I love old type.

It’s the Graphic Designer in me. My buddies and I went to Knotts Berry Farm awhile ago and they had this sort of history section. It was weird to see items from the same time period as my house. I kept imagining the people who first lived in my house using a bunch of that stuff. Made it a lot more “real” to me.

I love that most of the architectural details of my house are still intact. I love that I use the same doors and doorknobs, walk on the same hardwood floor, use the same built-ins that other people have in my home for the past 100 years. There’s a history here and it’s something you can’t replicate.

South LA. Where LA started.

I am always right.

Or at least, I was in this case. I was happy happy happy to find out that yes, my tub does curve. There use to be a wall right here at the back of it. (Where your head would be if you were taking a bath.) It was a crap-tastic wall that made my pretty big bathroom feel super dark and small. Without the wall piece being there, the two windows in the back can actually let light all the way into the bathroom. It’s no longer claustrophobic. I love this tub. It’s old and big and awesome.

There also use to be sliding glass doors on part of the tub. Added to the cave atmosphere so I got rid of them. I have to wonder why anyone would add that stupid part wall, and sliding doors onto a tub. I’ve never seen either one of those items being a good thing. An L shaped shower rod was my solution. Easy to get. Overstock.com had the best prices and quite a few finishes.

I heart salvage yards.

In this bathroom restoration, I’ve had a bitch of a time trying to find the baseboard. (That’s the piece of trim that runs along the bottom of a wall.) In my house every single room has the same original trim. Except of course, for the bathroom and the kitchen, the two rooms that have been changed quite a bit through the years.

In the process I’ve searched nearly every salvage yard I know of, a backyard, a salvage lumber place, home depot, lowes, and a few specialty trim shops.

These were from the photos I finally got off my phone of a salvage yard called Freeway Building Materials in Los Angeles. Really really cool place. They’ve got tons of great house parts, and then super cool older things. I even saw a few jet skis when I was last there.

Bathroom Parts

I started renovating my bathroom a couple months ago. It has been a crazy process. Here are some of the photos I took when I was researching parts. Funny thing, I don’t think I really used any of these pieces.

The white tile is from Lowes. It’s a really nice option for inexpensive pretty darn close Subway Tile. Subway Tile was most common in bungalows around my time period. (My house was built around the 1910’s)

Hex tile (hexagon shaped) was also very common. The $10-15 a square foot option was a wee bit out of my price range so I was looking at similar options. Some of these I thought were pretty nice for the price and were more of an homage to the hex tile.

The fixtures were because I have the three handle plumbing in my bathroom. Not as common now-a-days. The 3 handle options I’ve seen were mostly that fake crystal crud that remind me of my parents old house. Cheap and ugly. I remember cleaning mold of of the tops of them as a child and have hated those things ever since. These I thought were at least better options. As luck would have it I ended up finding something way better.

You’ll have to wait for the final bathroom pictures to see them!

Bombs Away!

I have such a crazy backlog of posts. I’ve been taking photos with my cellphone, but haven’t been able to get the photos off my cellphone until now. Be prepared buddies, for a bunch of posts in the coming weeks.

Anywhos, for my birthday this year me and my friends made a bunch of seed bombs. You can see my buddy B in the photo above rocking out with the dirt.

In case you weren’t aware seed bombs are these awesome little balls of dirt that have seeds in them. The plus side to them is that you’re able to throw them into places that are hard to guerilla garden. (Like empty lots with big fences, the sides of freeways, on-ramps, off-ramps, etc…) If you don’t use seed bombs, and just throw seeds, I heard 80% of seed you throw ends up being eaten by ants, birds and other wildlife. Seed bombs on the other hand are protected in their dirt/clay shell, and basically melt when the rains come. PERFECT for Los Angeles. The compost you add to them, and the red clay have nutrients to help the seeds grow.

This was my first time making them and we used the most common recipe that’s floating around the internet.

5 parts dry red clay (think powder, like flour)
3 parts compost
1 part seeds

Mix all the ingredients together and then start adding water slowly. You want the ingredients to stick together and form nice little marble sized balls, but not be soaking wet. It takes about 3-7 days for them to dry out.

I used a bunch of native wildflower drought tolerant seeds this time around. We made hundreds of seed bombs. At the time of this posting, ALL of them have been thrown. Most of them on the 110 freeway, some on the south la exits off the 10 freeway, and then parts of the 101 freeway in highland park. I can’t wait till Spring to see how well/not well this has worked. I figure the first time around is the hardest. After this anything that does sprout up will also self-sow. So every year will just be better and better and better.

I want to see a rainbow of color!

Holes Sweet Holes

In two of my bedrooms I have these weird holes in the floor. I’m assuming for cable lines…? Something… Too bad I didn’t notice or say anything before my hardwood floors were refinished a couple years ago.

I’ve had a lot of success with the Zar wood filler on a couple doors I’ve stripped of paint, filled in holes, and then stained. It’s pretty awesome in my opinion. Most of the time the wood patch/filler really does take the stain. Sometimes though, you have to kind of paint the stain just on that part a couple times and leave it.

It’s worked enough times and well enough for me that I want to see if it’ll work on these floor hole situations. We’ll see what happens. Something this deep you have to fill in, in layers. Building up to an awesome Herculean patch.

Me vs paint. I win.

Rain makes me productive. I’ve been working on my bathroom for the past couple months, and while I’m waiting for some key pieces to arrive I’m finishing up some off the detail stuff. Here’s me cleaning off a bunch of the hardware. Paint stripper and Paint thinner are my best friends.  A lot of these pieces go on the windows. I’ll never understand why people paint over awesome hardware. It’s all about the details.

Check out the hinge. The one that’s still covered in paint on the left is the original hinge to my bathroom medicine cabinet. At some point in time one of the two hinges had been replaced with a weaker cousin. It didn’t match and was warping. This one is the original. I crossed my fingers and headed over to Liz’s Antique Hardware. As luck would have it, they had a match. Why are some things are super easy to find and others are next to impossible…? Arg.  Pretty neat-o though. One pass and I matched my 100 year old hinge. Now to clean them up.

First Garden Workday of the School Year

Come on out and garden with a South LA Elementary School!

Guerrilla Garden Expert Bulbil let me know about a gardening event in South LA happening this Saturday, October 24th, 2009. It’ll be from 9am-12pm at the 24th Street Elementary School Garden. Sounds pretty neat-o. Make friends with them on facebook and then you’ll be in the know for some gardening awesomeness. Info and links below:

We look forward to seeing everyone at our first workday of the school year, Saturday, 10/24 (9am-12pm) at the 24th Street School! Please mark your calendars. Bring your garden gear (garden gloves, some water, sunscreen, a shovel or pitchfork). We will be catching up on our fall planting, building some infrastructure, making new beds, and many other tasks.

The address is: 2055 West 24th Street, Los Angeles

From the I-10 Freeway: take the “Western Avenue” exit (3 miles west of downtown) and head south on Western. Take a right turn on 24th Street. The school and parking lot will be on the right-hand side on the east side of school. There will be plenty of street parking as well. Look for the banner reading “24th Street School Workday” and enter through those gates.

We are fortunate to have our partners from RootDown LA, Megan Hansen and Katy Atkiss, providing us all a delicious meal!

We look forward to seeing you then

LINKS:

Facebook Link to the event Here

Garden School Foundation Blog

Bulbil’s Website

Guerrilla Gardening this Saturday

And the season begins!!

If you folks want to start Guerrilla Gardening, you can come out this Saturday Oct 17th at 5pm. I just got this email with the details from my buddy Bulbil.

Hi,

I know it’s kind of short notice but with the rain coming I can’t think of a better time to plant some plants guerrilla style. We are going to be doing a planting (replacing some plants) at the Van Ness and Harold Way garden behind the Dennys (at the Sunset exit to the south bound 101 freeway) this Saturday at about 5PM. And there will be a weeding event at the same time across the freeway at the Sunset and Wilton garden (at the Sunset exit to the north bound 101 ).

The LA Guerrilla Gardeners group will be having a meeting very near these sites from 3 till 5PM then we are going over to work in the gardens. I’ve copied their email about their event below. It has a link to a map to the house for the meeting but here’s the address in case I do something wrong and the link doesn’t work – 1922 Taft Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90068

If you can’t make the meeting at 3 maybe you can still help out in the gardens at 5.

I think all you’ll need is some gloves but if you have a tool or two you like to work with feel free to bring them.

I hope to see you there–

Scott

AKA bulbil321
http://socalguerrillagardening.org/

It looks like Rain!

Yippie! Whoo hoo for grey skies. This is the start of fall here in LA which means it’s the perfect time to plant stuff. Yes, you heard that right, not spring, but fall. Everywhere else spring is the #1 time to plant. Here in LA spring is #2, and fall is #1.

Which also means it’s the best time of the year to seed bomb. Coming soon to a 110 freeway near me. COLOR! In a couple weeks I’m planning on gathering a crew to seed bomb the shit out of South LA. Specifically a good portion of the 110. The 405 freeway will cry with jealousy.