At the Ferry Building. Click photo to see more photos on Flickr.

Nana and Papa hunt came to visit to after Ava's birth. Their week-long mission included: doting on Bea, helping Allison with Ava, weeding the yard, planing doors, and building a set of shelves for the kitchen.

On Sunday, Bea and I drove to the airport to welcome them to the Bay Area. We had a nice walk around the neighborhood and looked at some open homes and chatted with neighbors.

In the early part of the week, we mostly stayed at home. On Tuesday Allison and Betty toured a pre-school in Piedmont that accepted Beatriz. Wednesday night I made a risotto from Jamie Oliver's new Italian cookbook.

Thursday and Friday was spent going to the lumber yard and hardware store to buy tools and materials to build a set of small shelves to fit into a small nook in the kitchen.
(the space used to hold a water heater, but we replaced that with a tankless water heater outside).
Larry shared some of his secret building techniques and I hope to employ my new skills in building a set of built-in cabinets next to our fireplace.
Building the cabinets in the unusually cold-weather was a real challenge, but fun nonetheless.

Corner clamps are a nice alternative to mortise and tenon joinery

We had a nice meal Friday night at Doña Tomas. On Saturday we made the trek to the Ferry Building Farmer's Market where I picked up dry-farmed new potatoes, romanesco, and Niman Ranch skirt steak (which became dinner Saturday night).
We spent Saturday afternoon at the DeYoung and returned home to cook dinner and watch River and Tides.

Sunday Bea and I took Nana and Papa to SFO to catch their flight. Returning home, we all felt a bit sad to have them go.

At the airport. Look at Bea's new Hasselblad.

Front of House

I'm still painting the picket fence: one more coat of paint for the long stretch of fence that runs along Shafter Avenue. We planted more this weekend and ordered olive and meyer lemon trees which we will plant next Saturday.

Oakland is planting two trees (non-bearing plum trees) in front of our house. One will be planted on the 42nd Street side and the other will be planted on the Shafter Ave side. Allison has been hounding them relentlessly for three months about this. I guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

JP thinks our house color is brown--WTF! I'm never going to consult him when it comes time to color-correct a film. :-p

The developer who bought the house to the right of ours decided he liked our fence so much, he's building one just like it next door. Allison said if someone had moved in and bought the house, they would feel too embarassed to copy cat the neighbors. This design-challenged chap, however, is flipping the house so he won't be living there. While it's said that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," if he copies our house color, we're going to smack him.

More photos on the flickr account for those who are interested.

Beatriz on the stoop

Our new front walkway (which Allison designed) is in. Rick DeKoven did a great job putting down a combination of old bricks we found on the property and new stones we bought.
Gerard is almost finished with all the prep work and we hope to have the house fully painted by next weekend.

Jack Hammering Away!

A lot of progress the past few weeks:

• the concrete has been poured and it's dry
• they're restucco'ing the house
• the sewer lateral was replaced
• we ripped up the juniper and the fence(!)
• I've begun to strip the windows (with a darth vader respirator mask and a heat gun).

New windows and blinds are expected soon, and we're getting estimates on the bathroom, painting, and solar. We also got a nice cabinet for the TV and a new dining room table. (i'll post pics of those and my new Brompton soon

Front

OK, so I was lame in not posting photos of the new place. So I snapped a couple for this bungalow restoration class I'm taking at Piedmont Adult School this weekend.

We moved in three weeks ago and so far we've had:

• the foundation replaced
• the sewer line replaced
• a new electrical box put in, switches and outlets updated
• an alarm system installed
• recessed lighting put in the living room
• painted the living and dining rooms
• installed a new kitchen floor
• removed the hot water heater and replaced it with a tankless water heater

In a few more weeks we will nuke the front yard and replace the chain linked fence with a white picket fence, remove the juniper and plant some prettier things, and replace the all the windows and paint the exterior.