100 posts and more house pictures

So unbelievably enough this the 100th post over i think like 3 years or so. Kinda wierd to be half assing something for that long.

Anyways, to the right of course are some photos of the house with a faux finish paint style which was necesseray because we didnt remove some of the 50 y.o. wall paper and had to re-plaster some big spots on the wall. Also i sanded the built-in cabinet which was painted and will now be stained.
I'm actually pretty happy with it all so far.

update on the house

We've finally really started up on the house recently, painting and getting all the electrical done. Unfortunately we;ve discovered the house has tons of old wall paper. Some crazy racist wall paper at that. lol. anyways below are pictures of how things are coming along.

We have the second bedroom which has been patched and is ready for primer and paint and that will be done this weekend. All in all its an incredible amount of work.

ceiling, total pain in the ass

Here is some video and pictures of the bedroom which we've been working on.

I totally underestimated the mess i would make while patching things up. Actually, it wasnt so much the patching but the sanding. The walls are plaster for the most part but there are a ton of poorly done patches that we needed to repair. there is this odd cardboard/plaster mix wall that was put in when the kitchen was added. The people who lived here before first put wall paper then covered that up with paint. a total pain in the ass to remove. they also had a closet that we needed to rip out which was held up by a series of 3 inch nails every 3 inches. the holes in the wall that were left were enourmous. Plaster patching compound was used to fill in the holes, that was then covered up with drywall tape.

We're also working on the ceiling which has tons of cracks. the popcorn ceiling that was used before was removed. That popcorn was covering up all the cracks which we suspected were there. We're using plaster washers to secure the existing plaster to the lath above. the washers are being drilled on and around the cracked areas. ...

More soon.

Hipsters, it’s not about what they like, it’s about what they don’t like.

The search for our first house took us over a year. At first we were flying down from the bay area every month or two which would take over an entire weekend. Imagine 2 days of looking at no less than a dozen houses each day. Finally we got to a point where we were able to move down here and look locally. Our initial neighborhoods that we were interested in were not working out for both apartment and house hunting and we ended up living in an area we were told by the suburban living locals was "spotty" "sketchy" "ghetto". They were half right. Certain spots were, "visually spotty" but not ghetto by any means. Some run down apartments, a liquor store here and there but what they didn’t see was there was a lot going on in the area. Lots of people who'd grown tired of living in suburbia had moved back to what our realtor so eloquently put as an "urban village". It’s a funny term but actually really true. Here, but up next to downtown was a community of real people, not afraid of social interaction of all income scales. I haven’t lived here long enough to know if it’s a "happy" mix but it seems alright so far.

What drew us here was a house down the street. It was a mix of Victorian/craftsman. An absolutely beautiful house that needed loads and loads of work. The block it was on sucked ass. Think of this, the nicest house on the block was the one for sale which was bank owned and falling apart. But this house got us looking more in the neighborhood in which we lived in. The neighborhood for the most part had kept most of the original architecture. Each block has its share of craftsman/victorian/spanish style homes built in the late teens and throughout the twenties.

I grew up in an old house. I think it made a real impression on me. The house had some built-ins which were cool and more importantly it had character. It was in a neighborhood where most of the houses had character and they weren’t being mansionized. I absolutely cannot stand the man mansionization of neighborhoods. It’s in poor taste and they always use the ugliest looking architecture style. To top it off, they're cheap, made very, "temporary". I reject this.

So the neighborhood here has restaurants, bars, a few shops, some markets and parks. We were looking for an area that had all these and more importantly, it was all accessible by walking. This was a huge deal for us. I've been in areas where if you run out of beer or are hungry you have to get in a car and drive through miles of boring beige tract homes in order to get something. Here I'm close to what I like, I can walk to what I like, I can walk to downtown and I can take my dogs everywhere.

The neighborhood is not all peaches and cream though, There does seem to be a dog shit problem here. Especially around some of the open space preservers (i.e. canyons) and apartment buildings. There is an over abundance of pit bulls in the neighborhood as well. Everyone has a pitbull! White, Brown, Black, Yellow...etc. I dunno, maybe they fight them off the freeway, who knows, but I'm not much for them. People drive fast here. No idea why. Maybe cuz the streets are wide, but I've seen some accidents cuz some fool thought he'd haul his hooptie's ass up the hill pretending to be an f1 driver. There are also some busted up apartment complexes. Really shitty ones that look like they should be condemned. Finally, the shittiest thing about the neighborhood, there was some girl murdered by who knows who in an abandoned house not long ago.

We like it though for the most part. The house is a total work in progress and I'll be half ass documenting that and the shit related to it.

Madrid Toledo

Vienna

Vienna, I got off the plane, grabbed a taxi and

headed to the hotel. a last minute place that i

was able to get thanks to an odd website that

pairs up suckers (me) with little, unknown,

hostel type places. Hotel Corvinus was where i

was dropped off at. At first glance it looked

like most shit places in Italy, but this was

not Italy and it definately was not shit. My

room was large, flat screen television, huge

shower. Brilliant shit.

The place was owned and run by a hungarian

couple. They were not young but not old. Old

enough to have a son in his late 20's and a

very cute daughter probably around 19 or so.

The man was genial, good natured and a keen

salesman. We haggle back and forth on the

price. even tho the site settled it, there was

always room to bargain.

I make my way out of the place in a hurry after

i leave my baggage and make my way to the

metro.

Viennas metro is fantastic. I've never been in

an underground that had such fantastic mobile

phone coverage.

Saw some sites, The museums were out of

control, really great stuff, the klimt stuff

was great but there was an entire room

dedicated to this one sick fucker herman nitsch

or something like that. filmed all this wierd

humiliation shit, people rolling in filth,

films of people shitting, closeups of assholes

with shit coming out. pretty sick. dude must

have had serious game.

Came accross this one guy, nuts! spoke every

language. He was an Italian dude, with a german

girlfriend, speaking spanish to me, german to

his lady and italian on the phone. bad ass.





































Schnitzel Bitch