What to do with ugly security doors

If you live in L.A. you might have a security door, they are ugly but useful. I thought plants might brighten the appearance of my door, I think I will add some more.

Fire Place

Fall is here and it's getting a little cooler in Los Angeles, soon I might be using my fire place. The beautiful, green, suspended 1950s fire place was one of the first projects we did at the house. It involved tiling the wall and floor, installing a chimney, and suspending the fireplace from the ceiling. I spent lots of time in the attic preaching on small beams like a bird, good thing I'm not afraid of spiders.

We found the fireplace on Craigslist, the man we bought it from said it wouldn't fit in his small Mexican Villa, so he had to sell it. It had never been used before and came with the original paper work. We also had trouble fitting it into our small villa, we had to pop off the door jams to just squeeze it in. It sat on the porch for a week. It also included the original chains for hanging and a different fire screen handle, both where brass and a little cheap looking, so we updated it with a cleaner more contemporary options. I still need to find a replacement knob flue switch. Molding will also be added around the tile edges after we finish fixing and painting the walls.

Wild At Heart was filmed on my street.

You can see the side of my house at the end of the video, when Dale is "dancing" in front of the big brown house (my neighbor's house). The interior house scenes where filmed at the house 2 doors down from my house.

Removing Archway

The main room in the house had a strange archway that broke up the room. I felt it took away from the great high ceilings, and wasn't really interesting, so we removed it. While removing the archway we discovered it was once a wall, that was trimmed down at some point. We also found old strips of original wall paper, under the drywall, I'll post a photo of them soon. Total cost of the project was about $20.00 not including food and drinks.

I did do one, small, cheap rehab on the front yard. The front yard was aging, not so pretty crab grass and a extremely large beavertail cactus and agave. I made two planter boxes dug out the grass and dirt around the boxes. Then, I laid down some landscape fabric and covered it with black mulch. Later, I framed the planter boxes with some nice rocks I found around the yard.

What's growing in my planter boxes? Box 1 Green tomatillos, Japanese Pumpkin, Variety of Melons, Lemon Grass, Crock Neck Squash, Red tomatoes. Box 2 Zucchini, Corn, Lots of Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Basil.

It was cheap but, lots of work.

Here is a closer look a the Victorian fishscale.

I purchased a house a little over a year ago in Pasadena, CA. I knew it was an old house, the real estate paper work stated 1916, but after further research, I discovered it was built in 1888. My goal is to rehab the house, I want to respect it's history, but not be confined to it. I have a very small budget and will work on the house piece by piece while living in it.

The house has not been altered much since 1888, a bathroom was added, the back porch was converted into a kitchen and the electrical was improved.

It should be a long, challenging and rewarding endeavor, I hope you enjoy.