a door problem.

our door may have fallen out of its hinges a few weeks ago. we may have managed to get it closed temporarily and left our house unlocked for a week while we used the back unlockable-from-the-outside door. and we may have propped our very heavy door up on stacks of magazines, stuffed toothpicks into the holes and screwed everything back in and all is working now. and we might be crossing our fingers that this will hold for another month or two while the custom doors we ordered get made and we can install brand new doors on the front and back of the house and never have to deal with this issue again. maybe. possibly. this could be true.

landscape edging, seven months later.

we've been buying plants left and right recently. one of the plants we bought was a large fern to fill this bit of dead space on the lawn, and this pretty pink plant you can see just to it's right. but as you can tell, it's not very well defined, and we even had the issue of the gardener weed-eating our poor plants a bit. so we decided to build a bit more separation into the area to highlight our pretty plants.

technically, it was a project we started back in december and never finished. it's a good thing too, because we probably would have just edged a straight line the entire way and not done what we decided to, which is to add a nice curve to add a home for the new plants. so we dug a 4 inch deep trench, put down the edging, and filled things back in.

the other thing we decided to do this time was put down a weed barrier underneath the mulch. there's lots of weedy grasses that just keep coming up, and we simply don't have the time to keep up with them.

look how much the colors really pop with the dark red mulch we bought!

day of, we didn't have enough mulch to cover everything, but we've since remedied that - we promise! and the best part! the gardeners didn't destroy our plants any more this past week! success! you can see below that we also have a baby foxtail and another grassy plant to be planted behind it. we really love our plants..!

neighbors are coming : a little privacy please!

so, the house next door is in escrow! this is absolutely fantastic because when we first moved in, it had been foreclosed but the homeowners were still living there. and it was, to put it gently, a total dump. since then, it has been flipped by investors and put on the market.

anyway, the sliding door in the kitchen faces the house next door, and more specifically, directly into the two bedrooms (sorry for the dark photos, we did this little project at night!):

we hadn't put up curtains yet, because i always felt curtains would be weird here in the kitchen. plus, we really love how much nice sunlight we get in the kitchen, and didn't want to lose that. however, just with the real estate agent, new homebuyers and various inspectors stopping by the past few days, we knew we had to do something!

we wanted something that was a quick and temporary solution. we eventually want to put in a wood fence up against that chainlink (it's on the neighbors side, so we can't touch it) - probably with some tall plants for additional privacy - but don't have the time to do so before the neighbors would move in.

after a bit of thought, we decided to do the same thing we did to those bathroom windows when we first moved in. the artscape etched glass window film that we got from home depot last time was so easy to install, and has held up really well to the humidity and direct afternoon sunlight of the bathroom.

we bought the 36x72 roll, and it was perfect (we needed 66 inches total). we did a stretch across the middle, that lands just a bit above eye level. it took all of half an hour to measure, cut and install. and i think it looks great! and while it's a bit modern for our craftsman home, the whole kitchen is kind of modern and will eventually be redone with wood-framed french doors. a view from the outside:

we didn't block out the entire door because it is still nice to be able to see outside if necessary, plus sanford loves spending his afternoons looking out the door:

lookit that booty!

and who are we to deny him that pleasure?