That’s our house. Well, technically we share it with these two lovely Spanish dudes named Reuben and Ramon. It’s a duplex (like a house that’s split in two) and it was built in 1965 by a pair of architect brothers who married sisters and lived side by side in their little slice of heaven in the Valley.
The place is a time capsule of California Modern goodness. R & R’s side has been messed with in some unfortunate ways, but the side that we’ve called home for the past four and a half years? Perfectly preserved as it was when LBJ was president and movies cost a quarter. That’s what we fell in love with.
Unfortunately shit is really starting to fall apart. Like the shower pan in the hallway bathroom? It’s in a bad way and as a result we’ve got water damage all throughout our hallway and creeping into the master bedroom. The floors are wonky. The sump pump is a piece. But while we love this place and have put tons of time and energy into upgrading it and making it our home, we don’t own it, and we can’t pour money we don’t have into a place that’s not ours. So it gets frustrating, because like all renters, we live at the mercy of our landlord. Who is actually a pretty stand up guy. Except he sends his “cousin” to do everything, and instead his cousin does NOTHING. Until yesterday when Scott started to flip the EF out {rightfully so} about the hazardous state of our home and I crawled up my landlord’s butt with my camera phone {I texted him a crapload of pictures of what we are dealing with.} Because he’s a stand up guy, he was pretty mortified at the state in which we’re living ~ WITH OUR ONE YEAR OLD WHO ROLLS ALL OVER THE FLOOR, and once they’re done tearing up our bathroom floor and re-tiling the shower {nightmare} we’ll be getting the flooring replaced through out our entire pad. Which, despite being hugely inconvenient, totally, totally rules.
But now I’m freaking out. Because well… while he’s saying we can choose, we all know that most landlords don’t exactly like to go top-of-the-line on materials when they don’t have to. And because his cousin started running around my house like a chicken with his head cut off this morning talking about ripping up just the 2 x 3 square patch of carpet in our hallway with leftover laminate from the workshop downstairs, I am feeling a little apprehensive about having him do the work. But mostly, I just don’t know what to pick. Pergo or carpet? In a dream world, I think I’d go for thick charcoal grey shag (well, in a dream world I might go for white or ivory shag, but I don’t even want to think what would become of that with our brigade of beasts and baby) but I’m guessing he’s thinking more along the lines of by-the-roll berber. I mean, the commercial-grade carpet that’s been haphazardly laid through the apartment next door is…well…in the spirit of October, spooky.
But laminate? With all this wood? Really? What’s a girl (and her hubby) to do? We’re kind of at a loss here. Plus going laminate means we have to get a few more rugs, which means we have to spend $$$ on this endeavor. But then my brilliant design genius friend Meredith turned me on to the beauty that is Karndean vinyl flooring, and now I’m kind of hopeful that maybe this could actually result in an improvement. But then I have NO idea what color of “wood” wouldn’t be totally overwhelming with this paneling and these built-ins?
{When Scott and I lived in Hollywood, and I first bought the wall art known as “Birds Flying Across the Sun” on eBay, we used to fantasize about having a wood wall to hang it on. When we walked into this place, we knew it had found it’s home.}
{The Dining Room. We’re not quite finished here…four years later. Actually, we used to be finished, but then we replaced our old MCM chairs (which were awesome but falling apart and a total hazard) with these Orbit chairs from CB2, and things had to be re-conceived a bit. And now the shelves are kind of a mess and we’re thinking of painting that one wall. {I’m open to your thoughts on that, by the way.}
{Ahhh, the orange kitchen. It’s high gloss, too. It’s pretty sweet. But if we do paint the wall with the built-in on it, then we’ll probably tone down the kitchen, too. In the flipside of our duplex, they’ve got laminate in the dining room, which on the one hand seems convenient for spills, but on the other hand kind of disrupts the flow of the place, and we’re douchey like that…}
{Okay, I know there’s no wood of which to speak in this picture, but I’m pretty much just giving you a mini-home-tour at this point so I might as well keep going, right? Plus, I love the big windows. Plus also, that’s our tiny little yard with the fence that Scott built, and the hacked down version of the Ikea Expedit which makes up the northern wall of my Expedit Office. And toys. Loads and loads of Delilah’s toys. Presently, we’ve added backs to the bottom portion of this expedit ~ made from the hacked-off shelves, naturally ~ to act as storage inside my office. We’re thinking of rejiggering things a bit so that the bottom portion can face outwards and store toys and the upper portion can become my office storage cubbies. Luckily we have a lot of hacked-off shelves.}
{And finally, a badly composed shot of the bathroom I’m afraid to see what will become of. Crystal chandelier. Black marble counter top. Oh, and my beloved vintage pebbled linoleum, torn up today by my landlord’s careless cousin. A moment of silence.}
Okay so help. Pergo? Carpet? Mer’s magic Vinyl? Remember, Delilah is ALL over the floor and we have two dogs. Oh man. This is almost too much.
{And Happy Birthday Sar!} {And Bec!} {And weirdly, also my parent’s dog Stealth!}
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