Atelier 918

What is it with home maintenance contractors in Seattle?

We had some trouble withsquirrels and tree rats in September and spoke two 3-4 pest control groups, plus a roofer. Some people tried to sell us on additional services and some just didn't show. We had a similar experience when trying to have the house painted - a local company that does regular direct mail never replied to our multiplevinquiries so we ultimately used ServiceMagic.com.

Most recently we had two gutter cleaning services give us estimates and then try to change them. I guess it is better that they were up front about it but it took a lot to finally get it scheduled. Finally the gutters are cleaned.

This year or next we will be looking to get a new roof on the house and garage. I think that is exciting. I'm so weird. I wonder if we will have the same contractor weirdness when that project comes up...

House Painting - Almost Done

The house painting is almost finished. They have been working on it for the past couple of weeks and our house is now blue with white trim and black around the windows. We have to go around today and make note of where we want them to do any touch-up work and we've found a few spots already.

We don't like the color we had them paint the porch floor with, its a lighter gray with a blueish hue to it. We want to have that repainted. We also don't like the color we selected for the doors. It's called Copper Kettle but it looks to salmon-y and reminds me of Rustoleum -- we are going to paint the doors and porch swing red instead.

Overall we are really happy with the results though. It makes the house look a lot nicer, addresses the issue of some chipped paint on the west side of the house and also got some repairs done around the exterior. I'll post some photos soon.

House Projects Prep

I went to the paint store last week and had a couple of quarts of paint mixed up, one for the base color for the house exterior and the other for the window trim. I want to see what the colors look like in context before committing to the expense of getting the house repainted.

I don't know if I mentioned that a friend of mine rehung the double hung windows in the baby's room at the end of January but they work great now. He stopped by this afternoon while my partner and I were doing a little early Spring gardening and mentioned that he can go through the house with me to review all the windows and see what work they require. He said it would make sense to have them repaired prior to having the house painted. So I think we'll do that tour in the next couple of weeks and I will also start getting bids from painting contractors so we can plan ahead.

Baby's calling, gotta go.

Back

I haven't posted in a while but then we haven't been doing much on the house lately, just gelling our plans for a few things. I was just in Paris for a week and a half so even the lawn wasn't mowed and the food shopping hasn't been done.

I've been trying to make some headway on getting the exterior of the house painted and also starting to get the area more prepared for putting in a patio in the lawn. I have this great photo from an old Pottery Barn catalog that sort of represents what we are after, though ours will be more boho. I'll post it very soon so you can see.

Not the right colors

Here are the chips that I picked up the other day. You probably can't see it very well though. At any rate the blue is sky blue (what was I thinking) and not the aqua green in my mockup. I'll have to dig through all the millions of paint chips I have upstairs in my house project folder to find one that's more akin to what we had in mind. The red and white are okay though, they might actually work.

I was looking at our neighbor's house behind us and there are a few blues there as well. But on our street we'd still be pretty good if we went with that colorway.

Playing with house paint colors

We were brainstorming colors to paint our house yesterday so I set up a few mock-ups in Photoshop using our garage to get a sense of how it might look. Our neighbor on one side has bright yellow with barn red trim, the neighbor on the other side house is hidden behind overgrowth but it's gray with blue trim around the windows. We also have to factor in that we have two red maples in the front yard so we want some contrast. Also it gets so gray in Seattle that anything too dull is just going to extend that grayness -- we want something that has a little more life to it.

Aqua base with citron trim

Aqua base with brick red trim

Pale Aqua base with blue trim

Pale green base with aqua trim

Chimney Rebuild Shots Circa 2001

When the Nisqually Earthquake shook Seattle in February 2001 we hadn't even lived in our house a year. At work, trapped in client meetings that I couldn't get away from, I worried about how the house took it (was gas leaking? did the ceiling fall in?) and also about our pets. When I finally was able to get back to the house I tentatively opened the door and walked in. As I looked around every room in the house all the pictures on the walls were  out of kilter but surprisingly only a couple things fell, some chatchke on the mantel and some jar of something in the bathroom. Then I saw the debris coming out from the fireplace.

I pulled open the flue, well tried to as it was really heavy and kind of stuck feeling. When I was able to free it out dropped the brick you see in the left foreground. The chimney had not gotten off so easily.

It took a while to deal with it, during which time we didn't use our gase fireplace and worried about how the gas boiler and water heater were venting in the basement. The damage wasn't too bad, mostly just a few bricks falling and the chimney cap needing some rebuilding. Here are some shots showing the work in progress. We ended up having the two in-use flues lined with a chimney liner and filled around the outside with a stabilizing material. Since the third flue, originally in use for a stove in the kitchen in times gone past, was not in use at all we opted to leave it alone.

What is Atelier 918?

Atelier means studio in French. It's pronounced ah-tell-LEay (or maybe closer to ah-TEL-lee-ay). We named our house Atelier 918 a few years ago and wrote a song about it, we wanted our home to be full of artistic expression.

Our very first project in the house was finishing the attic to be a music studio for my partner who is a singer-songwriter and an excellent guitarist (but I'm biased). On the second floor I have an art studio which was my first big painting job and where I first learned about the mysteries of calcimine paint. In the livingroom I have a portable ballet barre (though modern dance is my forte).

The only home-renovation related thing I can tell you so far about in the livingroom is that we had to have our chimney rebuilt from the attic floor up and then have it lined as well -- we had several bricks fall down the chimney during the Seattle earthquake in February 2001. Oh, that and also I tried to repair two pocket doors between the livingroom and diningroom when we first moved in but the hanger-bracket thing has stripped threads and it won't hold the outside part of the door. I've been looking around online to see if anyone posts those from salvage but so far I've had no luck. I need to really hit up the salvage places in town and I'm sure some will turn up.

Our House

This is what our house looked like when we bought it in 2000. The garden wasn't anything to speak of, it mostly had tons of irises but the rest of it was pretty uninspired.

Here's our house December 2003 with the yard covered with a rare Seattle snow.

Backyard 2004

The backyard in bloom showing our garage and the deck outsite the kitchen.