The Sleeping Porch

This is one of my favorite places in the house, though unfortunately it’s still filled with boxes and other junk that doesn’t have a home yet. Someday it will make a great nook, though. Sleeping porches were common in Arts & Crafts homes; they faced south and were often open porches that allowed sun and air in during the dry season. Ours is actually finished, and based on our neighbor’s blueprints for his (identical) house and the fact that it as the same oak floors as the rest of the house, we think it always was. It’s a small room directly off of the bedroom with gorgeous big windows. Theoretically it’s my office right now. It’s hard to capture the space in a photograph because of the angle of the bedroom doorway, but there are two more windows to the left, one on each wall, that create a space with loads of sunlight. The room extends another several feet to the left and then another foot back, roughly.

The sleeping porch

The Fireplace Hearth

One of my (several) ongoing projects is the fireplace hearth, which is finally in the home stretch. When we moved in, it was painted a deep red, and D. wanted to strip both it and the fireplace itself. The latter turned out to be beyond our abilities as DIYers….we might still try it one day if we ever refinish the floors in there, but basically it involved bringing in a sandblaster and making a wreck of the space for a somewhat uncertain result.

The hearth, on the other hand, was simple to strip with Soygel, a great organic (so it claims, at least!) paint stripper. Here’s the before and after:

The Labradane on top of the old painted hearth

and now:

The fireplace, sans several generations of paint

So now I have to figure out what to do about all of the creosote and soot stains. I wonder if that’s why the hearth was painted in the first place! We have a slate seal to use once it’s as clean as it will get, but I’m running out of options to get the stains out. (We’ve tried various organic cleansers, bleach, baking soda, even TSP, bleh! …but nothing worked.) Should we just leave it as-is and figure that’s character? Is there another way to get soot out of stone? Not sure what kind of stone this is, unfortunately, though it seems to be on the harder side.

The Westlake District

I recently saw a real estate listing describe a home near us as being in “one of Oakland’s most sought after neighborhoods, the Westlake District.” While I’m glad that this particular agent thinks our ‘hood is sought after (it isn’t, exactly, though we think it’s lovely!) I especially love hearing what people call our little slice of the city. Our neighborhood, tucked at the northwestern edge of Lake Merritt, doesn’t officially have a name, though you hear everything from Adams Point (though that neighborhood technically ends at Harrison Street) to Uptown (we’re too far north if you ask me) to Harrioak (some locals came up with this one a few years ago; sounds silly but it does capture the geography, at least) to my personal favorite, “Lower Temescal.” (You guessed it, that one came from a realtor! I should add that we’re over a mile from the southern boundary of Temescal, a newly-trendy part of the city as far as realtors are concerned…)

I actually like Westlake the best, though (minus the “district” part, which is apparently a neighborhood in Daly City). It’s what appears on MLS listings for our neighborhood, though I rarely hear it used in conversation. The middle school down the street is Westlake, too—it was originally Lakeview Junior High School but the district changed the name in the 1920s because the corresponding elementary school had (and still has) the same name, and it got too confusing to have the schools called the same thing. So there may be something to it, historically. A neighbor of ours recently mentioned that she likes to tell people she lives in Westlake, even if it does take some explaining. I think I’m going to start doing this, too, and see if maybe it will catch on.

Things to eat

We have beautiful front and back gardens, mostly thanks to the previous two owners of the house. It’s a little overwhelming at times, but our lot is one of the largest in the area (at least as the bungalow lots go around here). Our backyard bordered the estate of the deFremery family up until the early 1970s, but unfortunately it’s now lined with condos and apartments on two sides. They tower over the yard and cast some shadows, so we’re working on ways to make the yard more private (two baby avocado trees for starters, and we might go the clumping bamboo route soon). Suggestions welcome!

We put in two raised veggie beds this spring that are growing with mixed results so far. We’re a little too close to Oakland’s Broadway Auto Row to gamble with planting directly in our soil, and it’s heavy clay to boot, which edibles aren’t keen on. We’ve had one tomato, some lettuce, a few beans, and a squash so far, and the bugs have had a field day with the rest. (Turns out everything in the neighborhood showed up to lunch, so we have scale, aphids, whiteflies, cutworms, spider mites, and more. Yuck! We’ve tried to keep the yard organic and pesticide-free, but have resorted to neem oil, a theoretically-organic-but-still-toxic treatment for chewing insects, to try to quell the whiteflies before they re-infest the citrus trees.)

We’ve had much better luck with our fruit trees, though. Our yard currently has:

• Avocados (Hass & Fuerte, but both babies!)
• Santa Rosa Plums
• Pluots (one tree, three types: Flavor King, Flavor Supreme, Dapple Dandy)
• Figs (three trees, probably Mission)
• Apples (probably Gala)
• Oranges (Valencia & Navel, three trees)
• Lemons (Eureka & Meyer, plus Ponderosa lemons that hang over from our neighbor’s yard!)
• Cherries (two trees, dunno what kinds)
• Loquats
• Persimmons (Hachiya & Fuyu)

One of the raised beds, early in the season

The Hallway

Not much to say about the hallway. We have one. It has lovely built-in linen cabinets. Visible in the foreground is one of our wacky light switches on the wood molding. Interestingly, our home was built by an Oakland cigar maker for his daughter; he built another identical (but mirror image) house next door for his son, who was an electrician and probably wired both houses. While the wiring itself was impeccable, he put all the switches on the molding in both houses. We’re slowly moving them back into the walls as we replace the knob-and-tube wiring.

Hallway and linen closet

The hallway connects the two bedrooms to the bathroom and to the dining room. In its original form, it had four—yes, that’s FOUR!—doors in a space barely big enough to turn around in (probably to help contain heat). The previous owner had stashed one in the basement, which is where we’ve left it.

The Bathroom

Like the kitchen, the bathroom is no longer original but is still not too far out of touch with the Arts & Crafts period. The built-in cabinets could use some better hardware, but are pretty handy—we think they were added sometime in the 1940s or 1950s, possibly by the same cabinetmaker who built the kitchen cabinets. (They’re similar in style, though the bathroom drawer bottoms are old-school particle board while the kitchen drawer boxes are solid wood.) Apparently the grill in the bottom cabinet would originally have provided covered ventilation for the plumbing, but now it’s just an empty box.

Bathroom view from the hall

Someday (hopefully someday soon!) we’ll replace the not-so-hot chrome and gold fixtures and plastic shelf with something a little classier. Right now I’m thinking an inset medicine cabinet like this one and a wall-mount soap dish like this one, though we haven’t quite figured out light fixtures and other hardware yet. Like the kitchen, though, everything in the bathroom is perfectly functional, and the tub, toilet, and sink were all replaced in ’97 so everything in this room is cosmetic.

Bathroom fixtures

The Breakfast Nook

One of D’s criteria for houses when we were shopping was that the house have a breakfast room with a view. We do indeed have one, though it’s been in a state of disarray for quite some time now. It used to be a laundry room (connections still sticking out of the wall—someday we’ll get that fixed!) but now it’s a baking/utility area-mudroom-breakfast room.

Here’s the built-in cabinet in the breakfast room. It’s also not original to the house (more beadboard behind it, plus two capped connections that might have been water lines for a sink?) but probably dates to the 1940s, around the same time the kitchen was remodeled. It was painted pink when we moved in, but I’ve slowly been painting it white and refinishing the wood countertop. (It does have two cabinet doors, too, but they’re not finished yet.) We got the hardware for this from Ohmega Salvage, a great salvage yard in nearby Berkeley, CA.

Breakfast room built-in baking area

And here’s the very messy breakfast nook. Once we finish the kitchen projects and clean this up, I’ll post a nicer photo, since for the first six months we lived here it was a lovely breakfast space (and will be again one day soon!)

Breakfast room!

The Kitchen

Ta-da: here’s the first photo series of the house. A lot of things still aren’t done (or clean, or unpacked) but at this point I figure it’s a lost cause. So I’ll put up everything but pics of the two bedrooms, which are awaiting curtains (our room) and unpacking/furniture (D’s office).

Here’s the kitchen. The layout and cabinetry isn’t original to the house, though it’s a fairly early remodel. The cabinets are built-in-place solid wood circa 1939, according to the permit on file with the city. The unfortunate granite counters and paint are courtesy of the realtor who was cleaning the place up to get it ready to sell. (To his credit, we’re pretty sure based on the paint swatches on the cans that he didn’t *mean* to paint the place pink!) I’m secretly hoping the countertop cracks when we install the dishwasher, which will take out the bank of drawers on the left… (We’re hoping to replace them elsewhere, but putting the dishwasher on the right just got way too complex with the stove and furnace chimney in the way.)

The floor is ceramic tile, though there’s definitely a douglas fir subfloor underneath (you can see it from the basement). We have no idea what kind of shape it’s in, but if it’s salvageable, I’d love to rip the tile up and refinish it. But first we need enough money to put in a new floor in case it turns out to be in terrible shape.

Kitchen view from hall

This is our beautiful O’Keefe and Merritt stove—a 1955 High-Vue model that has a periscope to check on your cake as it bakes. Sadly ours has seen better days, but I’m slowly restoring it (know anyone who has the short handles for the left-hand side??) Someday when we have this wall wired, I’m hoping to get the light and clock working again, too. The spice racks are Ikea. They’re not vintage, but they sure are useful.

Vintage O'Keefe & Merritt stove

We’re also lucky to have an intact California cooler, which were common in Arts & Crafts homes from the 1910s through the 1930s. The cooler cabinets were designed to hold fruits, vegetables, and other staples that needed to be kept cool but didn’t need to take up critical space in the era’s tiny ice boxes. The coolers were open to the basement to draw in cool air, which then wafted up and out a chimney or (in our case) a wall vent. Ours has had its bottom nailed in (possibly to keep critters out) so it’s not quite as cool as it could be, but still does an amazing job at keeping things like potatoes and onions fresh.

California cooler

And on to the breakfast nook….

A place of our own

This is the story of life in our little Oakland bungalow. We’ve got a big dog, a little garden, and a 93-year-old house about a mile from the city’s center. At just over 1200 square feet, it’s a tiny footprint, but there’s always something going on (or getting fixed!) We’re lucky to have a home that’s been well cared for over the years, so many of our projects focus on updating our home to make it green and sustainable. (And most recently, able to withstand the earth moving under its feet!) I’m way behind on getting photographs up online, so bear with me as we do the grand tour for friends and family….