There's A Hurdle In My Hallway

I have a hurdle in my hallway
And my bathtub is too small.
Which one do I try to fix
The floorboards or the stall?

The ramp is not so rampy
And the door may hit a guest.
Can’t we mend the too-short window frame
Is that too much to request?

My vintage floor got ruined
By a quack who hacked the maple.
It all started sorta shaky
So let’s hope it turns out stable.

Framing The 2nd Floor

View from the roof garden across to the new 2nd floor of main house

Ahhhh, now we're getting somewhere. I never thought I would have a 'second floor' when I was little. I grew up in Los Angeles in a Spanish style home with a front and back yard. We're talkin IN THE MIDDLE of town, not in the burbs. One floor. That was back when, I guess, there was still space for single-story homes in the center of town. My Dad still lives there. 

Originally, we planned to do 3 floors and put the kids on the third level (trap em in, I always say). But our architect Andreas Gritschke talked us out of it noting that this home is our dream home; translation: "the place we will never be able to afford to leave", We figured three floors doesn't mix well with hip replacements. 

So two floors it is.   

The Frog [Prince]

Once upon a time in an artsy land not too far away; well okay maybe/probably far from some of you, there was a yucky little 950 sq foot 1946 beach bungalow in Venice Beach California. We first rented it until we found our dream house on a hillside nearby. In this pic, you can't even see it through the overgrown jungle!

That was in 1994.

Back then you could still hear gun-shots in deep Venice until Julia Roberts moved in and ‘there went the neighborhood’, & with that to-do came the police to clean it up.

Flash forward a wedding, two kids, several career changes, a green card preceding a citizenship, about three cars, a partial reconstruction of the garage into a rumpus room/guest house/T.V. room/roof terrace, many cramped visits from wonderful forgiving friends and family members, and finally a HUGE dream.

It’s now year 2010…The Frog, (thank gawd for our sanity) got kissed.

And so, our journey into construction hell (did I say that?) I mean bliss begins.

What to do on a dreary summer day.

Having grown up in Los Angeles, I can't remember having had "no summer" before!

But, this year the summer beach days seem to be somewhere else!

So, what do you do on a dreary summer day at the beach??

Sand castles, of course!