Helpful Tips from Youtube

The video above talks about how to patch drywall. This is what I am doing right now and I can use all the help I can get. Thank you expertvillage for your home improvement videos on youtube. Folks, check it out!

You never know what you'll find in these old houses...

This is another picture of the foundation. This in itself is not interesting. But the following is:


Someone left their empty alcohol bottles in the foundation! These bottles are dated early 1930's. They have a special seal and stamp for gov't alcohol taxes. Also left in the foundation was a small personal planner, also from that period from whomever was working in there then. Just goes to show you that you'll never know what you might find in an old house like this. It makes for interesting stories, one of the reasons I love old things. :)

Get Eco-Smart: Trash Those Old Toilets!

Doing this renovation process has given me a new found respect for hard labor. (It really is hard!) I've been feeling pretty guilty about tearing up so much stuff in the house, but I'd have to admit, I'm not feeling guilty at all for getting rid of the house's old water guzzling toilets.



These old toilets used over 4 gallons per flush. With us being in a drought year and EBMUD offering up to $150 as a toilet replacement rebate, it made sense to switch to a more eco-friendly and sustainable toilet option. I've decided on picking up the Toto Eco Drake. It is a HET (high efficiency toilet) that only uses 1.6 gpf (gallons per flush). That's less than half than what the old toilets used. According to the EBMUD website, these HET toilets use a pressurized flush system that allows for a very fast and reliable flush compared to traditional toilets. The downside is though that they are slightly more noisy. The Toto Eco Drake is ranked by Consumer Reports as the best budget toilet. With it's price at about $240 and the $150 rebate, you're getting a deal on a great toilet and doing your part to make the world a better place. All in a day's work.

Art Tile on Broadway in Oakland: Where Old Tiles Are Reborn

Let's face it, broken tile in a 100 year old house isn't exactly going to be easy to match and replace. I once heard that the home improvement industry is ultimately a fashion industry. So when your tiles go out of fashion and the manufacturers no longer carry it, you're faced with the difficult predicament of either replacing all your tile with new ones, or go through the painstaking process of spending copious amounts of time at specialty tile stores trying to match the darn thing. Luckily the folks at Art Tile on Broadway (Oakland) are fabulous. I walked right in, showed him a piece of my broken tile, and the staff spent about an hour with me weighing the options and selecting the perfect tile to match my existing ones. They were exceptionally friendly and knowledgeable. I flipped through catalog after catalog of specialty tiles and had these ones special ordered. Within a week I was happy as a clam with a new set of tiles that match pretty darn well to the original ones. The best part is that now I only have to replace a few and not the whole darn room, which saves me oodles of time to focus on more fun things, like how to do recess lighting in the bathroom upstairs. Woohoo! (The tile color in the picture looks a little off because the floor was dirty, but definitely happy about Art Tile!)

Heads Up: New Management @ Emeryville Home Depot & THEY ARE FANTASTIC

So the area where I bought my lovely little Victorian is in North Oakland right by the Emeryville and Berkeley border. There is a Home Depot approximately 3 minutes away on San Pablo Ave in Emeryville, but I've always been very hesistant to go there. I've had several bad experiences; the staff were completely unfriendly, the management non-existing/useless, and products placed in weird and non-intuitive arrangements. It was not on my hot list and I typically prefer to go to places where I can actually talk to staff and get their feedback since I typically don't know what I am doing most of the time anywhoo. (Evidence of this store's previous poor customer service can be shown here.)

I went to that Home Depot for a quick and dirty a couple of days ago and I swear it was a completely different store. My brother had me run in for a couple couplings for the plumbing job he was doing. In the whole 7 minutes I was there I was asked by 5 different people if I needed help. The lighting seemed brighter. People seemed happy and there were tons of great new deals. In fact, when I was looking at some beige tile for the kitchen, a customer service rep came up to me to ask if I'd be interested in their clearance tile which was selling for 1/10th of the original price. I got $2.90/sq ft tile for $0.29 /sq ft and it's gorgeous.

It was like some sort of weird twilight zone and so I had to ask someone what the heck was going on. Turns out that this particular Home Depot is under new management and they got rid of the old one. I also heard from employees how the old management really created a bad environment by trying to squeeze everyone/thing too hard and how they ended up losing customers because of it. And now thanks to this great experience, I'm going to keep coming back. Thank you new management for my fantastic (and cheap) new tile!

Hey North Oakland/Emeryville folks, check out the new and improved Home Depot!

Bargain tools for people on a budget

Here's a picture of the crawl space in the foundation of the house.

Here's a picture of me and my work light that I got from Harbor Freight Tools for $6. This makes me happy as I maneuver my butt around in tight, dark spaces. Nothing like a great deal on a great product.
Here's a picture of my brother in the crawl space fixing the plumbing. Thank you my trusty work light.

Harbor Freight Tools specializes in low cost but reliable tools. Located in Fremont/Newark, they have a retail store with generic versions of the more expensive home improvement brands. They have everything from chain saws to power drills to trusty work lights (like mine!). Often times what Sears or Home Depot does is go to their OEM manufacturer in places like China to make their tools. These manufacturers then in turn make their own versions of the tools without the brand name attached, making it tons cheaper. Check them out the next time you are in the Fremont area. I think my brother and I spent like $600 there. I even bought some stuff that I'll be using for camping next month. The best part is that I've never had any issues with quality regarding these products and they have a good return policy. Check them out the next time you need some new tools for your home improvement projects.

Spring Means Gardening Time!

If only we could open our trunks to find a perfectly put together flowerbed that we can look at and enjoy anytime we want to! This picture makes me happy. I've never done much of gardening before and to be honest I'm a bit nervous that I'll just end up killing them. But luckily the folks at OSH (Orchard Supply Hardware) in Berkeley really hooked a girl up! If you ever make it out to this OSH, Willy from the Gardening Department is fantastic and has over 20 years experience as a landscape artist. He really helped me out by teaching me what types of flowers to buy and how to do it. He even recommended that I file the shovel that I will be using for gardening using the Kobalt 8' Flat File, which actually turned out to be fantastic; now my shovel cuts through the soil a gazillion time better than how I was doing it before. I'm a pretty small girl and lack the muscle power to turn the hard clay soil sometimes. Sharpening my shovel has made my life sooo much better. And the best part is knowing that I can use this for years to come for my gardening and misc home improvement needs now that I know how to use it. Thanks so much Willy! I couldn't find a link on OSH's website to the file, but here it is at a competitors. (OSH you need to work on your website!)

I'm pretty beat from getting down and dirty, but got to enjoy a great day of fantastic weather in the Bay. :)