Feeling very South Beachy

Our back patio faces west.  In other words, we get beamed every afternoon by the very hot sun.  Plant some trees and give yourself some shade you say?  I wish...

The layout going east to west goes like this:
Sliding glass door, covered patio, open patio, pool, fence.  There is no space between the house and the fence to plant a tree without cutting into the concrete.  I worry...about roots invading our pool and cracking it.  I worry...about dropping leaves that cause havoc on the ph balance of the pool.  I hear pine needles are deadly with all their oils.  And we're already having ph balance issues after the pool man kindly obliged to my request of lowering the chlorine.  I making the pool green!

For almost seven years I've schemed on how to give us shade without having to do a complete overhaul of the back yard. There is no way to shade the house without completely shading the pool.  Finding a solution while taking into consideration shaded areas, cost, impact on the pool and style has been daunting.  

Meanwhile, inside in our living, dining and kitchen areas we feel the heat through the windows. We sweat and bake, specially in summer, where it honestly feels as if the sun has her face smooched up against our back sliding glass door! Even after adding insulation to the house we continued to feel the heat a great deal. It was miserable....until I had an idea!  

A very long time ago I remember being in South Beach for a business meeting.  We met at a bar (because that is where business takes place in cities with the word "beach" in their name). We sat in low, white sofa like lounge chairs and the entire outside patio had long, flowing, white curtains. They were useful to block the sun, add privacy and looked romantic yet regal. That was the solution!  Long, flowing, white curtains hung on the outside of our covered patio! And to Ikea we ran! 

We bought 5 Merete curtain sets. I used 3 panels per patio section. So in between each post I used 3 panels. I wanted a very industrial looking set of hardware to hang the curtains. I was thinking pipe and cool looking yacht hooks. However, the rings on the curtains didn't slide smoothly on the test pipe.  The cost was a bit daunting to.  Those cool looking yacht hooks can run $20-50 each.  I kept it simple and used the Hugad rods, the thicker of their rods, in silver and the Betydlig brackets in silver as well. The rods are $4 a piece and the brackets $1.50.  You just can't beat that!  We'll see how they hold up to exterior weather conditions but at these prices I don't mind having to replace them every 2-3 years.  

The idea has been a success!  In the mornings the curtains are pulled apart and we get our view of the pool.  As soon as the sun makes it over the house and starts peeking in which happens around 2pm we draw all the curtains.  The sun is completely blocked.  It's still very bright.  The drop in temperature inside the house is amazing!  Instead of hiding away from the outdoors in the afternoon we now use the patio.  The temperature is tolerable now and we've gained not just our living and dining areas back but our patio as well!  

I think the house has a resort feel to it now.  I feel like I'm back in South Beach.  Dave predicts we'll take the curtains down in the winter but I feel we'll use them during the cold months as well.  I think they will make the patio warm enough for us to want to spend more time out there.  Rain is the only kicker.  They get pretty dirty from the water on the ground. But it's nothing a run through the washing machine won't get rid of. 

We've really loved our new curtains outside.  They even make a pretty cool back drop for pictures as you can see in the top picture!

Finishing the Fence

This past November we had to rebuild part of the fence.  In February I finally got to staining the remainder.  However, there was a last bit that wasn't complete on our side. One could say it was the hardest part, the part behind the pool pump. 

When my mom came to visit in March she stained the remaining planks. She came again in June and I knew I needed to finish or else she'd ask what the big hurry was to get it all stained.  So here it is. I thought it would take me 1.5 hours to complete. It took me 3!  

Now, I need to get this entire pool pump hidden behind something pretty.  And that project is now in the works. 

Summer is Here!

It hit 100 degrees last week! The shade sails went up!  Dave and the girls were in the pool three times yesterday!  Summer is officially here!

I feel like I'm in a new house! The house debuted it's new stucco and paint back in October, but I hadn't really experienced the house outside in summer until this past weekend.  For example, I've never taken a picture of the girls in the pool from the angle above.  The walls looked so ugly I never even bothered.  But now I am happy, and dare I say proud, of how our back yard looks. I can't even show a before and after because I have no befores!  The only thing close are here or here. 

It's going to be a great summer! We have more plans for the backyard!  I can't wait!

A Red-Orange Umbrella

We've been making many little changes and/or additions around the house this summer.  They've all had big, positive effects on our comfort level. For the first time, since moving into our house, I'm happy to be here during the summer. This is huge!  I really dislike the heat!

I bought an umbrella for the back patio.  We've always used our shade sails and they've gotten the job done. However, this umbrella brought an added dose of happy.  I think it's the red/orange color and the permanent shade to our Hoop chair area that makes us all feel happy. 

We now have the perfect shady spot to sit and have yummy mango in the mid-day sun!  

This umbrella was a spontaneous $50 purchase from Target. It's only 6 feet wide.  I don't think it'll last too many summers. So, now I'm on the lookout for a 9 foot, Sunbrella fabric umbrella from Crate & Barrel. They have beautiful ones there.  But for now I'm thrilled that $50 could bring us so much happiness!

The Great Outdoors!

I'm so glad I started this blog.  It's good to get in pictures how far we've come with the house.  There are many details that go into making a house feel like a home. Often we forget how much it is those very details that affect our lives in a big way.  Surprisingly it's not the big stuff...unless you're adding a room or something.

In 2010 our patio looked like this:

In 2012 it looked like this:

And now here is where we are this year:

The Bertoia chairs moved out to the patio table. The patio table came to us from the neighbors who lived behind us. They were in the hood very shortly. It was less than six months before they had to move again. Since they were trying to pack light they left us the patio table. It's not what I wanted stylistically but who is going to pass up a free table? It spends most of it's time under a table cloth anyway.  It's also given me the chance to feel it out for size. I think I want one that seats 8 instead of 6 next time. 

I love eating outside. I believe every meal tastes better "al fresco".  I feel much more relaxed. If there are spills, a quick hose off is easier than a mop. And for some reason food doesn't seem to get tracked all over the place the way it does under our dining table. 

This scenery, this space, makes me happy. I love eating and just hanging with the family out here. I realized it was time to make an investment in outdoor dishes this year.  We had the set up ready for meals. I got the "mermaid" set from Cost Plus.  P and her friends really love it.  A little whimsical for the kids but grown up enough for us. 

G is becoming more independent and with that means more messes. Hoping this summer she will do lots of practice so when we have to go back inside in the fall her eating skills are a little closer to perfect. 

The best part of eating outside is that we are 8 paces away from doing this! 

Drying Rack

Summer is officially over but the weather in Southern California doesn't play along with the official Labor Day notice.  We're in high swimming season in our heat.  With daily swimming comes a daily 10 pounds of wet towels and suits. They inevitably end up draped all over our patio furniture or on every door, towel rack or hook around the house.  

One of my pet peeves is towels draped on doors or over shower curtain rods.  The towels end up covered in regular dust from doors or black dust from shower curtain rings.  I also have a thing about drying off from a shower with a towel that was used to dry off from the pool or ocean.  If you're clean and you use a chlorinated or salt water towel to dry off you're technically not clean any more.  It's a bit OCD, I know, but I swear I can smell the chlorine or sea water on a person when that's what they've done.  Yes, I have a "dog-grade" nose. 

One day while browsing Remodelista, as I often do, I saw this drying rack.  I had to get it!  I love it! It now keeps all our wet stuff all in one handy dandy place.  Only problem is the rack is very light weight. If it's placed in certain spots in our back patio the wind blows it over and sometimes right into the pool clothes, towels and all.  Dave hates that about it.  I may try to strategically weigh it down with weights in the middle or we have to keep it in this one place where the wind doesn't catch it. I like that I can lift the dowels out to add or subtract a spot to hang things.  It also rotates which is convenient when grabbing all the clothes off to do laundry.  

The drying rack has a certain European flair to it. Not sure my pictures capture it but it does look pretty cool and I've gotten lots of compliments.   If you're interested you can find it here.  

Shades of Green & Blue

Remember last Monday's post? Remember our beautiful pool, "the green lagoon"? Well....

One week later and Dave has the pool looking AMAZING! It went from murky and green to clear and blue. I must admit that if we didn't want to swim in it I would have wanted the pool to stay green. It was actually a very beautiful color for admiring from a distance.

Dave cleaned it up like a mad scientist.  He added chemicals, swept it, vacuumed it and back flushed it. Just in time for warmer weather. It's suppose to get into the 80's this week. I told Dave he did such an awesome job vacuuming the pool I thought he should vacuum the house from now on!

Mad Potting!

 
The plants on the left are Red Sensation Cordyline

I tend to over think things. I plan, gather info, rethink, re-sketch, compare price points, etc, etc, etc. Lately I've been throwing caution to the wind.  Not because I'm turning a new leaf or anything. It's more because I have too many projects and too little time to rethink.

I was at Home Depot the other day and saw succulents for about a $1 a piece. I rarely buy plants at Home Depot. There are too many fabulous, small, family owned nurseries around our home. I'd rather give my business to them.  But for a $1 a piece I couldn't pass it up. Of course the purchase of one plant generally demands the purchase of another to complete the look.

In the past I would have sketched out the plant combination for each pot. This time I said "screw it" and I figured it out when I got home.  I don't think they look bad. We'll see how they all work together as each plant starts to grow in but whatever doesn't work I can always repot.,,,right?  This little exercise felt rather liberating.  I may do the same when picking exterior paint colors.

Anyway, for the record these are the plants I purchased this week:

String of Pearls or Senecio rowleyanus

 

Lola, I didn't get the Botanical name.

Orostachys erubescens

 I like how the Red Sensation Cordyline give the pots more height. The small succulents will need time to peek out over the pots but even now it looks better than the empty sad pots I had before.

 And this is more or less the view from the dining room.  By the way. I don't like the chair we have out there. However, I found it in the alley when I lived in Santa Monica.  It was exactly what I needed at the time. My brother sanded and stained it so I'm not quite ready to part with it. 

Sails

All summer I planned on taking pictures and writing about our sails in the backyard.  When I had time it wasn't the right time of day to take pictures and when it was the right time of day I didn't have time.  Then there's the constant mess on our patio that I really wanted to clean up before exposing to the world how "non minimal" we really live.

Fall has arrived. The rain and winds came so down went the sails and I never got to fully capture their magnificence.  So here is their story and some very non glamorous shots of them and the reality of our backyard.

Almost three years ago we took a family trip to Key West.  Our best meal was at an outdoor restaurant behind a house.  I can't remember the name of it to save my life.  It had a hole in the wall, hidden shack kind of feel to it. They had chickens roaming around freely.  I could see Hemingway or Jimmy Buffet eating there.  Above the umbrella tables, they had huge sails that cast a lovely shade down below.  It was brilliant! In a place were there are more boats than cars, the sails were so appropriate.

When we came back home to 100 degree weather. I wanted shade and I wanted to replicate the "feel" of that restaurant. I wanted our very own, backyard shangri-la.    Our backyard faces west. In the summer the sun beams directly into our kitchen/dining area all afternoon. The patio, with all it's concrete turns into a frying pan.  It's not a small area either.  Getting shade sails would have been a fortune to cover.  I thought finding thrown out or ripped sailing sails would be an easy and economic option. It wasn't.  I searched for months and couldn't find anything on Craigslist.  I called boatyards and marinas and came up empty.

Fortunately, a friend of ours once sailed in the America's Cup. He knows the right people and to my giddy surprise a heavy box of sails arrived at our door one day.  They came from Texas and they insisted nothing was expected in return!  I put them up immediately.  P was just starting to walk at the time.  I remember what a juggle it was to watch her and climb up and down a ladder as I figured out how to hang these sails.  Geometry was not my forte in school so just imagine how many times it took for me to place three large triangles in the right place at the right angles!

I love the sails! I especially love the one with the racing numbers.  We can put them up and take them down easily. They go up sometime in May and come down sometime in October.  During the winter the sun moves to a more comfortable place on our landscape and we don't need them anymore. If for some reason they are still up past October it's the Santa Ana winds that make us take them down.

Here's what I did not factor in about sailing sails.  They are meant to catch wind, unlike shade sails that are meant to let wind pass thru.   The first year we put them up, when the winds started blowing it felt like the whole house was going to take off for Kansas!  One of the beams where the sails were anchored actually broke in two.  

Second, because sailing sails are meant to catch wind they are not flat. They have a droop to them when hung horizontally.  No matter how hard we pull at the ends the droop will always remain which means they need to be hung up higher than the roof line.   Every summer we experiment with their placement. D says he's putting in poles  for next summer so they hang up higher and have a more permanent location.

My original thought was something more stylish to give us shade.  Something along these lines. These are from the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs.

However, I also love things that are original or things used in a non conventional way so I do love the sails because they are a very non conventional forms of backyard shade. What I don't like is how they droop so I hope with the placement of tall poles I'll be fully won over.  D loves them because they could have once been a part of the Stars and Stripes and because they're here and they were free.

What I really did not factor is that it's not the shade that makes shangri-la, it's the trees that create that feel.  So, we need more trees. However, the job of putting in trees in a concreted, narrow area along side a pool will be a big, big job.

Lots of White Pots.

16 white pots to be exact.  We bought them at Ikea when we first moved in.  The plan was to place them all along the back and north side of our pool. We wanted to fill them with bamboo or something that would stand tall and give the pool area a green and lush feel. 

We first tried a couple of bamboo but they died of root rot.  And they needed watering almost daily in the winter.  So, plan b. I drilled holes in the bottom of all the pots to allow for drainage. We got rosemary thinking it would grow tall.  Then we spent our first summer in the house and reality hit. The plants needed watering every single day! Or else they die, and they did, and we lost half.  The ones that survived were transplanted to our south wall in our backyard.  They are thriving now.

Meanwhile onto plan c with the pots.  I think succulents would work and make it through summer without as much water.  They won't be as tall as we wanted but they will look good and green and not be as much work....I hope.  I've always loved succulents but they intimidate me. There are so many varieties. Some are rare with price tags to go with them. I've tried learning their names like I'm majoring in botany or something but I'm over it. Unless they have a layman's name like "baby toes" I'll have to describe it to you.  

I bought two new varieties yesterday (in the picture above) and planted them in their own pot.  The idea is to mix a few to create great arrangements like the ones at the Getty.  However, I planted different varieties a few months ago and one is proving to be a pot hog. It's this one. 

I've had to cut it back quite a bit.  So, I'm going to get a few more kinds and learn their growing patterns before I build my bouquets.  I am finding succulents to grow quite easily from trimmings.  This is good and it'll save me some money on filling all 16 pots. 

Pool Problem

       

Here is the story of the pool. Because the house was a short sale purchase we were accepting it in an "as is condition". We've had our eye on the house since June and even though it wasn't ours we worried about it and would visit it on a weekly basis. Yes, we're crazy like that. I've been visualizing ourselves in this house since we first saw it. You know the saying "you can think it true". 

On one visit we noticed the green, abandoned pool had mosquito eggs. We bought mosquito fish and put them in the pool to prevent a mosquito infestation which would cause further delay with the bank.

I don't understand all the details of these deals but once our offer was accepted we had days to get the loan approved with the bank. The bank wouldn't approve the loan with the pool in its abandoned condition. They needed "the pump to be running, the water to be clear so you could see the bottom and the pool gates had to be self-latching". We had 24hrs to fix the problems.

My husband did it! My hero drained the pool and scooped God knows what kind of filth out of the bottom. He scrubbed the walls and filled it with fresh water. Here's the kicker. The power was shut off on the property. There was an outstanding bill. We couldn't open a new account without loan documents. We couldn't get loan documents without the pool working but we couldn't get the pool pump working without power. So, we paid the outstanding $400 and got the pool pump on because we only had 24hrs to get all this done or else we would lose the house.

Thank you Boo for making it happen. We would not be in the house if it wasn't for you!