Last Post of the Year!

Over Thanksgiving, we house-sat/kitty-sat for our friend & neighbor Jon. While there, I quietly coveted his couch while we watched movies, hoping that one day I, too, may have such a fine couch. Then, a couple weeks ago, Jon told us he was buying a new couch, & offered us the old one, without even knowing about my secret desires. A Christmas Miracle! He brought it over to Mars last night, along with a very nice coffee table that also happens to be a perfectly sized dining room table for our tatami matted dining room. Thank you very very much, Jon!

I tried to take some photos of the rooms this morning with my phone, but it's overcast & they just don't look good. I will charge up my real camera today & snap some pictures. I will take a photo of the roses blooming on the Monster Rose Bushes in the backyard, too. These photos will have to wait until the 3rd to be posted, however -- after working too hard over the past week, my hands are aching, so I'm avoiding all computers for the next 4 days, making this my last post of 2011.

Before I sign off, I will leave you with an assortment of random photos that I haven't had a chance to post yet.



The Neighborhood:

We live on a very large hill. First, to get up to the main drag of the little village-like part of the neighborhood:




Then, from the main drag, up another hill to get to the house:

*** *** ***

The Plumbing:

Shiny shiny!



We had to put in a new water heater because the old one was, well, old & inefficient, & also, worse, it was not sufficiently high off the floor per safety regulations, & it was not vented correctly -- it was vented on a downward slope instead of upward, which is dangerous on its own, but also caused the basement door to hit the vent pipe every time you opened or closed the door. Poor Jackie, living with an unsafe water heater! We also put in washer & dryer hookups (the washer was upstairs, & there was previously no dryer, just a clothesline), & replace the old main gas line in the house. The PG&E guy told me that he goes into a lot of houses where old gas lines are just about to fail, so it was a good move to make, & we'll be in good shape for another 50 years.

The city inspector says job well done!



*** *** ***

A Little Bit of Elbow Grease:

In an ideal world, we would have painted the walls, & stripped the built-in & trim, etc etc etc before we moved in, but that couldn't happen for several unavoidable, but ultimately boring reasons that I won't go into here. We did get a chance to try stripping some stuff, though, to test out our idea of taking off the pink trim paint (& the zillion layers underneath) & restoring the old wood underneath.

Looks promising!



The rest of the trim will have to wait, because Job Number One -- finishing unpacking -- is just a lot more important for sanity's sake, but we are going to finish stripping the built-in in the next month. Here's Adrienne, starting the job:




Lastly, I tried taking off one of the sheets of wood paneling to see what's underneath. As it turns out, it's more wood paneling:


I thought about trying to take that piece off, too, just because I was fascinated to find out what was next, but I decided that maybe it was best to leave well enough alone & just paint over it for now. Whenever we get around to painting. In 2012.


Onward to 2012! Thank you to everyone who has been so generous with good wishes & crossed fingers (& paws) & advice & housewarming gifts & every possible kind of support along the way! Happy New Year!

So Many Ads...

We didn't get anything done on the house yesterday -- I was putting ads up all day (it's our busiest time of the year), & Adrienne was out at a movie with Amanda, (finally) relaxing & recovering from the fall semester.

Today, however, I am planning to put up curtains! And more ads.

In the meantime, here is (an inadequate) photo of the incredible dawn this morning.

Working from Home

This morning I'm working from home in the almost-finished office, in the toasty warm house, watching the sun rise over the neighbor's house.

Christmas on Mars

Live Blogging The Heat: Done!

Done! We have heat! It's taken all of fifteen minutes to make the entire house completely toasty. 35,000 BTUs go a long way in this house. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Now all there is to do is to finally decide who would be a better Myrna Loy, Amanda or Adrienne.

Live Blogging The Heat: No Gas Leaks!

Hooray!

Live Blogging The Heat: Lots of Walking Back & Forth

Mr. Bunkport has been walking upstairs & downstairs repeatedly, carrying tools back & forth, for the past half hour.

Amanda & Adrienne are discussing some sort of Risk-like game involving honeycombs & settlers, and trying to figure out which chocolate-covered nugget in the little bag has the candy cane in it.

Oh, Amanda just found it. And she's not very happy about it.

Live Blogging The Heat: Almost Done!

The gas is now off, & Mr. Bunkport is banging around in the basement with pipes. Close to finished!

Live Blogging The Heat: Where's the Bathroom?

Mr. Bunkport just asked where the bathroom is. I had to think about it for a second.

Live Blogging The Heat: Mr. Bunkport Is Back!

Mr. Bunkport is back, & is making progress with complicated looking venting materials!

Live Blogging The Heat: The Picnic

Mr. Bunkport has just run out to the hardware store.


In the meantime, here is a picture of the picnic celebrating Amanda's quitting The Worst Job In The World.

Live Blogging The Heat: The Monster in the Corner

Here it is, waiting to be hooked up!

Live Blogging: The Heat Has Arrived!

Friends, our contractor friend, Mr. Bunkport, has arrived with the heater. It's such an exciting & long-awaited event that I am taking off my winter gloves, & live blogging it while we celebrate Amanda's last torturous day at The Worst Job In The World with our delicious picnic.

Hooray!

The Kitchen: Big & Little At The Same Time

The kitchen is about 16 1/2 feet by 9 1/2 feet. Easily twice the size of the one in the apartment. It is big (at least for us).

It also happens to have features that make it perfect for those who may be littler than other people. In particular: low cabinets & countertops.



Look how easy & ergonomic it is for our Master Chef to chop scallions:



We're going to redo/upgrade the kitchen at some point, because the cabinets are basically constructed out of spare pieces of wood paneling (no, really). We'll find a way to have low counters in at least part of the kitchen, at least.

"Don't you change the height of these counters!"

In related news, Adrienne finally discovered a place in the kitchen where she can receive her favorite radio station:



Today, after a lunchtime picnic celebrating our friend's quitting The Worst Job In The World, & tomorrow, we'll be working on the living room & putting up our Christmas "tree" just in time to have a friend over for a movie marathon on Christmas Eve. Also, we should have the heater in today. Really. I will post photos chronicling all these exciting developments.

Then after that, we conquer the office:

The Kitchen Has Been Liberated

Adrienne has been working heroically through her annual end-of-semester cold to get the house unpacked. First success: the kitchen has officially been liberated from boxes. Photos to come.

Last night we made progress on the living room. Now there are two places to sit.

Next up: the office! Watch out office, we are coming for you!

First Dinner on Mars

Adrienne's famous tacos!

Mars Looks Like An Episode of "Hoarders"

What a weekend!

Friday: Stayed up until 11pm packing.

Saturday: Up at 7am to finish getting everything ready for the movers. They came at 9:30, & we followed behind them as they worked, cleaning things & patching holes in walls. They wrapped up around 2:30, & we ran around the corner to borrow our friend's car (thanks Jon!) to pick up fragile stuff & plants that we wanted to move ourselves. Done by 5, I think, & over at Jon's with Amanda to drink celebratory champagne (thanks Jon!). Then a moving day/holiday celebration dinner with friends at our favorite Mexican restaurant, a short cab ride back to Mars (thanks Amanda!), & tucked into bed by 10pm. First night on Mars!

Sunday: Slept in a little & then rolled down the hill to the apartment to finish cleaning ahead of the landlord's final walkthrough this morning. She's not supposed to deduct from the security deposit for normal wear & tear, but 1) she hasn't done any maintenance inside the place for ten years & a decade's worth of normal wear & tear looks pretty messy, and 2) she either doesn't know the law or pretends she doesn't, so we put in 6 hours getting the place as pristine as possible to ensure we get every cent back. Dragged our exhausted selves back up the hill, & had an excellent dinner at a little Italian place on our corner (thanks Dad & Toni!). Tucked into bed by 9 or 10.

On tap today: Adrienne is going to be puttering around the house, calling our contractor friend about the heater & unpacking. There are boxes & furniture everywhere, with little paths through all the rooms. Like I said, looks like an episode of "Hoarders." I'll be joining her after work. On a mission in particular to find some pants.

Last Day in the Apartment

Today is our last day at 29th St. I've been here for about 4 years; Adrienne has been here for 9 or 10. To get around the fact that we have limited time to pack during the week, we've been packing for the last two weekends. That has its downsides (ex. 'Did we really pack all of the tupperware already? I guess I'll keep this hunk of cheese in this mug then.'), but having a little extra time has made it easier to sift through what we have & get rid of things, rather than just having to pack everything in a rush. We've given 5 paper grocery bags of stuff to Goodwill, shredded about two reams of paper, & have sent 10 other grocery bags full of paper & other recyclables back out into the world. So tomorrow morning, we will enter Mars with a load that's a tiny bit lighter.

Today will be a busy day of running errands, working, & in the evening, packing like maniacs. No time for a long post about the house today, so I will just leave you with this photo of the neighbors across the street:

Entropy Madness

From a smarty pants academic science website (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/therm/entrop.html): One of the ideas involved in the concept of entropy is that nature tends from order to disorder in isolated systems.

This describes the state of the apartment. And the state of our minds. As our good friend Amanda named it, we have Entropy Madness, & it will only get worse until Saturday at 9:30am, when the movers arrive.

So no photos to share today, but I will note that the main progress made on the house yesterday was fixing several doors that didn't quite shut, while waiting in vain for the gas company to come & turn things on. As it turns out, we had written the wrong date in the calendar. The gas company is actually coming today. Entropy Madness.

Progress in the Backyard

Adrienne is already making plans for whipping the backyard into shape. In the meantime, after several weeks of rain & sun since the listing agent took the original Mars-scape photo:

It's nothing we did, but I'll call it progress.

Here is something we did, however: Pandafence!

View from the Sloping Porch, when you've just come out of the kitchen.

View from the back door, just outside the Sloping Porch.

Close up.

It was really windy the day I put this up, so I had issues with overspray. There's touch up work to be done in the white section, but the overspray around the outer edges gives the panda a sort of a glowing effect, which is neat.

Who doesn't love a panda in the backyard?

Completing The Picture of Mars

As promised, here are more photos to round out the picture of the whole house.

Here's the bedroom. And the view.

We're going to frost the window or something. Keep the light, lose the shingles.

That's the bathroom door. My back is to the dining room. There are no other windows in the room, & it faces southwest, so it's just the right amount of dim in the morning, & has great warm light in the afternoon.

Here's the Great Sloping Porch. The one that is coming off in favor of a deck.

Here's some shelves in the corner of the room. Just to give an idea of how not square it is.

Mars is considered a detached house, but really, it should be considered semi-attached. Like most houses in the neighborhood, the neighbor's house is so close, you can't even really get in there to do anything. Not sure how the house next door was put up, since it's not like construction guys could get in there to even swing a hammer. The grey paint on the right of the photo is the neighbor's -- it stops about an arm's length in, as that was as far as the painter could go. So, mostly this space is used for these heater vents (both theirs & ours).

These are the original redwood shingles on the left. It actually stays relatively dry in there, because this is the leeward side of the house, & the rain gutters on the two houses overlap each other.

Presumably, these shingles are under all that vinyl siding. Someday I'd like to get the siding taken off & the shingles restored.

This little strangely dressed hunter is decorating the cinder block doorstop on the front porch.

Adrienne doesn't like him. At all. I don't know what she has against him. It just doesn't seem fair. I mean, what did he ever do to her?

Lastly, this little thing is hanging on the security gate on the front porch. Not sure what it is. A talisman of some sort, maybe. Any ideas?

What's In The Basement?

As promised, here are photos of What's In The Basement.

Number one, The Mysterious Deadbolted Room (which in the real estate listing was called a 'rumpus room'):

Exterior. Front of house is towards right of photo.

















View from the back door, facing the front of the house. Note little window to the rest of the garage.
















View from opposite direction, toward the back of the house. Note second little window to the rest of the garage.

The linoleum is likely from the 20's or 30's. Which is pretty cool, but also means it's probably asbestos. Hey, at least it's fireproof in there.

The calendar on the wall is from 1955.

The lighting is run on an ancient fuse box. The rest of the house is on the electrical system upgraded in 2007.








The doorway on the right is the back door of the Mysterious Deadbolted Room. It leads directly onto raised wooden flooring that we will eventually take out to do some earthquake retrofitting on that post right there. And also to make way for the air hockey table we have just been offered by a friend (!).

It's hard to see, but there is an old wooden workbench back there behind the ladder, with some neat old jars & (disconnected) electrical fixtures attached to it.








Now, how about a peek at what's under those back extensions?

Extension #1, the one with the kitchen:

Watch your step!

The grey ball on the steps is steel wool I was using to plug holes from old plumbing fixtures that go directly up into the kitchen. I just noticed that it kind of looks like an animal.













It's hard to see, but there is a hole in the middle of the floor, opening right to the dirt, under that cardboard box. Apparently this is how it was done when this was built -- sticks sitting on the dirt, without any real foundation, with a raised floor built on the dirt. I'm not sure when it was built, but there's an old (disconnected) outlet in the kitchen that looks like it's from the 40s or 50s.

The slats through the window at the back are part of the neighbor's fence. This window faces southwest -- I imagine this was actually pretty bright down here before they put that up.

I should have taken a photo of the left wall -- it's actually the original exterior of the house, redwood shingles and all.

It looks worse than it is in there because we haven't cleaned it out, but, yeah, there's work to be done here. The first big thing we are doing is bringing this up to modern standards structure-wise, & making it usable living space.


Extension #2, the sloping back porch:

Watch your head!

















This is the one with all the neat old stuff (& junk) in it. And the one that's coming off & being replaced with a deck as part of the structural work mentioned above.















Lastly, for now, one other thing that's in the garage:


Old bicycle pump. Fun.

The entire garage is walled with this reused lath, by the way. It's not a typical sort of thing to do in a garage out here -- someone just had all this used lath from somewhere, & nailed it up all over the walls & ceiling. It's nice looking.

We live on the Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo. How about you?

A little history about the neighborhood, from bernalhistoryproject.org:

In 1839, Jose Cornelio Bernal received a land grant from the Mexican government, the Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo, that made up 20 percent of modern-day San Francisco. It is from him that Bernal Heights gets its name. He built his family home at what is now the site of St. Luke's Hospital.

In the second half of the 19th century, Bernal Heights was largely rural cow pasture, farmed by Swedish, German, and Irish immigrants. The arrival of the railroad and a horsecar line along the old Mission Road in the 1860s linked Bernal to the rest of the city, and it began to grow. While a November 1894 story in the San Francisco Chronicle described Bernal Heights as "this paradise of the agile goat and the speckled hen," tanners and brewers thrived along Army Street and Islais Creek, while Mission Street was already bustling with activity....
After the 1906 earthquake and fire, Bernal Heights grew dramatically in size as city residents flocked to its open hillsides, cheap land, and solid bedrock. More than 600 houses were built in Bernal in the year after the disaster. After that, Bernal continued to expand along with the rest of the city, and is now home to more than 22,000 residents.

City records have Mars House down as one of the ones built in 1907. This map, also from bernalhistoryproject.org, shows the houses in Bernal around that time. The red arrow is (or is a couple lots down from?) Mars House.


For folks interested in the history of the Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo, the yellow arrow points at St. Luke's/the original Bernal mansion.

The orange arrow points at the spot where we're still living for the next 8 days (!). It's about a ten or fifteen minute walk from Mars House. Coincidentally, this particular corner had significance in 1907, as well. Streetcar operators, electricians, laundry workers, metal trades workers, & telephone operators all went out on strike in early 1907 for the 8 hour day. Most of them had won by late spring, but the politicians running the city decided that this was their chance to break the Carmen's union, bringing in strikebreakers from the East Coast in early May, & generally forcing the situation to get more volatile & dangerous as the summer progressed. On Labor Day (interestingly...), after a shooting at a streetcar barn up the street from here, a runaway streetcar barreled down 29th St, derailed where the tracks turned left onto Mission, & crashed into a building (which is now an excellent Peruvian restaurant). A small riot ensued.

A newspaper clipping, also from bernalhistoryproject.org:

For those interested in the ending of the story: The union stayed out until the spring of 1908. By the end, a total of 31 people had been killed & another 1100 injured (the majority of deaths & injuries happened in accidents caused by streetcars being run by strikebreakers), and the Carmen's Union was indeed broken -- it terminated its charter later that year. More info & a couple photos here: http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Bloody_Tuesday

Going to Mars House to clean & putter around tomorrow & Sunday. More photos to come shortly!

Welcome to Mars!

Hello, friends!

Welcome to the crazy little Martian house we bought. The previous owner, Jackie, lived there for fifty years before her death in June at 88. It's a great house on a great block in a great neighborhood, & it just needs a little love & a little sweat to update it & make it sparkle.

We'll be documenting our progress here, for our far-flung family & friends. So, to begin with, here are the before photos (taken by the listing agent).

*** *** ***

This is the dining room, which is the central room in the house. The place isn't quite as huge as the photos suggest -- it's a very comfortable size.

The room behind the closed door had the washing machine in it. No dryer -- just a clothes line out back. We moved the washer down to the basement, because we needed to add a dryer. Eventually we're going to put in a second bathroom there; for now, I think the homebrew stuff is going in there.

Yellow room is the kitchen. Room opening to the left is the bedroom.

Note the old gas space heater in the corner. The property inspector said it was unsafe & not worth repairing, so we had that taken out. Still working on getting some other form of heat in there...er, it'll be fine.

The lighting fixture looks like a UFO, so it's appropriate.

*** *** ***

This is the dining room from the other direction, facing the living room & front door. The front door has purple glass knobs.

*** *** ***

This is the room opposite to the living room at the front of the house. It was Jackie's bedroom, judging from the placement of the Sacred Heart, hanging in the middle of the wall right there.

We'll be using it as an office.

The door there on the right, at the edge of the photo, goes to the Jack & Jill bathroom.




*** *** ***

Obviously, the bathroom. The plumbing & fixtures were updated in 2007, along with most of the electrical system.

The office is on the other side of the closed door.

The bedroom is behind the person taking the photo. The realtor didn't put a photo of the bedroom on the listing; it basically looks like the office, but with just one, tall window that has a breath-taking view of the neighbor's roof.

*** *** ***

This is the kitchen. We moved the refrigerator out of the sloping porch out the door on the right (photo to come) to the spot on the left.

The countertops are the same ones my grandmother put in in a 90's renovation in the kitchen of the farm house she lived in for 50 years.

*** *** ***

This is the back of the house -- pretty much the exterior of the sloping porch, & a sort of work room/garden shed area below. The family cleaned out most of the stuff that was stored in the house, but there's still a lot left in that room -- some of it is just junk like broken lamps, but some of it is fascinating, beautiful old stuff like jars from the 50s and a sort of old (dead) fuse box or plate or something.

You can see at the top of the building that there is damage to the vinyl siding (which was put on in 1991), & this being the windward side of the house, there is water damage to this side of the building. Further, when this was built, the convention was to just stick the wooden support beams directly into the dirt, which obviously leads to deterioration over time, & is why the sloping in the upper porch is so bad. The First Big Project that we're saving up for will be to take the whole porch off & put in an open deck to open up the back area more.

*** *** ***

And now, the yard. This photo is what originally gave the house its name -- this yard looks like a Martian landscape. It doesn't help that the photo has been weirdly tinted.

The sticks in the brick edging are enormous (around 6' tall) rose-bushes that have been hacked back. We think there are 7 or 8 of them back there.

There are other flowers & trees back here, as well -- rosemary, something like a magnolia, the giant fern in the foreground of the photo. We'd like to have some sort of garden back here, & some citrus trees.

*** *** ***

Lastly, this is Carol Reen, our Realtor®.

This woman moved mountains to get us into this house. She is literally the greatest Realtor® who has ever lived. She is the Realtor® of Realtor®s.

If you want to buy a house in the Bay Area, you must call her. You must.








Many more photos to come! Garage! Weird room with deadbolts in the garage! New plumbing! A panda! What's under all that wood paneling?! What's under all that pink paint?! Stay tuned!