Oh the bathrooms...

 While our kitchen is brand new, our hickory floors are delicious and even our patio is coming together, our bathrooms are still in their gross original state. The previous owners had a love of weird 70's tile. At least our half of the duplex has neutral colors.

We'll get around to redoing the bathrooms eventually but in the meantime, we're just trying to make them as clean and livable as possible.

First task - redo the nasty caulk around the tub.

We scraped it off...

...and applied the new stuff as neatly as possible.

I would still love to just blow up the whole room, but for now, at least the dirt we see in the caulk is OUR dirt.

Insta-Bench...

Neal had the awesome idea to push the planters back a foot or so from the edge of that concrete level, making a bench for people to sit on.

Before our housewarming party, I whipped up some basic pads to cushion our guests behinds. Don't look to closely at the edges, this was not a very neat job, but I think they are pretty cute.

I also made some thinner, simpler ones for the gross built in bench on the lower patio.

I used basic drop cloths from Home Depot and filled it with some polyester batting.  A little embroidery floss to "quilt it". All done while watching Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol.

A wall of planters...

Since the very first time we saw this place, we've been concerned about the drop off between the two top levels of our back patio. Here's a picture from before we moved in (that's Gali, our awesome contractor) where you can see the 2-3 foot drop off. 

 

We knew this was one of the first things we wanted to tackle. Don't want to have a party and have a friend drunkenly topple over. A couple of weeks ago, our friend's little girl, Delilah was running around and almost soared off the edge. 

So, our idea was to make a wall of planters there, something to keep people from falling off the ledge, but also pretty. One of our friends, don't remember who, sorry guys, had the good idea to put it slightly back from the edge, so the ledge itself became a bench for people to sit during parties. (Can you tell we plan to have a lot of great parties here?) Brilliant! I may even go buy some cheap Ikea seat cushions to throw there when needed. 

ANYWAY - we hunted for planters, could not find ones we liked that also weren't CRAZY expensive (like these...or these...mmmm....) so finally settled on some redwood planters from our local Anawalt lumber yard. We kept thinking black so figured we could paint or stain these later on if necessary. 

Now, I'd read a lot about how to keep wooden planters from rotting too quickly and the cheapest option was to coat the inside with roofing tar! So one morning I laid down some plastic tarp, got gloved up, and spread this awesome good all over the inside of the planters (keeping the drainage holes clear) in a thin layer.

 It was like icing a cake. But smellier. And stickier.

Once you have a 1/8 or so inch coat, let it set for a least 24 hours.

In our case, let it sit a week. We used a coupon to the Sunset Nursery that came in the mail when we moved in, and got a bunch of plants that all needed about the same amount of water and would grow a  couple feet tall and to make our "wall" effect. I'm happy with them so far...really brings warmth to our concrete oasis.

It's the little things...

Slowly but surely, we're trying to not only make our duplex a nice place to live, but also a nice place to look at. We want to do new fences, railings, doors, etc. but started small. House numbers.

There were crappy gross tile numbers over the rental front door, none on our half, and only gross stickers on the nasty mailboxes. We replaced the mailboxes with clean black ones asap. Put new sticker numbers on those, then bought clean, simple modern numbers at Home Depot to put on the front. 

Super easy, especially with the masonry bit my dad left behind. We laid out the included number templates. Used our newest Home Depot purchase, a hole set, to punch holes in the stucco, drilled.

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Then squirted some silicone in the holes, and pushed in the numbers. We decided to go with slighly elevated numbers, so there's a half inch or so bar between the number and bar that makes them look a little 3D. We did them slightly askew - hinting to people that 2008 is in the BACK and 2010 is the front.

We dig them. Still need to touch up the paint around them, but they already look clean, modern and give us a LITTLE more personality than before!

The elbow grease begins...

The cabinets in the rental unit are not particularily pretty, but they are in decent shape and do the job. However, they are covered in a greasy goo from years of use. The previous owner didn't put drawer pulls on the cabinets (or ever cleaned anything, ever) so the corners and tops are grungy and sticky. Yesterday, while waiting on some prospective tenants to stop by, we used a combo of Goo Gone, Fantastic, and arm muscle to start scrubbing away the years of gunk. It's not fun, but it works. Check out these - The left's been scrubbed, the right is still grungy.

Better right? A little? Regardless, they DO look better in person and I feel better about renting it now. Today, I bought some wood conditioner that I'll apply when we are totally done, just to give them a little love.