Honeycomb Lover

I never tire of the honeycomb tile. I have always loved it and am pretty sure I always will. I bought a bunch of honeycomb tile from The Tile Import Co. over in Berkeley. They seem to have the widest selection of tiles at decent prices. I want to do this little black edge around the sides. I think it's a really nice detail. And we've been trying to figure out what to do with our shower downstairs. It's tricky because it is such a small space, but I think what they've done in the back there will work for us. As much as I hate a shower curtain, I think this is about as chic as a shower curtain can get. They've done a white subway tile here which I love, but I've already bought some Italian glazed ones in a light light beige from the bargain room at Import. They're square and beautiful and a little more modern.

Plumbing Party

We have an amazing plumber. His name is Felix and he works so damn hard. He forgets to eat sometimes like Josh. He's almost done with Phase 1 of our plumbing work downstairs after only a week. Phase 2 and 3 will come after we've vacated the upstairs and have moved into the studio. Phase 1 includes poking some holes in the ceiling to the second floor in anticipation of Phase 2. So, right now the master bathroom plumbing is poking through in the office (featured above). We have drain pipes and all sorts of weird little things poking up out of the floor in our bedroom under the bed because we're going to be expanding the kitchen a bit. Super glam.

Faucets

I am very pleased because I found all of our faucets and trim at more than 30% off today at Faucet Direct. They seemed to have a really wide range of stuff for sale and all heavily discounted. Who knew that I would ever get such excitement out of such things?

Faucets & Trim for the Studio

Kohler Purist Rite-Temp Pressure Balancing Shower
Kohler Purist Widespread Lavatory Faucet
Delta Grail Kitchen Pull-Down Faucet

We've finally decided on the faucets for the bathroom and kitchen for the studio. I really want to go more modern down there and I think these are really elegant. After drooling over the $2,000 options on Waterworks for far too long, we've settled on these more affordable Kohler and Delta options. Does anyone do polished chrome or is it a no-brainer to do do brushed chrome these days? I'm out of the loop on this one.

Neighborhood Greening

We spent yesterday doing more concrete removal for the greening of the Mission. Above is Josh with the concrete cutter which you use to cut the perimeter of the space that you will be removing. Afterwards, you jackhammer out the interior of that space. We had a bigger crew yesterday which made things a little faster, but still exhausting. I was the sweeper, the post lady and the caution tape lady. My favorite job was holding the Stop/Slow sign when Josh drove the Bobcat to the dumpster. Oh, how he loves to drive the Bobcat! I don't know if I'll ever be ready for the jackhammer. I don't get quite the thrill out of it that Josh does. We won't be planting anything until next weekend. Should look pretty great after that (aside from the fact that is definitely odd that we're planting in January)!

A Jackhammer, A Bobcat & Neighborhood Lovin'

Like much of the Mission, our neighborhood is a sea of concrete. The sidewalks are almost 15 feet across which is great for walking arm-in-arm doing Rockette-style kicks, but not so great for breathing in fresh plant-related oxygen. One of our neighbors motivated to get a grant to fund a neighborhood planting and actually succeeded. Luckily, she and a few brave others took on the task of coordinating the efforts of almost 30 neighbors. I have remained pretty much completely uninvolved with the coordination efforts up until this point since we have so much on our plate with our own little reno.

Today, our superstar contractor neighbor, Pat, and Josh jack-hammered out the concrete areas in front of 5 of the houses on our block. That's Josh in the Bobcat above moving the concrete to the dumpster in front of our house. Josh loves Bobcats. It's one of his favorite toys. We had to rent one several times when we redid our backyard. We removed over 200 yards of dirt. I hope I have that measurement right. Whatever it was, it was a helluva lot of dirt and that little Bobcat barely fit up the side of our house. I digress. After they hammered out the concrete today, the rest of us moved the concrete into the mouth of the Bobcat and shoveled out the remaining rocks from our clayish soil. It took 5 hours to do 5 houses today and we're supposed to do 20 more over the next 2 days...not sure how that's gonna happen. Party on.

The Almost-Perfect Bathroom

This bathroom from last year's Elle Decor has been pasted up on my dream wall for almost a year now and I never get tired of looking at it. The major flaw, of course, is that there is no visible bathtub. The lack of tubbing opportunitites and the wooden floors (and counters?) seem almost as impractical to me as the pink shag carpeting in Josh's grandma's house. Only an extremely disciplined person can maintain either, but ignoring that, they are wonderful to look at. It's my inspiration both for our bathroom in the studio and for the bathrooms upstairs. I think that the glass shower divider is a really clever way to allow the eye to continue thereby making the room feel so much bigger. And I love the beige glass tiles. Yum.

Photo from Elle Decor