodate a sleep over. The cover is made out of some of that stretchy fleece fabric I snagged at the fabic store. This stuff is great for furniture covers because it's really sturdy, is stretchable, soft, washable, cozy, and comes in a zillion colors and patterns.

I made the drapes. I ordered the fabric from www.hawaiifabricmart.com. They have literally thousands of colors and patterns and are very reasonably priced. If you ever want Hawaiian fabric this is the place to go! They also have a store in Honolulu that I was lucky enough to visit a few years ago (crazy, I bought FABRIC on my Hawaiian vacation!). Drapes are actually pretty easy to make. I measure the length I want, add 10 inches for casings and hems, and double the width I want. Do the simple math, and figure out how much fabric you need. This fabric was 36 inches wide and I ended up buying 11 yards. And I made 2 drapes since there are 2 windows. I lined the drapes with 100% cotton muslin. They turned out great and are washable. And, we got exactly what we wanted, "custom" if you will, for cheap. We added a couple of bamboo shades from Cost Plus to help with the tropical feel we were trying to achieve. The drapery rods were old ones from IKEA that I had laying around. I sponge painted them brown and added some rattan finial things at the ends.

We live in (usually) sweltering Texas and have ceiling fans in almost every room. I like ceiling fans but the existing one in the Lounge was a hideous combo of brass with white blades. UGLY! It was the perfect size and worked great so instead of scrapping it we overhauled it. Dan took it down and I sanded the daylights out of brass, coated it with a couple of layers of white spray paint, and there ya go! All the ugly brass is a memory, and cost us nothing except for a can of spray paint. The glass bulb covers where ghastly, too, but again I could not talk myself into tossing them and buying new ones (especially b/c the new ones I really wanted were $15 clams a pop). I thought about how to overhaul the ugly "tulip" style glass shades and came up with this: I went to a craft store and bought a few sheets of brown and yellow tissue paper and cut it into strips. I took some plain old Elmer's glue, watered it down and applied the tissue strips to the shades with a paintbrush. After it dried I hit it with a couple of layers of clear coat. Now observe the magnificent outcome: they look sort of tortoiseshell-y. Not too shabby for about a 50 cents worth of tissue paper!

These suitcases have been floating around between me and my sister for years. I actually bought the bigger one at the Ashby Flea Market in Berkeley a million years ago for like 5 bucks, when I was going to Vegas for the first time and needed a suitcase. My sister had it for a long time after that and stored all her tools in it. I re-inherited these things and love them so much I thought they would make a nice side table in the Lounge, and give a little bit of the travel vibe to the room. The basket on top houses the remote controls.




The other end table is a jute storage cube that holds extra blankets. I got the lamp at some discount store and thought it would work perfectly in the room because it looks like a big piece of bamboo. The shade is vintage, scored at one of the City Wide Garage Sales here in Austin a couple of years ago. We got a matching pair for $50. (the other is in the attic right now waiting for a lamp to call home).

The Hawaiian prints on the wall are from a couple of different calenders that I was saving, the frames from Joanne Fabrics for really cheap.


The pendant lamp was a birthday present from Dan. There used to be second hand store a few doors down from one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Picante, in Berkeley. I had my eye on this thing for a few months and suddenly it was gone. I was happy to find out it was gone because Dan went and got it for me..it is one of my favorite things.

The Barbie and Ken are ready to luau. I think every house should have a Barbie and Ken.

Dan and I went to Mazatlan about a year ago and found the wood swordfish and marlin at the mercado. We have always liked the fish-on-the-wall look but didn't want the real thing because 1) we do not like dead things on our walls and 2) real marlins and swordfish are endangered. So when we saw these we got them. We had to check them at the airport but they arrived safely.

And of course, record albums. We have a bunch of these and they look just right on the shelves above the tv. Yes, we do still play them. I got the ceramic mermaids from my grandmother who used to work as a painter at the famous Betty Lou Nichols Ceramics in La Habra, California. She told me that these 2 figures were from a line they made for a seafood restaurant in Los Angeles in the 1950's. The mermaids were used to dress up their seafood platters.

















So, there it is, our daily trip to warmer climes! We love our Lounge, especially on cold days like today. Cheers!

We are punk rock martha stewart

Love Gun

The wood trim in our house has about 10 layers if paint on it in every hue imaginable. This is not a happy fact. I can't understand why someone would add yet another layer of paint to woodwork and mouldings that are already so thick with glopped-on paint you can barely see the details of the wood itself. Some people even go so far as to paint over hinges and window locks - this is utter insanity and is the lazy man or woman's way of doing things. Of course, this too is one of the abuses our house was subjected to before we moved in and rescued it. But let's face it: there comes a time when decades of old paint has to be removed. So, any room makeover we tackle entails taking off all door and window hardware, stripping it and reusing it (they just don't make door hinges the way they used to so we try to salvage the originals, 10 layers of paint or not). If we wanted to take the easy way out and do a crap job the woodwork in our house could just be sanded before painting, but we decided that we wanted to get down to the bare wood and start fresh.

Thankfully I discovered an indispensable product that I can not live without. I call it my Love Gun. I kid, it's really called a heat gun. It has changed my life.




It kind of looks like a blow dryer but do not get this thing near your hair - or your skin or anything plastic. This thing gets fiery HOT! It will singe, burn or melt just about everything. So when I use my heat gun I also make sure this is nearby:



Better safe than sorry! And since I was working today with the Love Gun I thought it only appropriate to listen to this:


We are currently re-vamping our home office. The first thing I do when I take on a room is to strip all the baseboards, moulding, windows and doors of the offensive layers of paint. This is not an easy task since this room has 4 double-hung windows and 2 doors, and all that moulding, and all those baseboards. This is not the cheap ugly new crap that you find in newly built houses but rather is old and original to the house, so in keeping with our aesthetic, it must be kept. So, out came my toy, the heat gun.

Here is a shot showing how damn hot this thing gets, and how it bubbles up the many layers of old paint:


Here are a couple of shots of me scraping away the paint. It comes off pretty easily, but keep on the lookout for smoke and sparks! Seriously, I could start a fire if I don't keep my eyeballs peeled.





















This is actually a pretty labor intensive good upper body workout, but it is much easier than sanding! And you will get down to the lovely bare wood.

By the way, the song "Plaster Caster" is pretty hilarious. It's a fact that none of the guys in KISS ever got cast by the famous Plaster Caster herself, Cynthia. They wanted to but she said no dice. She apparently thought they were jerks...imagine that!

And here is an art shot of the door trim that I finished today. Looks nice. Bare wood!





When all the woodwork is stripped I will paint the walls (still planning on going with the goth dark gray Valspar color called "Sled"), and will then prime and paint the mouldings/windows/baseboards/etc with Valspar "Ultra White" high gloss. All the trim in the rooms we have already re-vamped are this color. We figured that since we have gone to all the trouble of removing the million layers of paint we do not want to repeat this exercise in hard labor! So, we will keep it all white, forever, and will only have to touch up the paint periodically. No more pesky layers!

"Plaster Caster (plaster caster)
Grab a hold of me faster (faster faster)
She calls me by the name of Master"....hilarious!



we are punk rock martha stewart

The Dreaded Screen Door Project

Listening to Pretty Maids.

Why are the simplest tasks so often the hardest to accomplish? Why can't a 20 minute project actually take 20 minutes? I ask myself this a lot.

We hired a well-recommended guy to put in a new door on our cottage apartment, and had him put in the screen door as well while he was at it. The old metal door was ugly and dented and had to go, but we were a little freaked out about putting in a new frame and door because 1) we didn't know how to do it and 2) if it isn't done just right it won't close and will come off the hinges. This is why we hired a guy to do it in the first place.

So, the door went in without too much trouble, but the way this guy installed the screen was ridiculous. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It was not flush, did not close well, and the latch didn't line up. It was verging on falling off when I realized that it had to be re-installed the right way. The new door and frame seem to be ok but so often if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself.

Here is a picture of the door before I re-installed the screen. I got a thing for aqua colored doors and black trim..

Putting in a screen door is pretty easy. We put them in on the front and back doors of the house with no problem, but this one was another story.
Normally a screen door fits into a door frame easily if you get the right size. This screen door was the right size but it didn't sit flush against the door jam. It stuck out about 1/2 inch and there was no way to put on the hinges. Check out this picture and you will see what I mean. Notice how the screen door sticks out? It should be flush.






I thought about this for a couple of days and here, right, is my solution:
I screwed a piece of wood 1/2 inch thick to the door jam resulting in a flush surface, and that means flush installation of the screen door!


















Here is the screen door with the hinges. The damn thing actually worked! And painted black it's hardly noticeable.










But let's not forget that I never get off easy with any project. I found that the screen door had a little sticking problem resulting in having to give it a swift kick to get it open. I thought about this for awhile and remembered that I am the owner of plane! So, down came the door again, out came the plane, and with a little elbow grease the sticking problem is but a memory.

A little sanding and a paint touch up and the door was ready to hang for real this time.

I then installed one of those door closer things: very easy per the instructions that come in the package. I did a little measuring, drilled a couple of holes in the door jam and a couple in the screen door and, voila, the door closes all by itself with out banging. It is pretty cool. Then I added a hook lock and a handle.


























And here it is, all done, finally. All in all, this re-install took about 5 hours....that's 4 hours and 40 minutes longer than I thought it would take. I kid, but seriously when the weather is as nice as it has been lately I happily turn off the AC and open up all the windows and doors and enjoy the fresh allergen air of Austin - with screens, of course, I am not crazy...this is Texas after all where we grow the biggest mosquitoes in the country. Aaah, fall elm!








We are punk rock martha stewart

New Trees, Dirty Fingernails

Listening to Factory...I love that song "Gone".

There is a guy in our neighborhood who organizes our yearly tree planting program. Something like 400 trees have been planted in our 'hood over the last 12 years. Pretty amazing. This year we joined up and got two Burr Oak trees (are young trees called saplings?) for only 40 bucks. He dropped them off a couple of days ago and today I planted them. I had never planted trees before but the guy left detailed instructions and it wasn't too bad. It took me about 2 hours to plant both trees and a Pride Of Barbados plant.

Here are the trees. They will grow to be about 20 feet if I do not kill them.

We decided to get the trees because during the 9 months of Texas summer we boil in the house from the evil merciless sunshine that beats down from the west starting midday and not letting up until 9pm. The trees will give us the shade we crave in 10 to 15 years.

Here is one of the holes I dug and here is a picture of the compost and mulch I used. It's from Texas.




















Texas Native mulch and compost!








Here is a picture of our cat Burton Cummings. He sat and watched. He never helps and is a camera hog.



Here is a picture of my lawn flamingos, and a picture of my lawn gnome. Will I ever stop liking these things?



















Hole as deep as the root ball and twice as wide. Compost 1/3, dirt 2/3's. Here are the trees all planted and mulched. And here, too, is the Pride Of Barbados plant. These things get really pretty orange and yellow flowers in the dreadful 103 degree summers. Gotta wait a year which is fine with me.





















I need a manicure. Maybe someday I will learn to wear gloves and take off my rings when I do this kind of stuff.
We are punk rock martha stewart !

The Day Dan Made A Box Of Dirt

Listening to The Dogs from Detroit. They rock!

Dan is the vegetable gardener here at the Casa Concordia. We have been growing tomatoes each year since we moved in to the house but this spring Dan decided it was time to plant a real vegetable garden behind the cottage apartment. And we started composting. Things did pretty well and we were looking forward to home grown organic corn, tomatoes, carrots, beets, green peppers and cantaloupe. We also have a fig tree behind the cottage. I don't like figs at all but I was impressed with the hundreds of tiny green figs that were emerging. I do like squirrels. In fact I love squirrels. If I was an animal I would want to be a squirrel. Squirrels love vegetable gardens. They really loved ours and they loved all those figs, too. It was so hot, dry and dreadful this summer that the squirrels were starving and eating anything that had a little moisture in them like geraniums and succulents in hanging pots on the front porch as well as corn, tomatoes, carrots, etc. We didn't get a lot from the vegetable garden but the squirrels did and I guess we did our part in helping them survive the hottest summer since the invention of the wheel. Now that it's cooled off and rained the squirrels are not so stressed out and Dan will now try his hand at a winter veggie garden.















We have a really ugly backyard and don't want more yard maintenance (the front yard is plenty for us), so we figured we would use the backyard for veggies. See the box of dirt above that Dan made? It is our first raised vegetable planter! We figured a raised bed would be hella easy to make and we wouldn't have to do all that rototilling and digging in the nasty hard rocky alkaline soil. Dan layed landscape fabric down on the ground (to stop weeds) and made the planter out of four pre-sized 12 inch x 8 foot boards. Very clever, Dan. No cutting, less labor! This is always good! He then took a 2x4 and cut it into 1 ft chunks to brace the planter in the corners. So there you have it: a very sturdy and lovely 64 sq ft planter. It took him about 20 minutes to make this thing!

What about the soil, you may ask. If you have ever tried to plant anything in Austin you have found that the natural soil in these parts is pretty nasty and rocky and needs lots of amending with pH corrective stuff. We decided to detour this little problem with our new raised bed planter. To fill it Dan made 5 trips to the Home Depot garden shop (you may have noticed we shop there a lot because it's about half a mile from our house...no other reason) and brought home a total of 72 bags of Texas Friendly Top Soil and Texas Friendly Manure. Here is a picture of Dan in the midst of moving all those bags from the car to the backyard. He is my he-man!
In addition he added all that rich, delicious, home made compost that has been churning away in containers in the backyard for the last few months. So, our recipe for the planter soil is pretty simple and easy - except for all that lifting and horrifying back pain!
















The icing on the cake: Plants! Dan planted veggies that are good for Fall/Winter in Central Texas: Lettuce, carrots, beets and broccoli. He planted everything from seeds except for the broccoli. We shall see what happens.
Stay tuned.....

We are punk rock martha stewart

Desk Overhaul: Stencils!

I have not been a huge fan of stenciling. My dear mom was decorating her house in a country cottage style (appropriate because she lived in a country cottage) and started stenciling everything in site and before you could say "enough already!" she had a row of grapevines wrapping around the bedroom wall and a blue checkerboard in the kitchen. All though her handiwork looked great in her cutesy cottage house, it was simply not my thing, and I had never considered stenciling anything, ever, because to my eyes stencils look for homely and homespun.

But then I saw the light thanks to a stencil project in Better Homes and Gardens of a really lovely repeated design on a wall over a bed, sort of resembling a headboard, but adding subtle pattern and texture to an otherwise boring wall, giving it a that oh-so-right bit of bling the wall needed.

Cut to the the desk I have been working on. Our home office is in make over mode and we wanted to revamp a cool 1950's desk my brother gave us and scrap our old clunky Ikea desk that was too big and had seen better days. We have decided to paint the office walls charcoal gray (Behr in "Sled"), a rather bold and dark color, almost black, that has me a little nervous. To make it not feel too goth we figured we would add a lot of white contrast to play against the dark walls, and as far as I'm concerned there is no such thing as too much of the black/white combo. The window woodwork, doors, ceiling and trim will be painted white, a wall of bookcases will be white, the drapes will be white, and most of the furniture will be white. And those 4 windows bring in lots of natural daylight so I think we will be okay with the dark walls without creating a cave room in our house!

The way to rehab my brothers desk was, of course, to paint it! Man, do I love paint! This desk had seen better days so a few dents were filled with wood patch and it got a good sanding. I then primed, painted with 3 coats of high gloss white paint, and lastly applied 2 coats of clear Verathane. I also recycled our old Ikea rolling cart so it could continue to house all our computer stuff. I removed the drawers, sanded and painted in the same process as the desk. Voila! It actually looks like it goes with the desk!

And, to spruce up the top of the desk, I succumbed to a stencil pattern I found in a magazine. I blew it up to a size I liked on a copy machine, traced it out with a felt pen on a piece of plastic and cut it out with an X-Acto knife. I thought a cream or tan color would be pale but still visible. I think it turned out great and gives the desk a little interest.

This computer has lots of extra stuff attached to it, like a music hard drive, a remote wireless thing that allows us to play our mp3's on our living room stereo, a printer, another box that Dan uses for his laptop, 3 speakers, a gadget for the wireless mouse, and a cable box. Keeping all these wires and cables in order, off the floor, and tucked away out of site is not easy! Yesterday I spent 2 hours trying to make sense out of all of them and came up with a solution using plastic tubing and a metal desk basket thingie from Ikea. So now, the wires are at least enclosed in a tube of indestructible plastic and are off the floor!


So, here is our revamped computer table! We are very happy with it and think the stenciled desk top looks ooh la la, not oh no no!

Next projects in this room to come:
Rehabilitate a couple of chairs, new bookcases, and all that paint to come with lots of white trim....but only after we strip it down to the bare wood. I would like to kiss whoever invented the amazing heat gun. Ingenious! And see the dark gray splotch on the wall to the right of the computer, below? Yep, that's our wall color!


We are punk rock martha stewart