Halloween is fast approaching and we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel 🙂 It’s been almost a year and a half since we broke ground and we are definitely coming into the home stretch now of finishing building our home and restoring the historic landmark Kitchen Brother’s property. While I’ve enjoyed this process so much and absolutely love my crew, I’m also really looking forward to wrapping things up and moving in.

Here’s what’s happened since I last checked in…

The roofers have been hard a work and are nearly done installing our beautiful terra cotta tile roof. The Santa Cruz Green Builders team has been busy multi tracking so many efforts including trenching for all our utilities; tiling the bathrooms; installing the HVAC system, as well as painting the exterior and starting to stain the interior cabinetry.

Brian Sarinova, our resident artist, has been very busy creating our courtyard fountain and it’s been a really amazing process to watch and participate in with him. He has also been laying the foundation for what will be decorative metal connectors between the DG (decompressed granite) courtyard and the historic building veranda, as well as between the DG and the gate in the historic portal at the head of the courtyard. We needed to create a solution to manage these ramp sections as the DG could not be installed directly over these angled areas due not being able to install the necessary base rock to stabilize the DG in this areas. Brian came up with a solution that did not require us to permanently alter the bricks in these areas. It’s a little complicated, so suffice to say it will look amazing and we are happy with the approach he came up with to resolve this challenge.

In addition to introducing us to Brian, our new friend Michael Trainer (owner of Roxa Elixir Cafe) also introduced me to another Brian (Campbell) who he thought might have a solution to our dream of building a living edge dining room table. As it turns out, he did. Brian had been holding onto a ten foot long old growth redwood slab that had been burned in a fire a few years ago. When he came across this old redwood he was hoping it would find a good home. We are proud to say we will be that home. Local artisan Joey Kochlacs will be creating our dining table from this old growth slab; something he is extremely talented at doing and we are honored that we will have one of his pieces in our home when it is finished.

Another cool thing that happened is that while the guys were trenching for utilities they came across what looked to be a bit of a dump site. There was a vacuum pocket in the soil where they found a bunch of broken glass. Brian Sarinova, who has done his fair share of archeological digs and salvage, got excited about this and excavated the remnants to see what he could make of it all. In the end, with his knowledge of dating materials, we were able to discern that the dump was likely Kenneth Kitchen’s and appeared to be where he threw out his glass bottles and jars, as well as one or two tea cups. We salvaged some good remnants and will use the most intact glass jar/bottle bottoms in the “Gaudi” style mosaic work, I plan to do after we move in, within the ruins of the exterior stairwell of the historic building. So fun to find these bits of history!

Another fun thing to note: I’ll be going on the local radio station KSQD this evening at 6:30 to chat about our project and the property with DJ / writer Wallace Baine, who will also be publishing an article on our historic property in the Halloween edition of the local “Good Times” magazine/newspaper.

Hope your Halloween is wicked fun and that you enjoy the pictures of our progress…I’ll be in touch soon with more progress reporting.

PS: we will be opening the construction fence in front of the historic portal and sitting out there to hand out candy Halloween evening. If you’re in the area, drop by and say hi😉