The Home-Improvement Chronicles: The Coffee Station Revisited

the before shot: the original coffee station consisted of one of Mo’s old bookshelves that was repurposed to hold the mugs. it was simple and functional, and i was happy with it. though Mo felt it didn’t match the rest of the kitchen, which was more stylized. he thought the area needed some pizzazz.


did i just write “pizzazz”? we went to our home away from home, Ikea, to get some ideas. Mo quickly zeroed in on this plant pot, which was super cheap (just $3.99!), so we bought a bunch and Mo got to staining them in the garage.


paper towel pizzazz: i’m not sure where we found this paper-towel dispenser, but it’s pretty hot and matches the chrome in the rest of the kitchen nicely. plus, it frees up the space that was once occupied by the countertop dispenser we used to have.


hot countertop: Mo built this part of the countertop by fusing together pieces of walnut wood, sanding them down to make them smooth and then staining the whole thing before installing. he even built the backsplash. the result is one gorgeous countertop — but one that was also very expensive, which is why the rest of the countertops are white laminate from Ikea.


the artist and his work: Mo’s next project is building a dining room table that will serve double duty as a kitchen island. it will extend from this countertop, also be made of wood, be portable and fit barstools underneath. and then there is the wine rack, the laundry room shelves — all sorts of fun items from my honey-do list.


the vase: we found it in some random pottery studio when we were in San Francisco last year. it has been situated in a few other places around the house before finding its permanent home as part of the coffee station. we try to fill it with fresh flowers once a week.


the after shot: and yes, we do make coffee here every day. would you like a cup?

The Home Improvement Chronicles: The Tree Stump Removal

stump and stumper: if there’s one thing the former owners of my house did right, it’s cutting down the two palm trees that once stood in the front yard. but of course we’re talking about the same owners who used staples to attach door trim, so their good work had to stop at the halfway done and mostly decent point.


some of my best friends are palm trees: i have nothing against palm trees, but i don’t want them on my property. they look awesome on tree—lined streets and near the beach, but on my little piece of earth, they block the view and are just too damn imposing. their stumps are no better. so i called in the reinforcements who began the stump removal with a little chainsaw action to the jugular.


stump and a half: the current state of the yard is pretty pathetic. i call it the "dirt pile." the idea behind removing the stumps was to bring Mo and i one step closer to being able to landscape the front yard, which we plan to do right after step two: winning the lottery.


do i make a sisyphus joke here? that’s too obvious, right? ok, pretend i never mentioned it.


the stump grinder: being a homeowner has exposed me to tons of gangly machinery i never understood before, and the stump grinder ranks at the top of my list of Gangly Machinery That Is Damn Sexy. after seeing it in action, i couldn’t help but rub up against Mo and whisper illogical yet dirty puns about stump grinders in his ear, to which he replied, “that’s almost as bad as your sisyphus joke.”


stump and stumper never stood a chance: that thing whittled them away in minutes, leaving a massive pile of sawdust in their place, which prompted me to rename the front yard the "dirt-dust pile."


danger! not only can the stump grinder pulverize you with its blade, the sawdust it produces can kill you by asphyxiation.


meanwhile: the other two stumps stayed safely tucked away on the deck, eager to descend into the yard and explore all the new space they could pee on.


more stumps: these were at the north side of the house, near the detached garage. nine dead cypress tree stumps that were once beautiful and thriving hedges before the former owners started depositing used motor oil in the soil.


not art: and before the owners’ jackass kids used them as a canvas for their tagging.


Mike to the rescue: you might remember Mike the Tree Guy from that time he pruned the overgrown Chinese Elm in the front yard. he’s simply the best tree guy in LA and you should call him immediately: Mike @ Eagle Tree Service: 626.353.3186.


timber: some of the cypress stumps were so dry that they could be pulled up from the root with just a few strong tugs. so with a little grunting and a long rope, Mike pulled them out one at a time while i yelled “go hercules” from the sidelines.


eight to go: after pulling them up, Mike chopped the wood into small "cedar" blocks that i put into every closet in the house. the leftovers were handed out to neighbors who also did the same. and the street smelled delicious.


stumpless: with the stumps removed, the front yard actually looked less awful, or maybe it looked a different kind of awful in the same way that chunky peanut butter and regular peanut butter are two different types of awful-looking. or maybe not. have i told you my sisyphus joke yet?

The Home-Improvement Chronicles: The Kitchen Completed!!

behold the new kitchen! it looks a lot like the old kitchen. only this kitchen is sans leaky fridge from hell, which has been replaced by the super sexy Nutid fridge from Ikea.


the hotness: the bamboo floors, which were damaged by the mold spawned by the leak, were also replaced after much waiting for a shipment from china. thankfully these boards matched the old flooring perfectly, except for the dog scratches, which were conspicuously absent.


the sexy fridge: i looked at a lot of fridges before landing on this one — at sears, best buy, frys, even a used appliance store. they were all decent and dull, as good as any other fridge. truthfully i didn’t know what i was looking for in a fridge beyond the basics of being able to refrigerate my food and not leak. then i saw this Ikea fridge, with its sexy silver pulls, and suddenly believed in love at first sight. i was smitten immediately and had to resist the urge to rub up against inappropriately in front of the sales clerk.


so i waited until i got it home: where i rubbed it, caressed it, cuddled it and put it in my will, especially after i saw how beautifully its pulls matched the silver pulls on the existing ikea cabinetry.


other fridges do, too: the new fridge, however, has done a great job not ruining the kitchen or anything else. welcome home, fridge!

The Home-Improvement Chronicles: The Doorway

the before shot: this doorway, with its obnoxious geometric shape, is another one of the inexplicable uglies my beautiful house suffered from. the previous owner seemed to be trim-averse — despite living in a 1920s bungalow — with only a handful of doors and windows having any sort of molding, most of which was attached with staples. love that Chuy.


Mo says hi: we were going to fix the doorway during the house gutting and fix-up that was done prior to move-in, but vetoed it in favor of replacing the rotted subflooring. Mo and i have quietly endured the eyesore for a year, smiling politely when friends have come over and said, “oh, it’s not so bad the way it is. i kind of like it.” thanks, guys, but we know it looks like shit.


enter Leaky Fridge Drama: the drama, which is 95% resolved, provided the perfect opportunity to finally fix this hot mess of a doorway. thankfully we had some trim left over, so the extra expense was reasonable and the extra mess blended in seamlessly with the kitchen disaster just around the corner.


the after shot: for the first time, the four doorways in this area looked cohesive, symmetrical and even happy. or maybe it was just Mo and i who were happy to finally see the kids wearing matching outfits and looking alike. no more red-headed stepchild of a doorway to endure.


aren’t they cute? the twins in the corner even befriended their brother, or at least stopped calling him Hexagon Head. then they all ran out to the yard and played kickball.


the deck door agrees: a little trim does a house good.

The Home-Improvement Chronicles: The Kitchen Revisited

how it started: who knew a little discoloration could wreak so much havoc? i feel dumb for not noticing it sooner. rather, i feel dumb for not doing anything about it sooner. i noticed the floorboard changing color months ago, but chalked it up to sun damage. little did i know the evil that lurked beneath.


then the paint chipped: it fell right off the baseboard. i couldn’t blame the dogs for scratching it off as there were no scratch marks nearby (nor are they particularly destructive). more unsettling was the fact that the area behind the paint appeared pitch black, a far stretch from the blond-colored MDF it once was. that’s when Mo let out a big sigh and crawled under the house.


satan’s fridge: what he discovered was a leak that appeared as a big watermark underneath the house. a plumber came over and further uncovered that the leak was many months old, caused by a faulty water line running from the wall to the fridge. i know it seems the water line is to blame, but i’m positive this leak is the fault of the used maytag fridge that has been the source of endless trouble since it arrived. the evil fridge that had blown out two outlets in the house. the fridge that, for months, needed to be defrosted every three weeks for some inexplicable reason, a monumental pain in the ass that miraculously stopped being an issue about six months ago, the time when the leak probably began. this realization caused me to etch a very important NOTE TO SELF in my head: Never buy a used fridge from a used appliance store again, because the appliances in those stores are discarded by previous owners for being broken pieces of shit.


the damage: this is what we saw when we pulled the fridge away from the wall. clearly, water had been seeping onto the flooring behind the fridge and cabinets for months, causing the floorboards to warp as they swelled with water, the paint to chip off in huge chunks and mold to form.


the nasty: the area stank like mildew and i worried that super toxic black mold had begun to grow, a worry perpetuated by the fact that the mold looked pretty damn black. then i started making phone calls.


my contractor to the rescue: he was one of the first people i called, and as he has before, he came through like a champ. he showed up the next day, assuring me that i didn’t have to go through one of the pricey mold remediation agencies i had been calling for estimates. instead, he and his guys could handle the mold removal and treat the area with bleach once it had dried. and that’s what they did. (call him for all your home improvement needs: Platon Markarian, 818.279.3118. he’s the best!)


gutted: sadly, some of the plywood subflooring that was less than a year old didn’t make it and had to be replaced. this hole in the kitchen, which stayed for a few days, caused all sorts of fun as the dogs kept trying to dig into it and mosquitoes kept flying up from the basement. my solution: vodka.


meanwhile: Mo and i were living in this kitchen nightmare, with cabinets, counters, canned goods, utensils and dishes everywhere. the only cooking the kitchen could actually support involved making coffee. i never thought i’d say this, but i actually got tired of the tacos from La Estrella, which we ate about five times a week.


this is Miguel: who was prompt as hell, arriving each morning at 7am to work the drywall while i sauntered around in my bathrobe, coffee in hand, rubbing my eyes. sleep was elusive during construction, and i found myself waking up every morning on the proverbial wrong side of the bed, pissed off, irritable and covered in this nasty layer of construction soot that seemed to line everything in the house.


then came bad news: as if things weren’t bad already, the espresso flooring, manufactured by Teragren, was out of stock. all i needed were five measly boxes, totaling 100 square feet, but every warehouse in the country was dry. Teragren reps said a shipment was coming in from China in two or three weeks, which meant Mo and i had to endure a protracted construction and still dysfunctional kitchen. i was livid. i tried arguing with them, then bargaining, then begging but was repeatedly told OUT OF STOCK, to which i finally said, “ok, i’ll wait.”


waiting: once the drywall was finished and painted— a process that took about two weeks — we pushed the cabinets against the wall and are making due with half a kitchen floor. this is the kitchen as it currently looks. ETA for flooring is sometime in April.

The Home-Improvement Chronicles: The Tree Trimming

not a euphemism: i got my tree trimmed the other week. as you can see, it was overgrown and long overdue for a trimming. the neighbor directly north of me complained that it obstructed his view and offered to pay to have the whole thing chopped down, but given that it’s the only mature tree on the property, shading the house from the sun with its strategic westward location, i declined his kind offer and opted to give the lovely Chinese Elm just a little haircut.


low hangers: some of the tree’s spider branches hung so low and so far into the street that SUVs driving down the road routinely got their roofs scratched up.


Mike fixed all that: he’s the tree trimmer extraordinaire recommended by all my neighbors, who sang his praises with glee. i will now add to their chorus and recommend super Mike for all your tree-trimming needs. but don’t bother him with your messy trees in the SFV or Westside as Mike only works the Glendora to Pasadena loop. call him at 626.353.3186.


i hope they’re insured: Mike brought his lovely crew who surprised me with their bladder control by never once asking to use the bathroom inside the house.


a little off the top: the guys spent all day hanging off the tree like wild monkeys, but thankfully never threw poop at me like wild monkeys.


better than pine sol: the best part of the trimming had to be the delicious smell it produced as the branches and leaves were shredded. it smelled like a thousand christmas trees, a lovely alternative to the intense skunk from hell smell that usually permeates the neighborhood.


and then they got sucked into the shredder: it’s a shame, too, because they seemed like really nice guys.


grass, please: i almost asked Mike and crew to distribute some of the shredded leaves all over the front yard to cover up the sad dirt pile that’s currently there.


Pinko on the case: she spent the day supervising from the deck and barking like a rabid animal whenever a branch fell to the ground.


thinning out: i spent the day holding my breath and expecting some kind of disaster, like a branch crashing through the roof or a guy falling out of the tree with chainsaw still ablaze, dismembering his own limbs.


the after shot: the only real disaster was how hot the house became in the afternoon without the overgrown tree to shade it from the setting sun.