Home With Potential

 

Photo by Cody VanderKaay

Sometimes I wonder why we moved to the valley.  I'm blah about the hot desert-like weather and it's a bit "vanilla".  We're more bohemian. We should have moved to Silver Lake or even Pasadena. For example, I like the patina of age on a home.  Our home needs a paint job but honestly it doesn't bother me too much because I sort of like the patches on our garage.  Granted they need to be more "art directed" but I like it.  

Well, the thing is that when you live in a place where Pottery Barn is the ideal no one gets "the patina of a by-gone era"...to quote "A Good Year", one of my all time favorite movies.  We've had people over to our house and I explain we bought it on a short sale because we fell in love with it's bones and it's potential. Ahhhhh, why do I waste my breath? The words "it's a house with potential" has no effect on people with no imagination.  I can see their eyes glaze over and it's as if they have a  ticker tape on their foreheads that reads "this is so NORTH of the boulevard".   

There is a lot I'd love to change about the house. Some of it can't be done due to lack of money right now and others we're choosing to wait till the kids are older or until we can do it ourselves.  We're like that, we get excited over DIY projects.  Anyway, sometimes I think I should tape this bag on our front door.  Maybe it would help....or maybe not. 

 

Front Yard: one year later

 

A year ago this month we put in the DG pathway in our front yard.  Since then I've been gradually adding drought tolerant plants and figuring my way around landscape design.  The yard is far from done but it's definitely on it's way. We've received compliments from both human and animal neighbors.  Lovely to hear pleasant things from the human folk and just as nice to hear and see humming birds, bees and butterflies come wandering by.  

Here are a few shots of how it's developing. P was determined to be in as many pictures as possible. I guess she's blooming just as well! 

We did have to hire a gardener to keep the weeds at bay both in the mulched areas and on the DG path.  The spring rains can get just about anything to sprout up just about anywhere.  It has been a thousand times easier to maintain, super cost-effective on water bills and much nicer to come home to than what was here before!  

The Fireplace

Our fireplace is looking rather dreadful these days.  The week we brought the baby home from the hospital the fireplace started to fall apart...again.  How ironic is this?  Four years ago when we brought P home from the hospital,  the fireplace lost two tiles from the top. My dad was staying with us at the time so he fixed it.  

Now, the same thing happened again. And again it happened the week we brought baby G home, except it was two tiles from the bottom. When Dave grabbed them to fully take them off he realized every tile above it was resting on the one below;  a domino effect in action.  That was it!  Dave took the tacky tiles off and pulled apart the half ass job someone did with our fireplace.  First it's a safety hazard with the kids and second we hate how it looked. This is how it was before. 

And now it looks even worse!  However, I'm not about to call someone to fix it for two reasons. The first I'll write about later and the second, because I don't want cement, paint, plaster, etc fumes floating in this house with a newborn.  So, ugly will live with us for a while.  I stare at this thing every day and everyday I dream of it looking like a version of this.

Image from Houzz

I think the fireplace would look great in the same grey/black tone as our chalkboard wall.  Well, we'll see how long I can look at ugly before I go nuts!