PARADISE ON THE BEACH
Like Jesus, my father was a carpenter. Also like Jesus, I learned the trade but had other plans for my life. In case you're nervous, that's the end of comparing myself to Jesus.
While most kids were busy tearing things apart, I was learning how to build them. For me, daycare consisted of going to work with dad. With scraps of wood and a few nails, I would build little airplanes, towers, and bridges.
I also discovered early on that I knew how electricity worked. Once old enough to drive, my Ford Pinto wagon delivered my services all over town. I retrofitted a Southern California castle with electricity. Yes, I said castle - as in built of stone, complete with a roof that looked like rooks from a chess board. The only thing missing was a moat.
Sadly, at the time I disliked every moment of this construction channel. The only thing I wanted to power up was my guitar amp and distortion pedals, and the only thing I wanted to build was an audience. I didn't realize just how much I would appreciate these skills later in life. It wasn't until just after my 40th birthday that I finally apologized to my dad for not appreciating the gift earlier.
One such use of these skills is the Tamer Condo. The Tamers are a couple from Dallas who were looking for a beach retreat. They wanted a place to escape when the weather at home was less than ideal. Based on my experience with Dallas, they are probably escaping to the condo about 50 weeks per year.
The Tamers found their condo on the beach in San Clemente, the ultimate OC beach town in my opinion. Standing on the balcony for the first time staring at the 220 degree ocean view was an amazing experience. Turning around and looking inside the condo was also amazing, but for all the wrong reasons.
The condo could charitably be described as mountain cabin, but it really felt like you were inside the home of the Keebler Elves. It was like a chipmunk had exploded. Countless trees had selflessly given their lives to skin every square inch of this place, and they had sadly done so in vain. In addition to problematic asthetics, the layout was no better. The kitchen was so dramatically divided from the rest of the living area that you felt like the room was designed for people who didn’t like spending time together.
My task was to both modernize the look and open up the living space. Also, they wanted it done in less than a month. The Tamers went to work selecting surfaces while we went to work filling up twenty refuse bins with Pine. We were able to open up the kitchen completely to the living room while creating an oversized island perfect for entertaining.
THE ILLUSION OF MORE PINE
Where there wasn't pine, there were mirrors installed to help create the illusion of more pine. Removing all of this destroyed all remaining drywall. Since we had plenty of electrical work to do, off it came. Same for the ceilings where a not-so-subtle spanish texture had been liberally applied to hide patches and cracks over the years.
Another job was to create a laundry room. In a thousand square feet, this is quite a challenge. Still, I had seen what Ikea can do with five hundred feet. Knowing that American ingenuity has to be superior to Norwegian, I was able to create a double-doored laundry closet with plenty of room for supplies. Recessed lighting went in throughout, as did gas cooking. In the 1960s electricity was going to be nearly free through nuclear power, but that didn't work out as they had planned.
OFFICE WITH A VIEW
The balcony became my work area. Splitting my time between working my other jobs from my laptop, assembling Ikea kitchen cabinets or just eating a burrito; everything was better on the balcony.
The bathrooms were stripped down and redone as well. The tiny master shower gave way to a walk-in doorless shower complete with natural pebble floor. Stone and rock surfaces were perfectly selected by the Tamers. More accurately, they were selected by Ditto Tamer with clear instructions for me not to let Michael know the cost. To this day he continues to ask why his doorbell was $3000.
We didn't quite make the three week goal I had hoped for, but about a month after we started the Tamers were entertaining guests. We came back in a few weeks later to install the home theater system and complete some loose ends. The only bad part about the timeline, is that I could have used another few weeks on that balcony.
