Arts and Crafts

It has been a hectic several weeks.  After taking about a year off from doing any major house stuff mainly due to burn out, we went crazy.  Just check out our reality show: Homeowners Gone Wild!  A lot of projects that were on the drawing board just came to fruition.

For a long time we have been looking for art for the walls.  It’s been a long and difficult task. We would find something and not like it and return then when we could.  A few areas of the house were causing us pain when trying to get something to fit.  One of our biggest problems was getting something for the living room’s 20-footish wall.  We could not find anything.  Then Deborah found Gallery Direct, which is a local Austin art house that has custom sizes including the 4.5ft by 5.5ft canvas art that now adorns the wall.  We also found some cool black and white plant photos that are above the stairs at an angle.  The real nice thing about Gallery Direct is not only their selection but the option of material you can select from.  We do recommend them.

 Speaking about art and paint… after a year and a half I finally had the time and the will to paint some of our cinder block walls.  Two rooms have part of the wall made from cinder block.  We decided to make them accent walls.  It took forever to figure the colors but we picked Adobe Sun and Colombian Coffee. Anything named after caffeine has gotta be good… except for Sun’s Java.  That is just plain evil. We used the kick ass Mythic Paint that we got from Zinger Hardware.  If you have not been to Zinger Hardware in Austin you have to check it out.  It’s a cool Retro hardware store with modern products.   Now if you never painted cinder block before let me warn you, it’s like painting a sponge.  I don’t mean a Sponge Bob Square Pants type; I mean a bottomless maw of a sponge.  It took several coats of primer and the main color for it to come out even but the final result was awesome.  As one of our neighbors once said “What a difference a colors makes”.

While I was painting away Deborah found a really cool lighting site called Seascape Lamps that made custom lamps and lamp shades.  We found one we liked and ordered it. When we got it something was off but we could not figure out what.  Then my mother-in-law stopped by (Insert Imperial March here) and mentioned that the shade was too bright and that we should tea stain it.  Using the power of the interwebs Deborah looked up how to tea stain and Valla! We now have a great looking lamp.

Those are just a sample of the major things we have gotten done in the interior.  We have been doing lots of little things as well.  The DIY channel and the like have spawned mini projects all over the place.   We have touched up paint, dressed up computer/electrical  wires, clean windows and terminated speaker cabling just to name a few.

Well that’s all for now. Oh wait… we have been doing lots of yard/landscaping as well… but that is a blog post for another time.

The Modern Savage Land

Sometimes when I am sitting in the backyard high up on our composite deck on the back of our very modern home I think about what is behind our backyard. The greenbelt behind us has many creatures which include coyotes, various birds, a lizard or two and some really interesting insects. We also have two empty lots next to our house and with all the rain this year, we ended up with some awesome wild flowers as well. For use of a better term, I came up with "Modern Savage Land".

Due to all of this "nature" we ended up with the largest population of butterflies and caterpillars I have ever seen in one place (other than a butterfly preserve). They just appeared all over our deck, in the yard, in the trees and in the flowers. Most of the butterflies were of the orange/brown variety (I don't know my butterflies) but we also had many white, some brown, and even a a few black or black and blue butterflies). Just walking on the deck I had to be careful not to step on the caterpillars. Just standing there I had them landing on my shoulders, arms, and even on my hand.

The pictures don't do it all justice, but you get the idea. Even today, three weeks later I am still seeing a few caterpillars and butterflies about. I think its not really that savage when you have some butterflies landing on you.....



This one landed on the patio table and got a little sun...

I have a feeling he was tuned into my taking a picture and he wanted to get his best side in.
Three butterflies sitting on the chair. They covered the back deck.

Mr. Caterpillar.

Someone really liked the butterflies. Zuni thought about some bug desert this day!

East Austin Projekts

Spring has just about sprung which means another blog update. Since we hit the sweet spot in the Texas weather I figured I better update blog before I have no motivation. Even though we have not said much in a while the Household Projekt Plan continues. Much like the USSR in its heyday we have a five year plan of things we want done. One of things I noticed when it was colder a few weeks ago was that the outlets in the CMU were “leaking” a ton of heat. I could feel the arctic air flooding the living room. I never really noticed it in the summer but boy did I notice it when it snowed. To fix this I got a bunch of foam insulation gaskets for the light switches and outlets on the outside walls. They worked great! One thing that we were not impressed with about the house was the use of the standard rocker light switch that has been around since Edison invented the light bulb. Now we wanted to replace them with the Lutron Vierti Series but since it would require a second mortgage to replace them all we decided go with something that was not the cost of an iPhone per switch. We decided to go with the Lutron Maestro series instead. One nice thing about this series is that there is an RF wireless option. This is a bonus for us since we have a walkway from the car port to the side door. With the wireless controller we can turn on the light for the walkway at night from the car and not leave it on when we don’t need it. It’s a “green” option that’s also convenient.
So far about a half a dozen switches have been replaced and only 5 million more are left. I did say this was a five year plan… Now one of my pet peeves about the house when we first moved in was that the thermostats from the 1950s (Okay it was not that bad but it felt that way). Now just like the light switches I wanted one type but I settled for something else. What I really wanted was the ecobee thermostat. It has a color touch screen and a Wi-Fi antenna that links it up with the Internet. This just rocks. You can program it via a web site remotely. Did you forget to turn the A/C down while on Vacation? Log in and turn it off! The thing even has a current weather display. The bad thing about this is that they charge you a monthly fee to access the thermostat. That is just plain ridiculous. I’m not paying a monthly fee for that unless it is running SETI@Home in the background and ET plans a visit. Hopefully they will come to their senses sometime and drop that fee. If and when they do I might reconsider my choice. The runner up for the thermostats replacement was the Honeywell Prestige HD Thermostat it does all things the ecobee does except the internet stuff. It has an exterior weather sensor which is a bit much (we did not get it) but otherwise it’s a pretty nice system.

Agave is Three Laws Safe

Well it’s been awhile since I have posted an update. The main reason is that there has not been much interesting going on when you compare it to having a new house built. Oh there is still a 1001 things to do but most of it is not really interesting to write about. I can basically sum it up as that after living a year in Agave things is still going great but things have slowed down a bit.

Right now we are on an art kick since we are sick of the walls being mostly blank. We sent the last year getting most of functional stuff done and now it’s time to liven up the place a bit. Our most recent household purchases were very functional but much needed. We have entered the 21^st century and gotten some robots!

Our first new house guest is Robbie the litter-bot. He has a dirty job since we don’t want to do it. Keeping up with two cats can be a chore at times (I don’t know how our neighbors do it with their six million animals) but Robbie is always up to the task. Robbie is literally a poo cleaning up a machine! To keep with the household theme of going Green he is made up of recycled plastic.

Robbie was a lonely fella. He toiled all day and got no respect. We felt bad for him so we decided to get him a lifelong mate. After ordering his bride via mail order Rosie showed up and it was love at first sight. Okay maybe it was the household humans who were in love more than Robbie. Rosie is a Roomba. The problem with Robbie is that litter gets all over the place and he can’t take care of it. Since our floors are either Bamboo or polished concrete litter seems to go everywhere. We were constantly bushing, vacuuming and mopping the stuff up. That’s were Rosie comes in. Once a day she goes out and cleans up after Robbie. By the time we get home the place is spotless.

Between Robbie and Rosie our daily chore requirements have gone down but I kinda felt left out since all the new household automations are for felines. Is there no robot for the humans? I was beginning to think so until I found Gort. Gort is a dream come true. He is a wonder of modern science. Gort is an ENA 4 Automatic Coffee Center. Now this 8^th wonder of the world is not part of the household staff yet but he needs to be. I’m hoping that he will show up sometime next year but if he does he might get a name change to Hal. It will be 2010 after all.

What they say..

I like to go out on google now and then and put those magic words "Agave Austin" or Nine Sixty Nine Austin" and see what comes up. Sometimes it is complimentary, sometimes it is negative. No matter what everyone has their opinion. The latest search led me to, well, .....funny. You will have to click on the link to see what I mean. After clicking on the link, page down a ways, you dont have to register to see the article on the Cyburbia Forum:

http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38959

When I look at the neighborhood a year after moving in I still love the house. We figured out a way to make our slopng lot which into an unusual and awesome backyard with a great deck. We have not met as many neighbors as we would like, but that has been our fault.

We have not seen as many houses being built this year in our area but the economy and the fact it has been hard to qualify for loans for many many people has caused that. For those of us that are here, I think we have enjoyed the opportunity to live in some truly unique homes, even if some say it is a modern suburbia. I would rather have a house like this, than one of those McMansions.

A Long Time

It seems that no one posts after they move in. I guess it is because we are all so busy for so long putting things away, trying to decorate, and come up with the money for landscaping our backyards. Then there is regular life..... friends, family and all that other stuff. We have not done much to our house lately. After having the landscaping completed in the backyard we suffered some sticker shock. Then we bought some art but one picture was shipped and had issues, the other needs to be reframed. So there they sit, those two pictures in the same spot and nothing has been done. We will have been here for a year in November so I hope that changes soon. We did have one rectangular pot done for the front patio so we will post that and hopefully get more done!

There was a vacation this month (which has not occured for over a year) and went to San Fransico and Monrovia California to visit my brother and his girlfriend. She lives in San Fran and has a very cute place which was built in the early 1900's. She has the midcentury modern thing going on and I took some pictures below.

She has furniture from her parents (they saved it for her) from the early 60's. The couch, chair and I believe pictures are all from that time period.

Although the kitchen is small they added Ikea cabinets which gave them more storage.

This is the dining area, only room for two people, but cute.

We went to the science academy and I love those jellyfish.

One of the more famous San Fran scenes. Fully restored victorian houses with a backdrop of the city.

Lights, Camera, Landscape

Its been a very long time since a posting appeared here. Moving in and winter stopped any type of updates... this seems to be the trend when you move in here! So three months later here are a few changes...

The outside lighting was replaced with the dark-sky friendly down-lights everyone else has. In the newly built houses they have been installing different lights and we knew we did not want to keep those. These are much better and will not blind our neighbors when the lights are on outdoors. Also placed the "eco-friendly" bug lights so we don't have pesky bugs by the door, a must in Austin!


Normally I think people wait awhile to get landscaping done in their backyards but we felt we had to do something right away due to the large slope we had in our backyard. We also needed a sprinkler system for the front yard. I aint watering by hand!

We contacted a few landscapers in January and actually settled on Agave Nursery (not any relation to the Agave neighborhood)! Since it was off-season we were able to have our backyard landscaped relatively quickly. We gave them total freedom on design but then changed a few things (types of plants etc). We wanted xeriscape and we got it! Very little water in the backyard! They also provided further phases for the future (when we have saved our pennies). They did a great job and it has a zen like feeling in the back yard now. There is lots of metal work for steps, stones, cactus and some mulch (which we can modify in future). The cactus was new for us but we really liked it.

Steps leading up You can see the metal and crushed limestone.

Steps leading down...

Interesting design by the deck, you can see the posts for the deck and this is kind of a walkway by the trees.

Cactus planters all along the steps. I have not learned the name of all cactus but the yard does have Inland Sea Oats, Mexican Feather Grass and Gulf Mulhy. The tree is a Palo Verde (desert museum) tree and there are no thorns!

Rusted pipe planters with cactus.. these things have some thorns.. or um needles. The pot to the side has an agave of course.

Colorful pots with cactus.. and more of that limestone on the ground!

Amanda from Agave Nursery came up with this really great big beautiful blue pot on the deck with another plant. You can see these from the road. Thanks to Agave Nursery and Amanda for the great ideas, design and wonderful work!

Hopefully posting will occur more often now boxes are unpacked!