Dream This Home

Building and Maintaining your forever home.

Archives for March 2017

Ants. The Bane of my Existence.

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If you live in Southern California, you know what I’m talking about.  I swear I live on an ant hill.  Summer is the worst when those pesky suckers are looking for water or whatever they are doing, but I’m already battling them in trickles this spring.  And let’s not even mention the swarming A-holes that I had to thwart this past winter when we had our “torrential” rains…  I am not an exterminator so I have no clue how ants colonize, but there are definitely ant colonies in our walls.  (I’m pretty sure they share space with the termites that live in there too…)  The ones that come up from under our raised foundation find their way through tiny cracks in our ancient hardwood flooring, but last year, we had an incident where ants were actually coming out of an outlet in the kitchen.  Ghaaaaaa! Writing about them gives me the serious heebee-jeebees but I have to share a few things.

Keep your kitchen clean.  I wipe down the countertops and the stove every single night and there are very few occasions when there are dishes left in the sink.  But ants smell everything.  I mean, I don’t know if they can actually smell, but the little f-ers that live in our house have radar or something.  If there is a rogue dish with even the tiniest scrap of food left in the sink, they will find it and come morning, I’m raging with the portable Dyson, and cursing (not so discretely) under my breath. The hardest part about “keeping it clean” is that when you have kids, there will be crumbs.  And undetected crumbs bring in the troops.  Last summer during the height of my battle with the ants, I kid you not, I saw one carrying a 1/4 of a cheerio.  One ant!  It must have been five times its body size and it was trudging along in line with the thing.  WTF?!?!  I admit that I don’t have the energy to vacuum every night so undetected crumbs happen, but if you are serious about the war, keeping your countertops and the floors wiped and swept at the end of the day will save your sanity – because I feel like ants do most of their scouting and heavy lifting in the dead of the night.

Check your potted plants.  I always have orchids in my house and for some reason, ants looooove to live in them.  Why?  I don’t know.  But just be aware that if you spent a fortune on that rare phalaenopsis or prized cymbidium, that ants don’t discriminate and can ruin your investment in a flash.  You can set the pot outside and flush the colony out with a good dousing, but several times, I was just so fed up that I threw a few perfectly good plants away.

Opt for natural extermination if you are going to call an exterminator.  For obvious health reasons.  But honestly, we did this and the ants still proliferate amongst us.  It seems like a losing battle and it drives me ABSOLUTELY bonkers.  I think we were ant free for a few months but like what they say about cockroaches, ants seem to be bomb proof.  I don’t have a sound recommendation for annihilating the unkillable.

My current battle strategy.  Sevin.  I swear by the stuff.  I sprinkle it around the house perimeter at the beginning of every summer and it keeps the outsiders out.  The ones that live in the walls and under the house, I can’t seem to control, but at least I know there are no newcomers from the outside.  If I find a line of ants in the house, I remove the bait, vacuum the line, find the source and sprinkle Sevin where they are coming from, then I vacuum again. This usually stops the assault.  I know I sound like a crazy person.  I guess when it comes to ants, I am a stark raving lunatic. It’s because I feel like I am constantly cleaning and I don’t have a dirty house, but they still manage to infiltrate and I feel angry and hopeless about it.  If you are an ant, you are on the “other side.”  I feel zero remorse for the thousands of lives I have ended and probably as retribution, their brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and 5 kabillion children keep haunting me.  Spiders, flies and other pests are just as gross, but nothing gets my blood boiling quite like a black line of marching evil.

Our new house…  We are going to have a boat foundation.  That’s the type where you basically pour concrete across the entire breadth of your home.  Because we are building on sand, it’s typical.  I. Can’t. Wait.  I can’t frickin’ wait to tear this old, ant ridden house down, haul the debris and the ants that live in it away and bury the ant hill we currently sit on under the glorious, crushing weight and expanse of concrete.  I imagine a celestial beam of sunlight will shine on our property the day the cement trucks pull up.  The remaining survivors better retreat to… wherever… because I will make for damn sure that the new house is sealed from the ground up.

I don’t want to put it out into the universe, but how much do you want to bet that there will be ants in our future second floor kitchen.  I can’t quite fathom what I will do when that day comes…

May you win the battle.

-K

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Problem Solving with the City

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I find that no matter what size of lot you own, at least in an urban environment, designing a home comes down to problem solving within the City Code.  There were so many parameters that were already in place from the get-go that our house basically designed itself. Admittedly, there were times at the start when we felt cornered, and that there weren’t a lot of creative layout options.  Especially when we penciled our needs down.

List of Absolute Needs:

  • 3 Bedrooms minimum
  • at least 2 full bathrooms
  • open layout kitchen/dining/living space
  • largest roof deck we could legally design

Of course our wish list looked quite different.

  • 4 Bedrooms
  • 3.5 bathrooms
  • Mud Room
  • Laundry Room
  • Walk-in Pantry
  • Powder off Mezzanine deck
  • A/C
  • Radiant Heated Floors

The original “dream” list went on and on and on…

Our budget and the land we are sitting on just didn’t make many items off our original list feasible.  We plan on having A/C and radiant heat (on the 1st floor only), but the space issues just could not be resolved.  During the initial stages of design, it’s important to get all your wants out on the table.  It’s a good exercise to know exactly what you desire for your dream home. How you want it to perform so that you can live comfortably and move rhythmically through its spaces.  You may be surprised at what your spouse feels is important versus what you feel is necessary.  A man-cave?  What?!?!?  Refining the list of spaces that will become your family’s actual future home is the next step of home design.

Next, you can tackle the City requirements.  I say, let your architect/designer work out the details, but just keep in mind that there is a lot of pushing and pulling before the final layout and its dimensions passes through.  We knew we wanted to max out on the height of our building as well as the width.  Not that we wanted a big ugly box, but in the end, if we are being honest here, kind of.  Just not the ugly part.  Most people will want to maximize on their lot if it’s tight.  If you have a sprawling plot of land, your built-space vs. open-space possibilities expand, but knowing that we were sandwiched between two existing neighbors, we knew we would have zero backyard and not all the “rooms” we dreamed of.  So “compromise” became our motto.  Practically no back yard meant placing high priority on a roof deck so our kids had some semblance of outdoor space to play.  And be assured, the City Code told us exactly how big we could make our darn roof deck.

I’m also not fully in love with the idea of the bedrooms being on two different floors, but after a few iterations we knew that it was an inevitability.  We are going to have to make the best of it.  Kids zone on the 1st floor and Master Suite + Public Spaces on the 2nd floor. Again, “compromise” and move on.  (I’ll let you know what a pain in the ass it is to carry groceries up to the 2nd floor once I’m living in the house a few months…)

My point is, architecture is about smart problem solving.  Knowing exactly what your family needs to function gracefully within your home is the first step to tackling the problems that will arise.  And they will arise!  But have no fear.  Pencil out a day in the life of your family. Don’t let go of the things that are important. (For example: kids spaces must be together, kitchen/dining/living spaces must feel airy.)  But be open-minded and compromise on the rest.  (For example: our backyard vs. deck situation, our bedroom locations, and garage must be 2-car and at the front of the house off the street…)  The Code will dictate a lot, so breathe through the inevitabilities and I wish you the best of luck designing a home that still resolves the issues with innovation and style.  A good designer can and will make the spaces flow to make them special, and come alive.

Don’t stop Dreaming!

-K

They say Subway Tile is Out… But is it?

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Subway Tile is a classic.  But is it so overused that it’s lost it’s charm?  I have designed many a kitchen and bathroom with this budget friendly material.  The 3″x6″ original unit can be stacked in a myriad of patterns from a traditional horizontal running bond to a 45° diagonal offset and all the patterns in between.

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I have seen Subway Tiles in other places too.  Gorgeous mirrored subway tile on restaurant walls, utilitarian/easy to clean installations in entry and mud halls, pops of colored subway tiles in laundry rooms…  In the end, I feel it’s a great surface cover; offering style and practicality in both traditional and modern homes.

For my personal home, I feel it needs a boost.  Something fresh to renew its place in tiled glory.  Enter Colored Grout.  Find some fun vibrant colors here.  How awesome is this stuff?  I intend to tile my kids bathroom in a traditional, glossy white, cheap tile.  Probably a vertical running bond or maybe a diagonal herringbone?  I have not decided yet.  I want the element of surprise to be the grout color.  A punch of color to make the pattern stand out.  If I asked the kids which color they want, they would most likely say blue, so I’m not even going to ask.  They are getting chartreuse.  Haha.  Black grout is hot but that’s the problem.  I’ve seen it everywhere for a few years and I want something whimsical and different.  Colored grout is having a moment right now so I’m jumping on that bandwagon.

There are other options to freshen up your subway installations.  Spend a bit more on an atypical dimension.  A longer tile, a tiny tile, a stone tile, or a colored tile can make any subway pattern sing.

I just don’t see Subway Tiles ever going out of style.  It’s an oldie but a goodie, dating back to the early 1900’s in New York’s subway stations, but that’s what gives it the nostalgic feel that I think is so appealing.  With all the options on the market today, only your creativity can limit you.  So my humble opinion?  Subway Tiles are here to stay and should be a staple in any designer’s bag of tricks.  It’s the black dress in any home.  Nostalgic, lovely  and works every time.

-K