Carpeting

Carpeting went in yesterday. Kristin chose a natural wool-blend carpet from Green Goods, backed with natural jute backing. The pad is made of recycled materials.

There were a lot of carpet options to choose from. The first one that we were thinking about using was made from recycled PET soda bottles, but we decided to go for a more natural feel. For the pads, you can even get old school jute underlayments, but they tend to be very firm, difficult to work with, and sometimes of uneven thickness.

We think it looks and feels good! It is a major step forward to see this completed.

The concrete guys are starting working today - by the weekend we should be pretty close to complete on paint, electrical, and flooring.

Stairway Project

Dad helped me with the stairway project, building the facing boards that we need in place so that the carpet guy could do his installation. We are going with the basic design that I drew up, I am excited, I think it will make for a really stunning entry feature when it is done. The newell posts, handrails, and cap boards are made from Bamboo, which will simply be sanded smooth and oiled lightly to show off their natural beauty. The infill will be stainless steel cables, which should make for a clean, modern feel; industrial but still delicate.


The bamboo lumber arrived yesterday. It is beautiful; the posts are glued up from smaller pieces, and the end grain has such an intricate checkerboard pattern that it would be a shame to router it out. I think I will likewise leave it fairly square, and just oil it lightly. I don't think that the light was very good when I took these pics, but you might get a sense of it anyway.

The company that the bamboo posts came from was 4 Winds Bamboo, in Boulder Colorado. Jason Liu, the owner, was very helpful and quick to ship. I am very satisfied on this end. http://www.4windsbamboo.com/

Painting Kitchen Cabinets

Kristin and I finished up painting the cabinets last night. Dad and I had sanded and started painting, and I tried to use a powered paint system, with a foam pad. It put the paint on really thick, but streaked it at the same time. I had much better luck going back over everything with a roller - I may need just one more coat on some things, and then it should be good. We are thinking about painting the doors red - but we will see. I am covered in paint now!

La Palapa

La Palapa
3820 Broad St., San Luis Obispo
805-541-2700

I love Mexican food. San Luis Obispo has decent (but still far from excellent,) taco shops (and even better taco trucks, at the Sunday morning swap meet!) For Sopes or Mole enchiladas, Chile Peppers is the place to go. For Lengua tacos, definitely Tacos de Acapulco. Mariscos frescos, other seafood and occasionally goat tacos at the little stand on Santa Rosa street, near the corner with Foothill.

There is a new addition near the winery that bears mention. La Palapa opened recently in Marigold Center, and is a convienient place to eat. The service is cheerful, but inexpert. You need to be a bit assertive here if you are in a hurry - they almost never drop the check on your table until you physically flag them down and request it. I have taken to going up to the register at the exit, and standing there with my wallet open. That seems to expedite things.

Try the Sopa de Pozole. It is served complete with an array of spicy sauces, dry peppers, herbs, onions, lime and cilantro, so you can bring it up to the flavor that you prefer. The Chile Verde is the best that I have had around here, bright, tangy, and flavorful - they include lots of tomatillas and sliced Nopales (cactus paddles) in the recipe, which I have not seen elsewhere locally.

This is really good food, especially for a warm up on a cold, rainy winter day!

Tracking expenses

We are trying to keep track of where we are spending what. This is a little checkpoint for us as of today:

Kristin's Toilet!

Dad and I put in this toilet last night. Now I know how to swap out a toilet, something that I guess every guy should know eventually. Not as bad as I thought it might be.

I'm posting here, so that Kristin can see, as she has been in Napa for a couple days (staying at Meadowood Resort with our friend Elaine. Those poor girls really know how to go camping!)

Dad comes to help out!

Dad offerred to come for a visit and lend a hand with things around here. We obviously took him up on the offer. (I suppose that after all the child labor he squeezed out of Benjamin and I, it is only fair, but it is really nice to have him here. It has been a long time since I have been able to work on any kind of project with my Dad, and it will be really satisfying to look at things around me every day and think that Dad and I did that together!)

I have been keeping him busy, as I had to work yesterday. He did some electrical wiring, started building the stair railing, and we ripped out one toilet yesterday before I went to work. Also, dad has been ripping out the tiles in the downstairs bathroom, so that the flooring guys can prep it for staining the concrete next week.

I met with the concrete guys, one of them stains floors, and the other builds countertops. We are thinking about using concrete for the countertops in the downstairs bathroom, as well as the kitchen - we will see how it all goes, I don't know what the quote is going to look like yet.

Some progress photos

We have been busy still - finally all the carpeting has been hauled out to the landfill, painting continues to progress. The painters should be done by the end of today, or tomorrow at the latest, they have only been at it for about ten days, but everything is done, except for a few touch ups and some trim that will need to complete a little later.

You can see that the laundry room is completely functional now, which is very exciting. We have taken to doing our laundry up here while we are working. We are going to have the dryer stacked on the washer when the appliance installers come back with the kitchen stuff, that way we will have a bit more room freed up for storage in the utility / laundry room.

President's Day Weekend - Saturday

Let's just say that Kristin and I are both pretty tired. We arrived at the house (the 'project?') at 8am, and we just arrived home about 20 minutes ago. We made some serious headway today, though!

So much happened, in fact, that it is hard to remember it all, and in fact, we forgot to take photos of every part of it.

Loaded the truck with all the baseboard trim and some of the carpet that we ripped off the stairs the day before, as well as the ceiling fans, (the Habitat for Humanity RE-Store didn't want any more ceiling fans, and we don't need them...) and went to the landfill. There is no carpet recycling place in Atascadero apparently - though the carpet installers we were referred to by Green Goods added "carpet recycling" on his estimate. Someone correct me if I am wrong?

The landfill is pretty cool, it is out in the countryside, among some almond orchards, and we saw our friend Kathleen, whom we know from The Park Restaurant in SLO, she used to manage events for Maegan & Jeff there. She is a professionally trained chef in her own right, and I think that she is a director, or at least a very active part of the local Slow Food Convivium. Anyway, the landfill uses longhorn cattle to graze the hillsides and keep the fire hazard to a minimum, it is really scenic, and we could just about see our house on the drive back, from the banks of the Salinas River, which is actually above ground right now, which is a rare occurance.

We also went to pretty much all of the hardware and lighting stores in town, getting the lay of the land. Kristin really liked Miner's Hardware, and said "I'm never going back to Home Depot again!" We will see how that plays out, but we found some good tools and supplies that we needed, and got a sense of what is available.

Then we went back, pruned some rose bushes, had our washer and dryer delivered and installed, had the refrigerator delivered, plugged into the outlet in the garage, and now we will have cold beer and sodas available! I ripped out carpeting on the stairs to the garage, Kristin removed all of the contact paper in the kitchen cabinets, which was no small task. The oven and dishwasher were hauled away by the guys from Idler's, so we ripped out the rest of the vinyl flooring. Then we took down all of the cabinet pulls and drawers, removed all of the doors to the garage for refinishing.

We tried to make it to Green Goods to finalize the order for carpet before they closed, but it turns out that they close early on Saturdays, so we missed it. We went looking for a salad, or something healthy for dinner. There are a TON of Mexican restaurants in Atascadero, and they look to be better than most of the options in SLO, but we had breakfast burritos for breakfast (and lunch) so we ended up at Hoover's cafe 101, which has its own brewery as well. KLC had fish & chips, I had prime rib. We earned it today! The beer was good too.

After dinner, just for good measure, we ripped out ALL OF THE CARPETING FROM THE ENTIRE DOWNSTAIRS!! It looks great, we really feel like we accomplished something, and the truck is loaded and ready for another trip to the landfill tomorrow!

Time for sleeping now...

Passed down traditions, ancient methods

I had to go to the doctor's office yesterday, (frighteningly, my doctor's name is Dr. Robert Klaw, MD, but he is actually a good guy,) in order to get a prescription for chloroquine medicine (anti-malarial) in preparation for El Salvador.

While I was waiting, I was checking out the decor in the exam room - charts of acupuncture points all over the body. When the doctor arrived, I asked him if he practiced acupuncture. He said that he did, more as an interest than as a professional pursuit.

I think this is pretty cool. My doctor can be a man of science, keeping up on the latest developments in western medicine and treatment options, and still be a man of passed-down traditions, ancient methods, and belief in the validity of the unprovable.

(Seems very much like being a winemaker!)

Little Fingers

My brother, Benjamin, took this photo last night. It is of he and his new son, Emmett Curtis Carlson, born just a few weeks ago in Minnesota. I can't wait to fly out for a first visit, to meet my new nephew!

Demolition!

I have been chomping at the bit for a few days now to really get into the thick of ripping stuff apart. In particular, the pink valence in the kitchen needed to go away, as did the plate rail on top of the cupboards. The painter is due in tomorrow AM to start removing wallpaper and patching up holes - I needed to get these things out of his way.

Also, I managed to rip out the old range hood, drop two ceiling fans out, and remove all of the switchplate covers that are in the way of wallpaper removal. All the locks are changed out, and it feels like a pretty good day's work!

(I have a pretty bad head cold, which is kicking my butt. I didn't realize it was so bad when I was working; now that I am done it is awful... Time to go to bed!)

Authenticity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR5_ceEE0Cc

I came across a news story about 3200 bottles of Gallo’s Andre ‘California Champagne’ being seized by EU officials in Belgium, not more than three hours’ drive from the vineyards of Champagne. (Better yet, I came across a video of the subsequent destruction of the contraband!)

EU laws consider Champagne to be unique to the traditional French region bearing that name, and it is illegal to import wines into the EU bearing any reference to Champagne or ‘Methode Champenoise’ on the label or packaging – it is a serious offense, akin to fraud.

Even in this country, there have been some ‘scuffles’ over regional naming of wines, most notably between Fred Franzia and his neighboring vintners in the Napa Valley, over Fred’s ‘Napa Ridge’ label, which contained mostly cheap fruit from the San Joaquin Valley. Up valley in Calistoga, there are some similar discussions about a proposed AVA there – the owners of Calistoga Cellars are concerned that they may lose the ability to use their brand name, unless they limit their fruit purchases to only the Calistoga area.

At some level, wine drinkers seem to desire authentic wines – they want to know that what they are drinking is a representation and a product of a unique place and vintage. Perhaps this is less important for wines intended as simple, mass-marketed consumer beverages, but at the same time, it is unfair for those types of wines to trade on the reputation of classic regions, such as Champagne – or even upon that of smaller, younger American appellations which are aspiring to create their own vinous legacy.

The wines I make are labeled ‘Estate’ which indicates that they are entirely grown in vineyards under our control, in the same appellation (the Edna Valley AVA, in our case,) as our production facility, that we produce all the wines in our own Estate winery, and that no part of them can ever leave the property for any reason before they are bottled and labeled. The ‘Estate’ designation is one of the strongest guarantees of authenticity under US law – it makes no judgment of quality, but makes provenance a certainty.

Bottom line – if you ask me where one of our wines is from, I can point out over the vines and confidently say “it came from that block right over there…”

Anyway, watch the video. Fascinating to watch as they mash the cases of wine into a soupy pulp with a giant excavator. I would like to think that the smirks on the worker’s faces reflect satisfaction at avenging an affront against one of the classic wine regions of the world, protecting their borders from a fraudulent New-World threat. (Probably, they are smiling just because smashing that many bottles is so much fun!)

-NRC

Laundry Room

Yesterday, we got a plan in place regarding some of the work that needs to be done on the house. In order to stain the concrete floors, we need to have the appliances hauled away. In order to get the appliances hauled away in an efficient manner, we need to have some other appliances delivered. Since the laundry room is only going to be modified minimally, we decided to place the order for our washer and drier today, for delivery next week, at which time they will haul the old range and dishwasher away. We got a front-loading washer and dryer; they are supposed to use a lot less water than the top loaders, while producing cleaner laundry. (We are purchasing all of our appliances from Idler's, a local company with branches in SLO, Atascadero, and Paso Robles.)

There was a refrigerator that we really liked on the floor that had some minor nicks and dents in it, so we purchased that as well, to make sure that we would not lose out on it. It will have to reside in the garage until such a time as the kitchen and main floor are finished, but that is actually fine. (It will be a handy place to cache some cold beer and sandwiches, I guess...) We bought a Fisher & Paykel, which is a New Zealand manufacturer. The Kiwis must be a lot more minimal than most Americans regarding what they refrigerate, as it is a much smaller, more efficient unit than most of the big American models currently available. It has a water filter and ice maker, which usually are not features that we would be interested in, but if a water filter reduces the number of plastic bottles of water that we have to recycle, all the better.

Bottom line is this; I now have a deadline of next Saturday to whip the laundry room into shape. Since the room is below grade, there is an exposed concrete wall / foundation. It was painted, but with a paint that is not well suited to such a situation - it is bubbling off from condensation and moisture from the ground. I spent the afternoon scraping and brushing the old paint off the wall, then washing, prepping and painting. It looks a lot better! I cleaned the floor carefully as well, and wet-vacuumed it with the new shop vac.

A Sustainable Remodel - part 1...

Well, we finally closed on our house, it is now time to get going on making it habitable. We aren't supposed to totally start on ripping the place apart yet, but we had 5 different contractors stop by yesterday to check things out and give us bids on some of the work. They all seem like good guys.

We want to use sustainable, natural products and local businesses & labor as much as possible in the remodel - we have been working with a local company called 'GreenGoods' which is a building supply company that specializes in natural, sustainable, and recycled materials, as well as in materials for chemically sensitive persons. We were looking at using a carpeting that is made from recycled PVC bottles, but Kristin decided that she really likes one of their natural wool carpets instead. (Yeah, it is nice, but it is more than twice as expensive...) We will be installing carpeting in the entire upstairs, from the stairway up.

For the downstairs, we had been thinking about using a combination of cork and bamboo hardwood flooring - we love how it looks, and we love how it is easily renewable, regenerating itself almost every 6 years. It is very hard, and is becoming more popular, and more common all the time. We were almost sold, but then ran across several stained concrete floors that we loved. Since we already have a slab of concrete right under the stained, smelly carpet, it only made sense to investigate using that slab as a flooring surface. One important piece of sustainability includes using what you already have, and that has pushed us over the edge - we will have stained concrete floors throughout the main floor of the house, including the living and dining rooms, kitchen, entry and bathroom. (I have always wanted to live in a warehouse, anyway - this might be as close as Kristin lets me get!)

Here are some pics of the place. It is in pretty rough shape cosmetically, but the bones are solid and the layout is good. It has good views of the mountains around, and is on a decent sized lot. Best of all, there is room for a sizeable garden, even if I have to terrace it into the hillside! I can't wait to go back to eating something homegrown for every meal, as much as possible. Who knows, maybe a small vineyard eventually? With any luck, the after shots will be dramatically different (and hopefully better!)