Backyard landscaping -photos from 1960s

Looking back at photos we got from the original owner, you can tell that the backyard was all about entertaining. We hope to re-create some great entertaining areas that have long since been abandoned.

We will be repainting the back of the house in this deep blue/gray color...we started prepping for paint today. I think we'll have the back of the house and fence painted by next weekend. :)

We still have the fabulous water slide from the 1960s...we effin love it! We had the water hose hooked back up and you slide down that baby like butta!

This photo makes me laugh. It is not from the 60s, but from October 1985...One of the original owner's worked high up at a grocery store. When I was going through old photos at the garage sale prior to our closing, we saw all kinds of 50s and 60s grocery store photos and display photos..way too stuff! I guess they had a cat back then...probably more like 15, judging by the smell of the parquet floors. Just a funny picture of a cat in a bunch of produce boxes.

The pool used to be a diving pool, but when the owner resurfaced the pool with mosiac tile, she leveled out the level to be 6 ft at the deepest point. Look at the flamingos...hahahahahahaa.

1 CITRUS TREE SUCCESSFULLY MOVED!

Today was the day. 3 men, a tractor, a bobcat, and a HUGE 30 year old citrus tree. We are making room on the side of the house to park the old vehicles...1 out of 2 trees has been moved. It looks like it will be a survivor, but the owner of Pima Nursery, Tony, says it may not look pretty this summer. But, come fall it will look gorgeous again!

Here's the hole where we transplanted the tree.

Here's the tree on the crane, in the alley.

This is when they had to prop up the tree to get it through the alley gate.

Here's the tree in it's new home.

Look at how much room is on the side of the house with just 1 tree gone...at least enough room for 2 cars.

More of the day's events

Matt re-built the carberator on his 61 Olds today...

I think I may be obessed with the back of our house....

I caught the tailend of the sunset today....pretty in pink!

Here's a photo of our original birch cabinetry throughout the house. It appears as though a shellac was applied to all the doors and cabinets some time ago. All the door handware is copper, which is pretty cool.

Another shot of the front....the new privacy screen will go in the bare area to the right of the grass.

Front Shots...

We had to move the cars out of the driveway today because we are having an orange tree transplanted from the front yard to the backyard. BUT, the guys never came to move it. So, I took a few shots of the front of the house before we moved the cars back. The goal for the side of the garage is to create a parking slab for the old cars. We have to relocate 2 huge citrus trees to be able to do this, but it is totally worth it!!! We have 5 cars, but only one of them can fit in our garage right now. Matt keeps trying to convince me that his Oldsmobile is going to be beautiful. I just can't see it yet. He re-built his carberator today...I still love my Caddy and Chevy though. :)

We bought some weed killer today to battle it out with the weed grass that pops up in the planting beds. Still waiting to install our privacy screens in the front and our concrete pavers behind the planting beds.

We gotta get the oil off the concrete driveway....you don't notice it when the cars are there. BUT, once we move the cars to the side of the house, I want the driveway to sparkle!

We still have to figure out whether to do a plant or sculpture in the little square cut-out. I was going to get some landscape glass is an blue or aqua and have someone make me a cool mid-century-esque sculpture to put in it.

We still have to decide what to do with the garage door. I think for now it will stay, but the wood trim will be replaced when we can get around to it.

THE BACK GLASS WALL IS ALMOST DONE!!!

Matt has been working like crazy to get the back glass wall all done. It got primered and painted yesterday. Before the painting came bondoing.

This is what happens when a zombie sands bondo all day long (notice that he was wearing a hat and sunglesses):

This is what the wall looks like today. Smooth, white, and purdy. The fireplace base and bench still needs to be built before the fireplace can go i...I can't wait. We also have to paint the whole back of the house and the entire block wall...

Here's another shot of the glass wall from today. We are going to build a angled patio cover....inspired from the pages of Sunset 'How To Build A Patio Roof'.

And another photo from above the pool. It was 82 degrees today. I stuck my foot in the water and it was too cold. Only about 2 more months before it is swimming season. We have to get our backyard all landscaped and ready for summer. We are hoping to have a housewarming party in June, but it might have to be July or August, depending on when we can get our kitchen and bathrooms all done. So much work left to do!

THE DOGS LOVE THE DOG HOUSE....

Yeah. They love it alright. They like to climb on the roof to peek into the neighbor's yard. That's about all they like to do with the dog house....

This is Auggie on the roof....Auggie used to climb our 20' palm tree at our old house. Climbing is nothing new for him. He also likes to get a running start and jump OVER the 6' block fence. Seriously.

This is Violet mid-jump off the roof...she's a scamp.

SPRING=RAD

So, everything that we thought we killed this last year due to a lack of irrigation, no sprinkler system, and general neglect is looking amazing right now. About 2 months ago when the original owner came by to snatch up some old bricks, I asked her about all of her crazy plants. I say it again and again, but seriously there are so many plants in the front and backyard that we don't know much about. We found out some cool stories about all her lovely plants....

This tree is just stunning. Stays green ALL year long, provides a bit of shade for the front of the house, and is now in bloom with these crazy red fuzzy things. Seriously....looks so rad.

Here is a close-up of the fuzzies....aaaawwwwwwww. Aren't they fuzzy?!

We have 2 peach or nectarine trees in the back that are starting to show some green. I was THIS CLOSE to ripping them out of the ground because they looked so sad and cold in the winter time. I can't wait to eat some of the tasty fruit!!!

And we have a Pomegranate tree that we cut back a couple months ago and it looked like just sticks coming out of the ground. The original owner told me that it is a non-fruit bearing tree. I thought to myself...she would know what she's talking about, BUT there are HUGE fruit-like growths on the tree popping up all over it!!! There are flowers that come out of the growths, but Matt says that once the flowers fall off, the fruit grows in. I gotta find someone who knows about these trees because I want to eat this fruit!!! mmmmmmmmm.

This pretty thing is behind our sitting area atop the pool. Again, I didn't have much hope for it, but all of a sudden there are these gorgeous flowers. The guy who owns Pima Nursery said the tree is so rare that he wants some of the seeds!!! How strange.

We also have Wysteria blooming up next to the dog house...which leads me to my next blog entry....he he he

Terrazzo floors...where can I put this in my house....

I just caught this product on HGTV....called EnviroPLANKS. Pretty effin cool....very expensive though at $20/ sq ft. I was thinking about using something like this in the bathroom, but I'm not sure it will go well with the 'rustic terrazo' in the rest of the house....hhhmmmmmm.

Here's a close-up of the existing 'rustic terrazo'

Check out the website: http://www.enviroglasproducts.com/index.html

My new obsession-zebrawood

Ok....so I think I changed my mind AGAIN. After seeing a sample of bubinga wood in person, I hate it. So, I am thinking zebrawood is my new fav. It is used for humidors, guitars, old car dashboards...and kitchens!!!!

Here's an old Fender Stratocaster I saw on ebay....yummy zebrawood.

Sweet cabinets. Not sure about the pulls....I'm still partial to my original favorites, from a previous post.

Seriously...zebrawood chair. Matt is going to make me some dining chairs...he just doesn't know yet. Zebrawood looks sweet with dark counters. I'm still debating over white vs. black silestone Stellar series counters.

I am so indecisive....

So, when thinking about creating our kitchen, I keep changing my mind. Do we go with doors or sliders for the uppers? Use an exotic veneer or use a more suitable vintage mahogony? Modern meets vintage? Or just modern...or just vintage....geez it's hard to make a decision.

What to do?

We want to build an invisible track to hang draperies from....in case we ever want to cover up the windows...like in the summertime, etc. any ideas?

We could do panels that would have this effect (although these windows have frost panels, not draperies). We could make have a separate drapery for each window...or...

We could have draperies that slide all the way across the 35' wall...

Or don't have window coverings at all. We did want a wall of window so we can look out at our yard and have true indoor/outdoor living...maybe window coverings would ruin the effect.

I've been trying to find inpiration for what type of finish to put on our fireplace...

Can't decide whether we should dress the fireplace up with some kind of natural stone or whether to paint it a bold color. We want it to be a focal point...so a we might be considering a bright color...any thoughts?

Floor transformation and ugly kitchen photos

The house has all new poured pebble floors. We torn up the cat-piss parquet and had the pebble, also called rustic terrazo, troweled on. It's one of the only flooring solutions that would work for us...thank god we had friends that had just done it...otherwise, who knows what we would have ended up settling on. This is how bad the floors were.....icky ickerson.And this is a photo of the master after we took up the parquet and took the hideous 70s paneling off the wall. Gross.

Here are photos of the kitchen when we first saw the house...Blue=everywhere in the house. You can see how bad the cabinets were in this photo...but much worse in person.

Um. yeah. Gross. I wish it was in better shape, but the fact that we felt the need to replace the cabinets allowed us to expand the kitchen. We only had 1 SMALL window looking to the backyard. We didn't have to alter the roofline to expand, we just moved the kitchen wall out to to the rest of the house. Gonna be amazing when we're done....whenever that is.