Our hearts and best hopes go to everyone impacted by the Covid-19 virus.
Just because we're doing non-Covid things, doesn't mean we have forgotten the folks suffering from the virus.
We also really, really appreciate all those folks out there keeping things going and keeping everyone as healthy as possible.
It's still out there and getting fiercer! Be vigilant and continue to be safe!
Wear your mask!
Wash your hands!
yeah, I know, it sucks, but do it anyway
12-12-2020
another alliterative date for this year
Wear your mask!
Wash your hands!
yeah, I know, it sucks, but do it anyway
another alliterative date for this year
Yet Another House Repair
and yet not the one we live in, aaargh!
Light at the end of the rainbow?
it seems hopeful, anyway
The Little Rental Restoration is pretty much done for now. There's still things that could be done, but there's a renter in there now, so we're done with that project for awhile. However, we are now in the middle of an emergency cleaning and repair of the other rental house now. Sigh! But, I'll put in pictures of The Little Rental to finish off that project before moving into pictures of the next one.
I'd been looking forward to some time off from rental house repairs, restorations and cleanings to get a lot of other projects done. Updating this website, adding a "Resources" page, a new bunny hutch, a cute sheep shed, fence the garden, corral some chickens, there's a whole list of projects that had been sidelined while getting the Little Rental rented.
I'd planned on getting some nice 'after' pictures of the finished project. However, the renter was moving in as we were finishing the project so there wasn't any time when it was finished without incoming furniture in it. Sigh! So much for a perfect world.
The big living room windows needed curtains. At least on one side so the neighbors didn't feel like they were being stared at. The windows facing the ocean don't have anyone looking in, but it's still nice to have curtains there, too.
They could use some ironing, but hopefully the wrinkles will even out on their own? The curtain rods took some finesse to get them to function since they were from a yard sale along with the curtains themselves.
They're nice 'pinch pleat' curtains although they had been full length from somewnere that had ten foot ceilings. By making them much more 'cottage' style, there's enough fabric to make curtains for all the windows in the Little Rental, although they aren't all 'pinch pleat' type of curtains. But, when making curtains under a deadline, it's more about getting them done than getting them perfect.
There's no making the curtains perfect when the windows aren't. Had this been a house we were going to live in, then the windows in the bedrooms would have been replaced. I really like the big double hung sash windows, but the louver windows sorta randomly placed on the wall annoy me. Louvers are good, they really produce a lot of ventilation which is a really good thing in Hawaii, but the windows aren't centered on the wall or at the same height as the other original double hung sash. Oh well, I suppose it's not something that will annoy very many other folks, though, so I shouldn't fuss about it.
The closet door has been replaced with a mirror door. It does help the bedroom seem larger. Plus it's always nice to have a large mirror when getting dressed.
I should go find the 'beginning' picture that shows an enormous hole in the wall to the left of the doorway. As well as the violently blue color that the room had been, although, I suppose for a kid's room, the very blue would have worked. I find the soft green 'Nob Hill Sage' much more restful.
The mountain side of the house (back bedroom, bath & kitchen) are all painted in the Nob Hill Sage. The ocean side of the house was supposed to be a much lighter blue color, but the paint came back a much darker blue than had been chosen. It's still a nice blue, though, so it got used since there wasn't a lot of time to be making duplicate trips to the hardware store. Next time it's painted, it will be a lighter blue color.
Oh, the one GFI outlet is just placed on top of the other one which is why the electrical outlet on the right looks somewhat odd. It's to remind the electrician that it will need a GFI outlet in the kitchen. The renter was in the house for one or two days before the electrician showed up so it was still 'jobsite' powered. That means long extension cords everywehre and the outlets & ceiling lights non-functional. But, the rent is discounted until January while we get the kinks worked out.
It also needs the decorative trim around the big ceiling light. That light is a bit large for the kitchen, but it's also covering some damaged ceiling in that area. If we used the bigger light fixture, we'd not have to replace the kitchen ceiling.
The backsplash on the counter needs a bit of extension. Part of the counter top is granite, part of it is whatever that countertop stuff is that you can get at hardware stores these days. Personally, had I been doing it, it would have been old style Formica glued on plywood. In a perfect world, with chrome trim, too, but that's about impossible to find anymore.
The renter was brining in furniture before the project was finished, so there's stuff in the pictures. It was just brought in and not set in place so the pictures aren't as pretty as I'd like. It's also not cute dainty 'cottage' type furniture. Oh wellos!
Anyway, this is the 'finished' pass thru area. It was supposed to have a large silky oak ledge there, but the moving in renter howled, something about he wanted to put a TV there and the ledge would be in the way? Not the way we'd expected a renter to utilize the room, but one less project before the Little Rental was finished.
the kitchen view from the living room
with assorted furniture dropped into the picture
Where that table on it's side is placed is where the renter is planning on putting a TV. Seems to ruin any use of the pass thru, but not my circus, not my monkeys. There is a small dining room area off to the side of the kitchen, although that table is gonna take up most of the space. The furniture doesn't seem sized for a cottage, but it's just dropped where they brought it in and it's not arranged neatly yet. Hopefully, it finds a nice location eventually.
This is actually a big problem for folks in Hawaii, they have more stuff than will fit inside the house. Since we always have the outside as part of our living spaces, houses are pretty small around here. This 'Little Rental' as a two bedroom built in the fifties, is even smaller than most. One of the projects I didn't get done was building some big storage units in the carport. But, soon as we get done with this other emergency project, maybe I can get around to getting those done. Kinda hard with a renter inside, though, since he's set up exercise equipment in the carport and may rather have that there than storage closets.
Here's another final kitchen picture before the renter moved in. This one has the back door in the picture, although it still is prior to the electrician putting in the GFI outlet by the sink.
The final front bedroom wall. This used to have 'remove wall' scrawled across it in sharpie marker. Also no bedroom door, among other issues. I do need to make some side by side 'before' and after' pictures, but that can be a project for another day. The paint color was supposed to be a much softer blue, but the paint was mis-mixed and came out much more, hmm, let's call it 'vibrant' than planned.
Well, here's a 'before' picture although from a different viewpoint than from the previous picture taken from inside the front bedroom. Since this "before" picture was taken, the doorway missing a door on the right side of the picture has been entirely covered over and is no longer there. Having an additional entrance to a very short hallway made no sense when there's now a huge doorway between the kitchen and living room. From the kitchen there is an entrance into the hallway about four feet from where that door had been. Originally, there was a door to the hallway from the living room and a door (not a doorway) from the living room. Apparently, back in the fifites, living rooms and kitchens weren't allowed to access each other. I don't know if there was an actual door in the doorway between the living room and the hallway as well as between the kitchen and the hallway. I'll have to ask the neighbor, she has a matching house.
Anyway, you can see in the room in this 'before' picture the wall that has the two doors of different heights. That's the same wall in the front bedroom picture above. Apparently, back in the fifites, doorways weren't always the same height.
Well, enough of the Little Rental for now, this has become a - for at least the moment - a 'done' project. At least until we get the emergency cleanup and repair of the other rental house finished.
1974 Rental House Kitchen
"it's too dark and gloomy" wail the prospective renters
"Dark & Gloomy"
original 1974, though
This is more or less a "time capsule" kitchen, fairly true to it's 1974 origins. It's a Hick's Home #690, should anyone else have a matching house. The whole neighborhood the house is in, is all pretty much similar houses. Hicks Homes were considered 'modest' when they were built, although now it would be almost impossible to replace them. This particular house is constructed of clear redwood? Fir? Some sort of wood that the termites don't seem to like and not a single knot in the boards. The floor is oak strips, most of the windows are louvers along with big plate glass windows for viewing. Very typical of a Hicks Home. Also allows for great ventilation.
The cabinets are original and could use some replacement cabinet doors, although I'd leave the rest of the cabinet structure since it's a lot more solid than most pre-manufactured cabinets you can get these days. Built in place cabinets will last multiple decades and not mere years. The original Formica is still in place, although as a Seventies House, it doesn't have the festive chrome trim of a Fifties House. Nor the bright color of Formica, a much more subdued gray speckle on white instead of some sort of bright yellow such as our house has.
We're currently living in a Fifties House which has the orginal Formica (although a different brand name) countertops. If you took one of those iridescent bowling balls, made it French's mustard yellow (close to a banana yellow) and then peeled the sucker and made it into a countertop, that would be the yellow counter top at the Fifties House.
Ha! I adore the internet! Apparently, the stuff is WilsonArt's Yellow Cracked Ice". Should you want to do an official Fifties Kitchen, there's an option for you. Hmm, wonder if I can get some imported to Hawaii? Might be nice to redo the kitchen back to original. They were quite bright and cheery in the Fifties. Well, No New Projects, at least, at this time. Okay, so back to the problem of the "dark and gloomy" Seventies Kitchen. Personally, I think the 'woodland' look is gonna be back in, give or take a few years, but that will be then and not now.
Kitchen Painting
too many cabinet doors!
Well, when painting kitchens, it's best to start inside the cabinets. No use having a bright and shiny kitchen with dark and gloomy cabinets? So, all the cabinet doors were taken off and all the cabinets were painted inside. That's a LOT of surface area to paint as well as pesky hard to reach corners. Had I realized how much of a PITA it would be to paint the interiors of the cabinets before this project was started, they may have remained dark and gloomy. I'm sure cans of soup are much more resistant to 'dark and gloomy' than people. What was supposed to be a several day's project has turned into two weeks' worth of bother.
Lighter and Brighter?
now the floor needs cleaning, new light fixtures, etc.
Well, that's now a different look for the kitchen. It was too industrial looking with the walls white as well as the cabinets, so the walls were painted a soft sage green. We seem to use that for almost all the kitchens, it's "Nob Hill Sage" should you want to paint your kitchen the same color.
A Bit Brighter
"not quite done and a night picture but still brighter"
The dining area is just a bit of space off to the side of the kitchen, it's not a separate room. When we were living there, I'd planned on replacing the louvers with some larger ones, extending the bottom of the window down to the level of the table top, but just never got around to doing it. The louvers do let in a lot of ventilation and quite a bit of light, but it would be a nicer view if they were lower.
Paint has brightened it up, so there's an easier improvement. It would still be nice to put in some sort of picture window with louvers below or alongside or something, but for now, paint will be the extent of the improvmemnt in the dining area.
We have more modern cabinet door pulls on order, they should arrive in a few days. Also some new light fixtures, that should 'modernize' the kitchen to some extent. And clean and wax the floor, although we're not replacing the linoleum at this time.
This is kinda another '1974 Time Capsule', although I don't think we're going to update it much at this time. The windows have been washed since that picture and the ceiling will be painted a brighter white color, at the moment it's an offwhite. The floors will be cleaned and shined, but they should be refinished. They are solid oak, though, so should we ever get around to it, they could be restored to original condition. This is very typical of a 'Hicks Home'.
This will be another project keeping me from updating websites as often as I should. This will need some boards replaced as well as a new coat of paint. That should be one of the last big projects for this emergency cleaning and reapair, though. I really want to get some other projects done such as build a cute sheep shed.
Well, there's the other half of the back lanai to be painted. Guess it's gonna take more than a day to paint it if it takes two pictures to show it. Hopefully soon we can find some nice renters for it.
Our First Pear
it's only been a couple of years since the tree was planted
I should look up what variety of pear this is, was it D'anjou, Bosc or Barlett? One of those three, I think. It was planted several years ago and had a tag on it, but that wore off. Well, somewhere I made a map of the yard with the different fruit trees noted, so at some point I'll go look it up. It was a tasty pear, crisp and juicy, whatever type of pear it was.
Just so we won't starve to death while cleaning and repairing the rental house, there was a stalk of bananas ripe in the yard. A lot of them were given away, a lot of them were frozen, now we are down to about four hands of fresh bananas so we're still eating three to five bananas a day. Which is typical when a banana fruits.
As if there weren't enough bananas, it's also avocado season. Since there's that wretched virus around, it's hard to find enough folks to give them to. We certainly can't eat them all and avocados don't freeze that well.
"Volenteer" flowers
they seem to appear every year
I haven't actually planted these, they were planted by the previous owner and the flowers just keep appearing every year. It's an odd climbing lily with little grasping tendrils on the ends of the leaves.
More wintertime flowers
These orchids are from some tissue culture seedlings from the local high school. They were planted in a plastic window box about ten years ago and ignored over at our other rental house. When that house was sold to buy the Extreme Fixer Upper (now the "Little Rental"), the window box was taken off the side of that house and set on a glass topped picnic table by the bunnies. The box is on it's side, they're not cared for or watered or anything and the orchids don't seem to care. Wonder if they will survive if I'm actually nice to them? Maybe I'll dump some 'bunny berries' on them and see what they do with fertilizer?
Bunny Pictures!
Gotta have a few bunnies in there somewhere
It's a Bunny Migration!
I guess a lot of animals migrate for the wintertime, don't they? We've had a major Bunny Exodus this past weekend. Six of them flew off to other islands, three of them went home with their new families via cars and two more will go to their new homes tomorrow. Then we will be out of bunnies who might migrate for at least another six weeks.
Twelve week old baby bunnies
it's good that they be a bit older when flying
These are some of the bunnies who flew away as well as some who stayed. The one dark colored bunny by herself is Venus. I still don't quite know what color she is, she looks Dark Sable, but that's an impossible color to get from a tortoiseshell sire and an albino dam, so I have no idea what color she actually may be. I'll see what color kits she may have later.
Lotus & DaffyDill's babies
more cuteness!
These are the last six babies still here after the big Bunny Exodus this past weekend and they're only a month old so they're too young to go anywhere for another month to a month and a half. I still dunno their genders, they're a little young yet to determine that, but no matter what gender the fluffier tortoiseshell one will be staying here. Also, the best buck in the litter will be staying here, not sure yet about the rest of them.
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