Ash & I are installing new laminate flooring in our condo. Let me emphasize: not hiring someone to install it…installing it. For those of you who have been to our place, you know we’ve had truly hideous carpet for almost two years, and I can’t express how excited we are to trade it in for a cleaner, brighter living space. (It’s crazy how much more light is in here! Stupid light-absorbing carpet.)
When we bought this place (probably prematurely) two years ago, we viewed it as a “starter home,” a shady, money-making idea somebody thought up when real estate investment became the fashion. Yeah, we kinda liked it (1/2 a block from the beach), but it was 30 minutes from work and the complex was a lot like one of those ’70s era hotels where all the rooms open out to the pool: starter home. Not where we want to end up, but a way to “get in the market.”
Real estate hooie.
‘Cause the reality is that every other place we might actually want to live has increased its value at exactly the same rate as our “starter home” and we have a snowman’s chance in hell of affording the mythical “trade up.”
Since climbing on the middle class treadmill is not an option we want or can afford, over the last few months we’ve considered some other options: Move out of state? Sell and go back to renting with a tidy nest egg in the bank? Keep spinning the wheels, hating our home and waiting for the lottery win?
In the end, we chose to make our home a home. We’re not ready to move away from Cali, it would be silly to go back to renting, and we have no one to blame but ourselves if we just stay miserable. Ergo, laminate flooring and other [cheap] projects we’re pursuing with HGtv enthusiasm.
I have to say, we’re having fun. Being blessed with two people in the family with rather strong opinions about aesthetics is not a picnic every single minute, but letting our imaginations run wild is just what the doctor ordered for our drab little existence. And it’s truly amazing to be planting our feet in now…not wishing for something different or better, not waiting for our ship to come in. This is our life. There isn’t something grander around the corner…there is only what we make of it today.
And it’s pretty damn wonderful.
Beth and I are tracking neck and neck with you as we’re just fixin to start killing the kitchen and two bathrooms to regrow new ones in their place. And yes, there’s something about HGTV that makes common folks say, “hmmm… I can do that…. right?” -except in OUR case, it’s our bank statement that really dictates who does the grunt work, so HGTV is just the facade we’re using as empowerment.
this post, more than anything else, is to say that I’m extremely (and really, and totally, and overwhelmingly) glad that the HawkMores are staying in California. I’d heard a nasty rumor that y’all were debating the move out of state and I feared that it would give beth just enough incentive to do the same. Now I feel like it’s more of a:
“We’re-All-Young,-Artistic,-And-Poor,-And-Damnit-We’re-Staying-Here-
No-Matter-How-Much-Ramen-We-Have-To-Eat”.
Fight the power.
Damn the man.
Pass the Ramen.
Welcome Home.
The HawkMores. I love it. Although I wouldn’t count out the Ashkins either.
We are also working on projects in our house. We have been talking about selling our house for awhile but a bad refinance and we have to be here for another couple of years at least. We just ripped apart our kitchen so we can paint the blue a lovely shade of grapevine green, and replace all of the hardware. Next up is our deck and the play structure out back.
The only thing we did when we moved in 4 years ago was paint the upstairs bedrooms. My lack of motivation in doing anything else was my fear of what others would think. I have finally gotten past that and we are now doing what we want and we are making it more of our home.
Good luck with that laminate! It will be so much easier to clean!
Oh… umm…. heeeelllloooooo!?
“Fight the power, pass the ramen”
Tagline tagline tagline.
Welllll, fine, OK, Yay for you and Ash, honey, but if Giving Up means moving your asses to sunny Seattle (I swear!), I’m all for it.
Just kidding. You’d die here, with or without a sun lamp and a good therapist. Can’t wait to see your new floor.
Cerise
Morphea,
STFU. In Love.
chad. what a brilliant joke grenade. i’m running those letters through my head thinking that buried somewhere within must be a reference to either St. Louis, Seattle, or San Francisco. I woke the children laughing when I decoded it.
In the year and a half or so we’ve been in our “new” house… think 1967 ranch in the woods, we’ve entirely remodeled the interior. Well, we hired a guy to do the tough stuff, but I’ve done my fair share. I singlehandedly painted the ENTIRE interior. It was a rental before we bought it, and thus was painted a dreary grey throughout. We’ve ripped out the kitchen to the studs and in one spot to the dirt underneath and redid plumbing, electrical, drywall, cabinets, appliances, tile, counters, etc. For the floors, we took out the hideous carpet and 5 (!) layers of old linoleum from the kitchen/dining areas and replaced with engineer oak floors. The living room was directly on the slab, so with no nailing, I managed to do that whole room entirely myself. We’ve removed a wall of the ugliest 4 inch thick rock/lava combination around the fireplace and redone with wallboard, new mantle, slate hearth, and polished river rock surround (after we hired the mason to fix up the brick work). We moved one wall about 4 feet to make a bigger utility/art studio, gutted and replaced the master bathroom and added a closet in the master bedroom.
This year, we’re building a recording studio in the existing garage, and dealing with the entire exterior.
Oh, and did I mention the landscaping? When we got here probably 1 of the 1.4 acres was covered blackberries 10 feet high. We had that mowed down, and now I’m trying to clean up the debris when I can. We’ve put in 3000 square feet of sod, including sprinkler system, and topsoil (10 yards!) Recently I moved 9 yards of gravel (if you the the topsoil was heavy…) to recover the driveway and pathway to the mailbox.
I’m tired. And poor.
But, the house looks good inside, and the outside is coming together. And in a few months when the studio is up and running… watch out!
Anyway, take this as encouragement… you can really do it. We did all this in a year with a 4 year old and a 1 year old. And yeah, we get lots of ideas from HGTV.
Stick - I think you mean to be encouraging, but I gotta tell ya: I suddenly feel greatly inferior.
wah wah wah
My 1.4 acre mountain estate needs to be relandscaped
wah wah wah
my 3,500 square feet house in Nashville was an ugly color inside.
you people.
Aly, don’t. Stick is not well. Not well at all.
That said, I’d love to see your house, man.
Cerise
I will readily admit that I am not well.
While we step back admiring our handiwork (well, more like the LA real e$tate market’$ handiwork) we say to ourselves… well, it was nice to have done once in our lives… but never again.
However, the more you do, the less of a big deal it becomes.
Oh, I forgot to mention replacing all the exterior windows and doors. And the ceilings… I painted all the ceilings too.
Aly, you’re not at all inferior. Maybe less crazy.
Before this, we’d never done ANYTHING like it. Sheesh, I’m a piano player/ProTools nerd. What were we thinking!? Ok, maybe I’d painted a room once or twice…
Yes…not well. Painting ceilings is the work of the devil.
Did Brian (Stick) mention that we spent an equal(to the home improvement budget) amount of cash on therapy and we spike our coffee with Prozac every morning?
And yet…
I grew up in Washington (think: 362 days of rain and 3 days of Narnia)…….so……it’s ALL worth it for CA sunshine!
And just for the record, when my vertebral artery spontaneously tore a year and a half ago, the good people in the ICU gave me a list of the top 10 causes: painting ceilings was on it. My advice: turn freakin’ HGTV off and just don’t look up.
Yeah, but we hadn’t started the house project yet… the neck thing wasn’t caused by this… and still we did it… hmmm. Again, not sure what we were thinking.
You guys are freakin’ hilarious.
June: damn you for rubbing it in. Don’t you think we WANT to move down there?? So, ah, where in Washington did you grow up, anyway? The peninsula - because that’s the only place I can think of that has wetter weather than Seattle.
Poor baby with the neck and the ceilings and all…
Cerise
June’s funny.
Yes, she is.
June’s medicated.
[laughing]
Cerise/Morphea, (I don’t really understand the names in this blog world…apparently I am married to “Stick?” June really is my name, but I was born in August. For real.) Anyway, I grew up south of you, but still solidly in the rainbelt. Vancouver, WA was my soggy home from birth to as soon as I could get the heck outta Dodge. But, my judgement was severely impaired (rusted?) from all those years of rain…I chose to go to college in western New York, where it promptly started snowing in October and didn’t stop until who knows when. (They had to “de-ice” the plane so I could leave in May.) Seattle is a cool city though. And, as previously mentioned, when the sun does shine, it is nothing less than Narnia-like. Do you go hiking/marmot-spotting on Mt. Rainier? Lovely. Skiing at Mt. Hood? Exhilarating. Till the St. Helen’s ash-enriched soil in your organic garden? Wholesome. Forget that the sky is higher than 9 feet and has been known to be a color other than grey? My condolences.
Huh - hiking, skiing, gardening…yes, I remember what those things are. No, none of the above, I’m sorry to say. I live firmly entrenched in the city - almost downtown. I do hike…all the way to the International District to eat the RIGHT kind of humbao (such a snob, such a snob)…but I haven’t set foot on The Mountain. Yet. We moved here about 2.5 years ago and are still so entranced with the city that it hasn’t yet started to make us crazy. But it will. Oh yes, it will.
And I like rain and clouds - it’s cold I can’t take. But California still seems like heaven to me. Ramon and I still haven’t recoved from being in So Cal this last October. Heaven.
YOU LUCKY BASTARDS!! OK, I’m moving.
Cerise
Is it just me, or is it kinda sad that most other posts on this blog are all deep and philosophical and stuff, and this one is about laminate flooring…but it’s got a gazillion comments?
Laminate flooring…bringing people together faster than MOCA, the ethics of participation and DCFC combined.
What does that say about us, other than we love engineered wood?
Hey, I contributed to those deep threads. I think my opinionated raving killed them off.
By the way, how’s the project going?
Cerise
Still going. We hit another little snag and are working it out. I’m knocking on wood (ha) that we can be done by this weekend.
Have your cats discovered the joy of skittering around corners like they’re in a Looney Toones show?
Aly,
All I can say is that there’s no rhyme or reason to the comments or lack there of.
What’s there to say about Mike’s piece? It’s beautiful and I won’t soon forget it, but I just didn’t feel like adding any of my commentary was necessary.
Morphea made an insightful comment on the Song post… that I might comment on after I check what’s happening on Fark or Gearslutz and then finish my salad.
All that to say is that it seems that quality of writing has very little to do with the conversation that follows, and often does. I, for one, like the idea that there’s a deposit of a dozen or so conversation starters littered all through this blog, as of yet unconversed.
This conversation makes me want to write a song called “Gather Ye, Round The Digital Watercooler.”
P.S.,
Corey, glad to make you laugh, brother. The F-word is always funny. Except in church.
legalist.
Well, I will say, that I realize that I usually only post on these slightly less “deep” threads because I’m generally in awe of the way you guys think and form your thoughts into coherant writing. I feel smarter just hanging around.
“Eye due moozik.”
Oh Stick, Mike and Aly are not nearly as smart as they seem. I keep them around mostly for their humorous posts. Your awe of me is totally justified.
Just keep thesaurus.com open while you are posting… I hear that makes you seem erudite.
All I can say is (wait, no one asked me…and I’m not even a fringe member of this blog…oh well, Chad gathered me round so I’m still gonna say) that Mike’s piece is blog perfection. Mike, where were you during my senior year Philosophy or Art Seminar in 1992? (And please don’t say you were in junior high!) The art majors at Azusa (I’m assuming there are some) would do well to take your post to heart. Such articulate truths were in short supply during my art major years and while I’m now in the next box up (18-34…35-45…eek!) I’m moved and motivated by your piece. Thanks.
And since it will probably be quite some time until I’m here again (2 toddlers and a faltering art career…oh and that whole house remodel thingy…I leave the blogging to Brian/Stick) I just want to say that if we still lived in SoCal, we’d come help you, Aly, with the flooring (we now consider ourselves experts) and Cerise/Morphea…whoever thou art…please do swing by if/when you make your way down from the temperate rain forests of WA to the sunny southland! We’ll show ya around the place and give you unasked for advice on home improvement.
Ah, and there is my son crying from his crib…perhaps I’ll post again…when the youngest is in kindergarten…and I’m in the NEXT box up.
Ooh, I’d love to. Thanks for the invite (ask Aly - Ramon and I take you seriously when you say “Come on down!”).
Call me Cerise. Or Morphea. Or Bill.
Seriously, we’re jut off the 80, which is not far from the 5. So do call when southward bound.
Call me June. Or October.
I think June was talking about Mike’s “LA Experience” post…
Oops… I just read back… we were talking about Mike’s post already. Ignore me… June’s the smart one.
My thumb hurts.