Ladyscaping

by | Oct 2, 2011 | Painted Lady

We’re really wrapping things up at The Painted Lady, I built 300 feet of fencing as an ice breaker for the landscaping package. Over the past week or so I’ve been realizing what a huge yard we have! In order to provide a complete package to a buyer we always go the extra mile with fencing and decking when possible. In the rear I went with a dog eared cedar 6′ standard privacy fence and a 20′ wide driveway gate which will soon be solar & automated. I stained it with 2 coats of my favorite Redwood semi-transparent color from Behr Ultra, It really looks tropical and plays well with all the green tones in my color palette. Up front I built a classic Victorian picket fence and painted it the same Sherwin Williams Rockwood Green as my house trim color. I brought in some palm trees, 3 yards of river rock, 8 yards of mulch and 5 pallets of sod to give her the love she needed for so many years. The sod is from Hydro Scape, a better place than Home Depot and is called Medallion Bonsai Fescue. Notice that we also made the small rear deck off the master suite, got gutters installed and hand made a really cool period correct front porch decoration for the handrail. Once these decorative gingerbread features are all painted everything is really going to come together.

After we’re done outside its down to what I call the final “punch list” of random items inside. I’m pricing the house around $499,000 and we magically have a really nice buyer already lined up. She’s so excited and has been back multiple times and loves the house more than we do. I hope it works out for her, so we’ll see if a deal can be inked once we finish up. There’s nothing like this on the market and we’re offering a tremendous value for the money as usual, having it hit the open market if this buyer doesn’t materialize might also be a good thing. I have a local historian at SOHO (Save Our Heritage Organization) researching the history of the house as well, there might be a cool story to share when we find out who built her and what the original owners might have contributed to historic San Diego. Stay tuned for the dramatic final pictures and story of everything we did during the restoration to this 1909 Victorian Gingerbread.

Black Subway & Clear Fir

Black Subway & Clear Fir

by | Sep 18, 2011 | Hardwood Floor Refinishing, Hardwood Flooring, Kitchens, Painted Lady

All I have to say is go with your first instincts. I really wanted to do the backsplash in black ceramic 3″ x 6″ subway tile to match the absolute black granite countertops but white would have been a safer bet for resale. I came real close to chickening out and doing white, but am glad I took the chance and got to try something new in the kitchen.  I’m really happy with how it came out and I got the look I was going for. I’m planning on switching out the plugs, switches and cover plates to black as well. For me, the white grout and the square profile on the granite slabs really makes it.  Once I get the under cabinet lights in there going to be quite the neat reflection going on. I used the Domsjo Farmhouse apron sink from Ikea again, and as you regular blog followers know we’ve put them in all of our historic renovations. You cant beat the price at $299.

We shopped around this week for hardwood floor refinishers and ended up going with Geary Floors here in San Diego. They are charging $2.50/ s.f. for a pretty nice job. I found slightly less expensive prices but knew these guys do good work and its pretty important to me that we get a good job upstairs so I didn’t want to take any chances. You can see the 100-year-old Douglas Fir floors upstairs came out way better than I expected. I decided to not add any stain color and go “clear” with the refinishing job. The distressed look matches well with the house and adds a lot of character. This wood is the old 5″ wide long leaf style with standing grain. We are staining the stairs however to try and get them close to matching my hand scraped and distressed engineered wood floors downstairs. I’m officially now over budget, not bad considering the scope of work and the appliances are already paid for and standing by for delivery. Most of whats left now is outside which we plan on attacking this week. Stay tuned as we button her up and really add the missing small touches…

clean and simple

clean and simple

by | Sep 11, 2011 | Bathrooms, Painted Lady, Tile, Tubs and Showers

The upstairs bath now is mostly done at a cost of around $2200.00 for everything new from the studs out, all I have to do now is install the missing baseboards and then drop in the toilet. You can see my style is once again timeless, clean lines with a blend of retro and modern design. I’m really stoked on this vanity and sink this time, I tried something different and it really goes with this house. The tile is white Dal Tile K100 from Home Depot. It’s 6″ square on the bottom and changes to 3×6″ subway at the black liner. The floor tile is also Dal Tile ceramic hex dot and is my favorite for old house bathrooms, this is the only floor tile in the whole house, both bathrooms downstairs and the kitchen have wood floors which is another feature I’ve been doing to these old houses which looks cool. I know the white ceramic tub box below on the hardwood floors in the bathroom is a great look because I’ve been down this road on the last project.

With the upstairs bath tile job done we got started downstairs. My helper Steve is doing it all, I’m so stoked to have found someone and not having to do it myself and furthermore knowing that I’ve got a tile guy for the future. You can see I went back to the well with the river rock floor in the shower, its white rock with grey accents. The walls are 6″ white ceramic and will change to 3×6″ subway on top of the accent which I found of matching grey glass and white carerra marble, which I’ll cut into 4″ strips for the liner. I really hate to use any glass now because its become so trendy but I think just this small amount mixed with the other materials will give me just enough fun without looking like the house flippers who throw too much of the trendy stuff in and overkill the effect. The entire inside is painted now, I was lucky and bought all my paint over the Labor Day week and took advantage of the Home Depot rebate of $20 for each 5 gallon I bought. I used 20 galllons to spray all the trims 2 coats and another 22 gallons for the walls in the house so the rebate added up.

Revisiting White Paint

Revisiting White Paint

by | Sep 4, 2011 | Interior Paint, Painted Lady

Did you know Benjamin Moore has over 140 shades of white? Nothing is more classic than a white room and with big wide trims and good architectural details – Tom Tarrant 

After all the hard work trimming out the house, its always a pleasure to start painting inside. Our floors are covered so no worries there, I went back to the well for my old favorite interior trim color Snowbound by Sherwin Williams in a semi-gloss sheen.

High-gloss is just too Brady Brunch in my opinion so I always use semi-gloss for trim inside. I sprayed all the interior doors, casings, closet shelving and baseboards with 2 coats after taping the glass up and switching out my chrome hinges with dummies.

I keep a bucket of crappy hinges that I don’t mind painting and find it easier to switch them out instead of taping the new ones off. This way also my new chrome hinges stay as new.

As you might notice I sprayed the semi-gloss right onto the drywall next to the doors and window trim with no cause for concern, my flat wall paint color will go right over that and you wont be able to see it. Also the hardwood floor refinishing will get any over-spray from the floors upstairs.

For the wall color I tried something new, it’s Cloud White by Benjamin Moore. I didn’t want to use the typical “flipper beige” and wanted to lean modern a bit without creating a full blown white box. I’ll run this color through the whole house to unify these big spaces and provide more flow.

The first few pics downstairs you can see the color on the walls already, I’ve layered the space by stacking 3 whites together; Pure White in the ceiling tray, Cloud White on the walls and Snowbound on the trims. I thought that with the huge room size anything too pure white might look like a hospital so with the soft, cream hue that this wall color offers, it will go good with the hardwood floors and be very easy to live with.

Cloud White seems to have a chameleon affect, in different rooms and at random times of the day, it picks up color around it, even sometimes almost looking a little pale yellow when the sun is coming in the front room.

Since I used good PVA drywall primer I can get away with one coat on the wall paint. I’m rolling the walls carefully with a very small 1/4″ nap roller cover because I have a high-end smooth drywall texture.

After all this work getting this hand-troweled luxury finish, the last thing I want to do is use a big nap and add stipple from the paint roller. The walls are looking amazing, probably the nicest finish I’ve ever done, I’m never going back to spray orange peel texture again.

The staircase is almost all stripped down to the original wood now as well. Once I get done painting upstairs I’m ripping this paper off the floors and its on! That’s all I got for ya.

Concrete Jungle

by | Aug 27, 2011 | Concrete, Painted Lady, San Diego Real Estate Market, Victorian House

What’s an urban restoration project like without adding just a tad more hardscape to blend in with the mass expanses of paved metropolitan living? There is always a danger of adding too much concrete and having your house look like a parking lot but I think I pulled it off and managed to give the new owners a place for 4 cars to park securely while also enhancing the landscaping design with the sweeping walkway around the side yard. After receiving multiple bids in the $5 – $7  per square foot range, I managed to pull off the 22 yard pour for just around $3.75/s.f.

There was a block wall that was cracked and leaning over out front so we formed and poured around it after some reinforcing with rebar. Once I crack off the forms we’ll give it a swipe with spec mix for a sanded stucco finish to match the foundation walls. I thought this was a good quick fix as opposed to demolishing everything and having someone stack a whole new block wall which technically would also have to be permitted with the City. Inside this week, we also stripped all the paint from the 100-year-old staircase after deciding it will look better in its natural redwood state rather than painting it with all the trims.