Finally

I am happy to say that almost a year after we moved in I finally got a chance to bring my Vespa over. I am keeping it inside instead of the carport and luckily it doesn't take up a whole lot of space. This is the first time in the 4 or 5 years of owning the scooter that I have had it where I live.

I know this doesn't have anything to do with the house but I felt like posting it anyway.

2010 Northcrest Tour of Homes

Every year there is a tour of homes in Northcrest. This is the second year I have been able to go on the home tour but it was the first time I got to go as a fellow Northcrester. It is so inspiring to see what other people have done to their homes.

House 1
The first house on the tour belonged to some friends of ours and this was the first time we got to see the inside. It was featured in the Atomic Ranch article about Northcrest titled North by Northcrest. Holy crap this house was amazing! They have the same origianl layout we do but they renovated and expanded the hell out of it.



Wall unit = drool.



Getting rid of the upper cabinets over the island thingy opens the kitchen up so much. They made up for this loss of storage space by adding cabinets to the back side of the island. There was also a great built in pantry under the planter that I did not take a picture of.



My parents have a black fireplace just like this. My mom hates it and hopefully that means I will get it one day since it is in perfect shape.



I want to live in this bathroom and so did everyone else.



This was a great office and I really like the design they had on the wall. I should have asked if that is just painted with a glossy version of the same paint or if it is a clear sticker. I am thinking it is something like the latter.

UPDATE from one of the owners.
FYI the mural in my office was done by Matthew Craven. He did the mural by basically just freehanding clear gloss over the background color in the retro shapes and just adding them in as he went along.



I saved the best pic of this house for last. What better way to add some zazz to a home tour than to get Lucy to entertain your guests?



House 2
The 2nd house was also featured in the Atomic Ranch article about Northcrest. This house was recently purchased by a young couple that we got along great with. The wives went crazy over their love of knitting and and of course we, the husbands, had to make fun of them for that.



This was a great kitchen and we may redo our layout one day to be like this.



I am sad this picture did not turn out that great but oh well. I really liked the feel of this room. The light colored floor complimented the dark colored walls very well. Also, they have the exposed brick wall showing unlike us. I would like to uncover our bricks to get this look but Susan is against it. Maybe one day she will realize how awesome this look is.



I love our pink bathroom but I think I like the blue even better. It looks so good with the dark colored cabinets and trim around the window.



I am jealous that they still have the original faucets in their bathroom. They are so much better looking than ours.



House 3
The 3rd house on the tour was pretty much a museum of mid century awesomeness. I wanted everything in there. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the outside of this house. I loved the way it sat on the lot and really wish I had taken some pics.

The living room was amazing.



Susan was in love with that hutch/credenza thing and so was I.



I love wall units and this one was beautiful. They also stole my idea of having multiple clocks together but I will do something a little different than this.



The downstairs was pretty simple furniture wise.



However, they had done something I always wondered about. They took down the wall beside the fireplace and made the downstairs den huge. I loved the look of this and I want to do it too. Sadly if we were to do it we would loose a majority of our storage space and my workshop. Maybe one day this dream of a bigger downstairs can happen but we will have to sort out the storage issues first.



This was the downstairs bathroom and it was beautiful. This picture does not do the tile work justice. Hopefully when we redo our downstairs bathroom it will look this good.



Our goal is to be on next year's home tour.

Chop Chop

A few months ago we decided some trees around the house had to go. Since our yard is a mini forrest it doesn't look like we did anything even though we cut down 11 trees. Here are a few before pics showing how many trees we had to deal with.





These 3 trees were so close to the house it was ridiculous. Whenever it was windy dead branches would fall on the roof and cause more damage.







You couldn't pay me enough money to do this job. Watching the tops of the trees drop was scary as hell every time. I kept thinking that one of them would hit the house but luckily these guys knew what they were doing.



Our front yard is so much more open now. It's nice to be able to see our house from the street. Here are some after pics.





Until I find some dirt to fill the hole we have a cute little pond in our front yard.



Sadly with 3 trees gone you can see the lovely A/C unit that was left on the side of the house. We will be removing that very soon.



All of the work was done by a company called Limb-it-Less Tree Care. These guys were great and we will be using them again in the future.