Invisible Fence

During the day Fringe and her doggie day care visitor Cazie stay in the fenced in dog yard.
Fringe:

When I'm home they have access to the entire patio, ramada, pool and covered porch area. This area is either fenced in or self contained by retaining walls. Unfortunately the temptation of rabbits, javalina, coyotes and birds proved too difficult for Fringe to resist jumping off the wall. The end of July 2007 I had an invisible fence installed along the sections of the wall the pooches could possibly jump off. It works pretty well but I would not leave Fringe loose without being home because there are too many wildlife temptations for a hunting dog around the house.

My mom sent this cartoon to me.

Floor Plan

OK so I am a real nerd. I measured and created my house floor plan in AutoCAD. I even have a version that has all of the electrical marked. However I can say that I don't have it modeled in 3D in Pro/E like a friend of mine has their house. I don't have the stables modeled.

You can click on the picture to enlarge or use this link to the floor plan pdf file so you can actually read it better.

Aerial Views

Here are some aerial views of the property. You can click to enlarge.

The black line property boundary is off. The yellow boundary is closer but still not exact.

Old For Sale Flyers

Even though my mom and I did not remember it, It seems I have had my eye on this house for a while. Previous times the house was up for sale (1996 and 1999) I had mailed my mom the flyer telling her she should buy it. My mom has been cleaning up her office and found the flyers on two different occasions in piles of stuff I had sent her.

The 1996 Sale Flyer:

The 1999 Sale Flyer:

Who wouldn't buy from this guy ;-) Real estate agents are swarmy like used car salesmen and why do they have to plaster their faces everywhere? They also should join the 21st Century and stop using fax machines.

The 2007 Sale Flyer (When I got the house):

Our real estate agent was an idiot. We like to call her "birdbrain" or "The Shredder" (there's a story behind that one). Since real estate agents insist on putting their photos on business cards one day we had a talent search to draw her picture. Here are some submissions:

Exterior Doors and Misc. Update

I have mostly been doing some landscape work. This is a sampling of what I have planted:
3 Chilean mesquite trees, 1 desert willow tree, 1 lysiloma feather tree, 5 ocotillos, 4 Mexican bird of paradise, 4 Arizona yellow bells, 1 boojum, 3 desrt milkweeds, mexican honysuckles, baja fairy duster, salvias, hedgehog cactus, mexican fence post cacti, trailing indigo bush, chuparosa, cat's claw vine, etc. Unfortunately a big saguaro with an arm that was by the pool equipment fell over a couple of weeks ago. Luckily it did not take out anything else plant or property with it.

I am slowly painting the wrought iron fence. The exterior doors were painted a nice blue color.

Guest Bedroom

The guest bedroom was plain Navajo white with the 80's mirrored closet doors.

Before:

After:

The ceiling was painted ultra pure white and the walls Restful (a sagy green). As a cheap temporary fix the gold frame of the mirrored doors was painted dark anodized bronze and the mirrors painted Garden Wall (a grayish taupe brown). This will do until I change the closet doors. The bed is queen size black metal. I still would like to get a dark wood nightstand, bedside lamp and chair for the corner and maybe "a shrubbery".

Master Bedroom

I painted the master bedroom Gobi Desert and the fireplace Toffee Crunch. The inside of all bedroom and hall closets are painted Parchment Paper.

Before:




After:

Door Knobs Galore

At some point in time I had planned on replacing ALL the door knobs inside and outside with Baldwin wave levers in distressed oil rubbed bronze. I did not plan on doing this now but I stumbled upon a clearance at one Lowes in town that I normally don't go to so I bought everything they had that I needed. The prices were more than half the price I could find on the internet (eg. a $66 deadbolt for $15 ridiculously cheap). Unfortunately the other Lowes in town did not have theirs on sale. In fact one guy was completely shocked at the price I got because the Baldwin stuff is never on clearance or on sale. Basically because it was a clearance the other stores don't have to honor the prices so I will be getting the 3 remaining interior door knob sets from the internet. What does this mean? I unexpectedly spent money on something I had not planned on doing right now and spent time this weekend installing the knobs.

The old knobs consisted of the type found at a bargain basement clearance at the cheapest store in town in 1980 where they couldn't get all to match. Below we have different types and shades of antique brass and shiny chrome.

Knobs before:

Knobs after: Soo much better and the levers can be operated in both direction and without a hand.

Garage Cabinets & Support Posts

After a vacation hiatus I'm back to work. I hated the fake wood laminate cabinets in the garage. I also hate peg board so that came down. I primed the cabinets and painted them and the posts Rocky Creek. I had a custom metal shop make a 24 gauge galvanized top for the built in workbench. The is another set of built-ins close to the door opening that I'm most likely going to remove completely. This fall when it cools off I'll epoxy coat the garage floor a tan color.

Before:


After:

Upstairs TV Room

Upstairs - Office, TV Room, Extra Room

The upstairs area above the garage consists of three living areas and a bathroom. I created a TV Room, Office and an extra room that can double as an extra guest room and space for working on projects.

TV Area Before:


After:
The upstairs area above the garage had a floor to ceiling mirrored wall I took down and then refinished the wall. I painted the TV room newport blue.

TV Room

House Numbers & Minor Stuff

House Numbers:
I replaced the Mexican tile house numbers at the street, driveway fork and at the house with more contemporary satin nickel numbers on slate.
Before Example:

At House:

At Fork:

At Road:



Garage Stairwell After:
Wall Harvest Brown, Ceiling White

Hallway Sconces:
Before:

After:

Paint Colors

Here are the Paint Colors I have used. The on screen colors are not true but it gives an idea of the overall palette used throughout the house.

These are Behr Flat Enamel
Mississippi Mud (living room fireplace column)

Harvest Brown (living room walls, garage stairwell)

Gobi Desert (upstairs bedroom area, master bedroom & bath)

Iced Tea (kitchen, laundry room, bar area)

Newport Blue (upstairs office & TV room)

Restful (guest bedroom)

This one is Behr Porch & Deck Low Lustre Enamel
Rocky Creek (garage cabinets)

This is Rustoleum
Dark Anodized Bronze (living room vents, wall plates, outlet covers, fireplace grills)

2 Dog Dogport Conceptual Plan

Fringe & Cazie (who comes over on weekdays to be with Fringe for doggie daycare) need a shelter to get out of the rain in the dog yard. They have shade all day but no rain shelter. Below are pictures showing my dogport concept I plan to build. The initial ground breaking has begun to start the footer. The side walls and center column will be out of sump block to match the house. The roof will be metal over two 1/4 in plywood with insulating foam in between. It is not shown but there will be a vent just under the roof on each side.

Living Room and Fireplace

The living room also includes the bar area and fish tank area shown on the last post.
Here are the before pictures of the living room and fireplace:

Fireplace closeup:

After:
I painted the wall Harvest Brown and the fireplace column Mississippi Mud (both Behr flat enamel). The lights, wall & outlet plates, vents were all painted dark anodized brown. I replaced all the light switches with the same kind since the original ones seemed to consist of every possible type and style you can buy. I still need to paint a couple of the track lights.





The bottoms of all window ledges were tiled with slate.

The old mexican tile was removed from the fireplace and replaced with multicolor slate. I replaced the kitsch southwest themed fireplace grills with grills from Reggio Register.

Originally 2 coax cables and a phone line were just coming out of the fireplace wall. I installed a plate for these.

Speaking of "Kitsch", my goal is to take this house which is oozing with southwest themes to the point of nausea and convert it into a more contemporary place. Tip for others: "Just because a house is in Tucson, AZ or anywhere in the southwest, it doesn't have to have southwestern themed decoration."