the arrival of the doors.

bright and early this morning, our new front entry door, back entry door and interior shaker door were delivered! this post is really more of a sneak peak than anything..

james sizing up the delivery truck.

now we have to wait until our contractor has time in his schedule to come by and actually install them - he's busy at the moment, so it won't be for another month or two!! i am very upset about this, as this project has already been almost six months in the making, but that's another story entirely.

how gorgeous are these doors? laying horizontally is the interior door for a new interior wall we are going to put in. we will eventually be replacing every interior door in the house with one of these. the upright one with the sidelite is the back entry. behind it, that you can't see, is the front entry. which is a bigger door without a sidelite, and an additional dentil shelf. none of the doors are stained yet, so we still have to figure out what the stain will be. i'm thinking something dark, but not-too-dark, and warm, but not-too-warm. that's descriptive enough, right?

crystal knob for the interior door (doesn't it just make you swoon?!?!)

entry handle set for the front door (can you spot the craftsman-y details through the packaging?)

the doors are from simpson, the palomar ii (for front and back) and a five panel shaker. we found it a lovely coincedence that the name exterior door we fell in love with is the same name as the hotel we we stayed in when we got married (the palomar hotel, washington, dc).

the pretty hardware is from emtek. the old town crystal knob we ordered is as pictured above, but the arts and crafts full length entry set we got is in flat black, so the hammered look is more subtle. i just can't wait until all this work is done..!

in preparation of a fence.

the fence separating our home and our new neighbors is chainlink. this is leftover from the previous homeowners, and used to feature barbed wire at the top. luckily, that part was taken down several months ago.

we got an estimate done to replace the chainlink with a redwood fence, and are moving forward with it. the fence posts will be set right into the concrete. however, there are three bougainvillea plants right where the fence would be going, so we we needed to dig them up.

limited space for digging due to the concrete.

the smallest and easiest to handle of the three bougainvilleas.

we are happy to move these guys too, because they haven't been thriving in their little concrete box. it wasn't all that easy to get them up either. the biggest of the three (not pictured) and roots that went down pretty far, and trying to dig them up without damaging the roots was really hard. we probably weren't successful either, but we've got them in pots and our fingers crossed they'll survive.

the bougainvillea repotted. as you can see, there is little privacy with a chainlink fence.

all clear! hopefully we'll get the contractor scheduled soon and the chain link will be gone and replaced with a pretty redwood fence. we've got big(ish) plans for this space! more of that to come in time..

view from the street of this unutilized space between the two houses.

the return of an unwelcome houseguest.

what an exciting evening we've had! after eating dinner and watching an old episode of doctor who (we're avid fans!), we were finishing our last blog post when we started hear little taps and other weird noises behind us, about where the front door is. there are definitely lots of cats in the neighborhood, so we paid no attention, until we noticed it was above us. and remembered that a few months back, we had a raccoon problem in the attic...!

so we rushed outside, flashed our light up there and saw.. nothing. we had previously figured out how he was getting in: a few missing pieces of wood in the attic gables allowed enough space for a pesky little raccoon to enter. except, he's not so little because we saw him last time, right after we sealed it all up, and he had tried to enter but couldn't. he was at least 30 lbs. big raccoon. but we thought our problem was solved, and haven't heard a peep in the attic for months. until tonight. and the wire mesh we had used to block the entry still looked intact, which was awfully confusing.

james is a trooper.

we knew the raccoon was definitely back though, because he tore up our side garden, which is something he did the last time:

raccoons are jerks.

anyway, while james was still scouring the outside of the house to try and see where it was coming and going from, i went back inside the house and was able to confirm it was definitely still inside the attice. james took a ladder into the front yard, stood on it, and shined a light at the entry, while i knocked our ceiling with an umbrella to try and scare it out. and it eventually worked. james then used the ladder to get onto the roof, went to the spot the raccoon had managed to get loose and tied the lattice-work together with 10-gauge steel wire and put a cinderblock on top. fingers crossed that holds.