Many of us caught the edible garden craze a few years back, but some of us may have found that a farm-to-table garden isn’t always the most aesthetically appealing scene. This doesn’t have to be the case.
Using edibles in landscape design can increase the health and economic benefits we derive from our gardens, and can be done in such a way as to increase a garden’s visual appeal as well. Working within the bigger picture of the overall garden style, thoughtfully incorporating decorative containers, various plant forms, hardscape structures, and blending edibles with ornamentals, are all ways to enhance the ornamental garden while reaping the many benefits of growing your own food.
Although the traditional kitchen garden, potager, or parterre, has its own kind of traditional beauty, that may or may not jive with the aesthetic of your home or existing garden. Is your home and landscape modern, with clean lines and minimal plant materials? Consider swapping out the traditional wood planter boxes for Corten or stainless steel, in a variety of shapes and shades. Food-safe options for these are available.
Arranging your plantings in carefully chosen blocks of contrasting color and texture can also achieve a beautifully clean, minimalist look. Do you have a Mediterranean villa theme happening? Consider planting your favorite herbs, vegetables, or fruits in beautiful, deep ceramic pots, arranged in groups throughout the garden.
Some edible plants provide their own structural support, and some require additional support. This gives us an opportunity to play with the valuable element of verticality in our outdoor spaces. Vines such as beans and peas, grapes, or kiwi can form a delicious, living green wall. They can be trained onto an existing wall with a few wires, drape gracefully over arbors, allowing the fruit to hang for easy harvest, intertwine with artfully shaped bamboo or twig structures, or climb the living wood of another plant.
Fruiting trees provide another opportunity for creating sculptural vertical elements in the garden with some regular aesthetic pruning, the traditional art of espalier. An added benefit of espaliering fruit trees is that they can fit into narrow spaces, such as along a wall. Not enough space for a traditional orchard in your yard, you say? With espalier techniques, you still get to have some fruit trees!
Another strategy many aesthetically minded gardeners employ is the blending of the edible elements with the ornamental landscape. In some cases, this benefits our tender and high-maintenance annual food crops, by providing a more ecologically diverse climate for them. Companion planting can increase resistance to pests and improve soil nutrition.
Some of our vegetables also have aesthetically appealing qualities of their own such as flowers, fruit, interesting leaf texture or color, or plant structure, which can provide visually interesting components that change with the seasons. Think of the bold statement made by the flowers of chives or artichokes, the deep violet drama of a red cabbage or tree collard leaf, the verticality of a stalk of corn, or the way a pomegranate tree transitions from golden-leafed to red-globed glory in the fall.
While annual edible plants may sometimes require more maintenance than your average perennial ornamental gardens, the benefits they offer are multi-faceted. Being in touch with the rhythm of the seasons brings not just food to the table or a reason to work up a sweat outside, but psychological benefits as well. For gardeners with less time on their hands, there are plenty of nurseries that sell small vegetable starts—no waiting for seeds to germinate. Also, not to be overlooked, is the fact that the Bay Area offers the unique gift of a year-round growing season.
All it takes to get started is tucking a few herbs into the edge of that bed by the back door, and you’ll be on your way. Along with enjoying the visual beauty of your garden, why not enjoy the taste?
Suzanne Arca, ASLA, ALPD, CLCA is the Founder and Principal of Arca Design Group, a full-service design-build landscape architecture firm based in the East Bay. Arca Design Group is a Certified-Green and -Bay-Friendly landscaping company. Suzanne is also an instructor in the Landscape Architecture and Landscape Horticulture departments at U.C. Berkeley and Merritt College. Contact her to design your dream garden! arcadesigngroup.com
As painting contractors, we at Arana are very attuned to the needs of the homeowners we serve, and the desire that many people have these days to be more “green” when it comes to certain products, processes, and material choices. One example is the increasing appeal and popularity of solar. In our position, we look at solar from a purely logistical perspective. In the order of operations, if you are thinking of adding solar to your roof, you would do that before hiring us to do an all-over exterior paint job, and after any repairs or roof replacement that your roof might need.
But, when the state of California recently announced that all cars must be electric-powered by 2035, we became intensely interested in the subject! In general, we agree that “green” is good. And overall, solar is good. However, we noticed that the recent announcement brought into focus for us certain questions like: Is the transition to solar truly as green as it intends to be? What is the intent vs. the impact of changing over to green technologies? And who actually gets to take advantage of green technologies and practices?
If there is a transition from gas powered cars to electric, by association, it seems clear that there needs to be a transition to alternative power sources, like solar, to further reduce reliance on fossil fuels. From our perspective, it is interesting to consider that a push for electric cars and solar to support that would also place more “power” in individuals’ reach, decentralizing energy production and control.
That then points to the question of equitable access to energy. The recent heatwave further highlighted serious concerns about the reliability of the grid overall when in the same breath, while stating the intention for all of us to go all electric, the state then asked residents to refrain from charging their electric cars at home so as not to strain the grid!
So, in 2035 California, if you have an electric car AND solar, you might be okay? If not, you might be staying home that day from work?
Having had personal experience with solar over the past two years in a rural area prone to grid disruption, Ernesto and I have our own opinions on whether the solar industry needs more time to mature before it can be a dependable and affordable source of energy for all. In addition, there are the potential social and environmental impacts relating to the mining of lithium required for batteries, which also leads to inconsistent supply; plus many more skilled contractors and reliable parts suppliers and manufacturers are going to be needed to support the increasing demand.
(See our blog article “Bay Areas Schools Train Next Gen Tradespeople“ for further discussion regarding the challenges of increasing the base of available and competent contractors.)
For an in-depth look at the ins-and-outs of solar, and to explore some of the complex questions that arise around this topic such as equitable access and long-range viability, we interviewed our colleague, Ben Giustino, a licensed general contractor and solar installation expert with A1 Sun (a1suninc.com). Ben has 15 years of experience working in solar power and energy storage, working alongside his parents since the founding of the Company in 2007.
The family’s interest in solar power traces back to Ben’s father, Larry Giustino’s childhood. Larry manufactured a photovoltaic cell through a Bell Telephone Lab school program in San Diego in elementary school at age 11 — and his experience continued through designing solar and thermal systems in the 1970s and 80s, and on to the 2000s. Ben and his family’s passion for and knowledge of the solar industry make them an ideal resource for our customers and we are excited to share this interview with you.
What is your process for advising a homeowner on how big/what capacity system they will need? What are the pros and cons?
An average 2,000 square foot home uses around 6,600kWh/year. If you have a South-facing roof, free of shading, that would be a roughly 4kW solar array. However every home is unique. In other words, two identical houses could have completely different consumption rates based on occupancy and how that individual (or family) uses electricity. We size systems for homes based on consumption, roof space, and budget.
The cost of installing solar essentially is you prepaying for all of the electricity your new system will produce over its whole usable lifetime. Solar is expensive up front. You want to make sure you have a design that works for you. You also want to make sure you get a good installer that will be there to service the system.
How do factors such as pitch of roof, presence of trees, direction it faces, determine if someone can use solar power?
For a good installation, you have to take into consideration anything that is important to the homeowner, plus site challenges or constraints. In certain situations, solar is not a good idea. The main reason you wouldn’t want to install solar is if there is no access to sun. The more sun on your roof, the better the power production and the cost-effectiveness of solar. As long as you have sun, solar makes sense at any scale. With access to sun, you can produce enough power to operate a single cell phone, to a single residence, to an apartment complex, to an entire city.
In order to have access to power at night, you will need to pair solar with storage and/or other forms of generation.
People should be aware that an old roof that needs to be replaced, old electrical that needs to be upgraded, a difficult site, a steep roof, lots of shading, etc., all affect how expensive it is to install a system and/or how quickly a system pays back.
One thing I would advise is to never think you should install solar on a roof that needs to be replaced. You really want to install a system and then maintain it for as long as you can. The longer your system operates, the less expensive it is to produce each kWh of energy. Let me repeat that for the people in the back, The longer your system is in operation, the less expensive each kWh of produced energy gets.
A cool thing to look for will be vehicle to home or vehicle to grid. This is where not only can you use the solar to charge your car, you can also use the car to power your home or offset peak demand on the grid in the evening. This is possible, but still just in its infancy. It will be a few years before code, vehicles, and technology are aligned. Currently, it’s awesome just to be able to charge your car from solar.
How does becoming energy-independent work? Self-supply electricity at home, with a battery?
Since this is a newsletter focused on homeowners, and residential solar and storage is what I do, I’ll stick with homes as the scale to focus on. But really, since solar is scalable, what I’m saying about homes can be scaled up as big as you want to go (*with some serious details to take into account) or down to powering a calculator.
So there are essentially three ways to generate and/or store electricity in a home. These can be mixed and matched:
A. Solar that is grid tied with no battery
This is the majority of solar systems you see in your neighborhood today. During the day you produce power. You export the energy you don’t use on site to the grid. Those kWh are banked at the rate exported by the utility, who sells it to your neighbors. Then at night, you consume power, which the utility adds to your bill. At the end of the year the utility gives you a yearly “True Up” bill where they either bill you for net usage or give you a credit for over consumption (at wholesale). This explanation is an oversimplification of NEM which are the interconnection rules for generation facilities.
Grid-tied-no-battery is actually the most cost effective way to have solar on your home. It is also the most environmentally friendly way to have solar, because it uses less components, meaning it takes up less raw materials, less carbon emissions from shipping from the manufacturer, etc.
B. Solar with battery which is also grid tied
All of the NEM rules still apply with imports and exports of kWh, but what happens when you have batteries is that you store your energy and use it on site, rather than exporting and importing from the utility.
This has some financial return, but it does not currently improve ROI because of the cost of the batteries. The real reason to have batteries is if you need power when the grid goes down.
Currently the reasons I would advise batteries is if:
You rely on a medical device that needs access to power during a blackout
Loss of power would lead to financial losses, such as with a home-based business, which would offset the cost to install
If you just really want batteries
If the current cost to install batteries is insignificant to you
If you are prepping for complete collapse of the grid — in which case, make sure you prep other things like food, water, bow and arrows for the zombies…
OK, joking about the zombies. But, if you can’t say yes to any of the rest of those bullet points, my suggestion would be to wait on batteries.
As technologies continue to evolve in the industry, batteries will get better than what we have now; there will be more options that will be more capable, and hopefully cheaper, in the future.
You can always retrofit an existing grid tied solar array with batteries later.
Taking your system off grid is possible with batteries, however, you either want to slim down what you are trying to back-up or supersize your solar and battery — and get ready to fight PG&E. It is theoretically legal in California to leave the grid entirely; however current building code requirements include connection, meaning that homeowners are unlikely to get cleared for it.
C. Generator
You can also leave the grid by relying on a generator — by itself, or paired with battery back-up and solar. Currently powering a generator means relying on gas or diesel, but as time goes on, who knows? The downside of generators is that they are noisy, need refueling, need maintenance to operate, and typically are only used in outages.
What else do you want our readers to know about switching to solar?
Being able to produce and store your own electricity allows you to be potentially more self reliant. Right now it makes sense to get solar because you get good interconnection rules, it creates an eventually carbon negative generation source, and it helps to push California/USA/the world’s generation towards renewable electricity generation.
Now or later, you can add storage. Lithium based batteries are finally at scale, meaning they are relatively affordable with less maintenance required (as compared to Lead Acid batteries). They also allow you to store your cleanly generated power and use it on site. Batteries also can be used to help reduce peak evening demand on the grid, as your system will likely be exporting power to your neighbors in the evening.
However, batteries will get better. I’m hopeful for more environmentally-friendly batteries. My personal favorite (which is a viable option now) is Saltwater batteries. In theory, they are great for stationary applications, pose no fire danger, rely on plentiful ingredients, are relatively benign, and are reusable/recyclable. However, they are limited in how much energy they can store and deliver, compared to other battery types, are larger in size, and cost is still fairly prohibitive. We will see, as time goes on, how this technology evolves.
How does individual homes switching to solar impact the larger community? The environment?
Solar in general is beautiful. Producing Electricity from the sun. Solar on homes is practical. You are making something you need right on site where you need it. Storage makes sense because then you can store energy for when you need it. Solar and Energy Storage as an industry also creates good-paying local careers world-wide, and hopefully more domestic manufacturing jobs, as the industry grows.
The more solar that is installed, the greener the energy mix on the grid is during the day. While solar does take natural resources to create, the longer it is in use, the more CO2 emissions it offsets. In reality, solar panels can last for 50+ years. I’ve seen panels from the 70s still in use on an off-grid home in Northern California. If you charge your car from your solar, you reduce the footprint of having a car, which is still not insignificant, but every bit of reduction is good.
How do we (as responsible members of our local communities) make solar generated power more available to those who cannot afford to put a system on their roof? To renters?
There are many options here. The biggest pathway to making solar more accessible would be to have the apartment complexes or communities join together to install one shared system, with renters or lower-income homeowners having the option to buy into that system.
The larger the system, the lower the cost-per-watt to install, the more people that start-up cost is divided between, the cheaper your electricity gets. In the industry, this is known as “Community Solar.” Community Solar, also called “Shared Solar,” is essentially a private enterprise, multi-owner-collective, or government entity building a micro-grid — and PG&E does not like that.
To learn more about this issue of unequal access and possible solutions, visit:
Currently, Yes. And at rates that make it practical to make the investment and have it payback in a reasonable amount of time.
Is solar getting cheaper as the industry evolves?
Yes and no. Over the past 15 years, solar has gotten less expensive to install. Panels are less expensive, equipment is better, and companies can generally do it better and/or faster. But the utilities companies don’t like Solar. Solar impacts their profit margins. Thus, they work to make it more difficult/expensive to install with added bureaucracy, rules, fees, etc.. Utility companies are actively trying to undermine the financial value of producing your own power.
So, while solar has gotten cheaper, utility companies are actively doing what they can to reestablish monopoly. NEM 3.0 (a revised “Net Energy Metership” policy) is their all-out attack on distributed renewables, a.k.a. rooftop solar, and this proposal is currently being debated by the California Public Utilities Commission.
If you want to get involved with advocating for your right to have and benefit from solar, visit: solarrights.org
Does a solar system have to be replaced/updated every 10 or 20 years?
Depending on how well-sized, designed, installed, and maintained it is, a modern solar system can operate well beyond the 25 years the modules and inverters are warranted for. Systems can also be updated over time with more panels, batteries, car chargers, home automation, etc.
The only part of the system that will need to be replaced over decades of use should be the inverters. Given the quality of current materials on the market, and if your system is well-installed, you should be able to use the panels and hardware/wiring/etc. for the next 50 years, or at least, in my mind, that is the hope.
All photos in this article provided by A-1 Sun, except for the featured/top image.
In February our daughter Sofia was accepted into the Academy for Business and Finance at our local San Leandro district high school. The Academy is a three-year program that provides academic and technical training to prepare students for the workforce as well as for higher education.
These types of programs are a critical resource at a time when college tuition grows more out of reach for many families — and are imperative for businesses as the availability of skilled office — and field-labor has become more-and-more limited.
As described in a recent article, “Oakland Schools Go Back to the Future With Vo-Tech,” in Oakland Magazine, paraphrasing Emiliano Sanchez, Oakland Unified School District’s director of Career Technical Education trades and apprenticeships, “It’s been at least a couple decades since the vast majority of Oakland students got any exposure to anyone in their K-12 education who knew anything about the merits of going into the skilled trades.”
The article notes the shortage of skilled labor nationwide, as well as in Oakland. There is a concern that with more than 50 percent of the skilled-trades workforce due to retire in the next five-to-10 years:
“Right now, the average age of an apprentice is 28, which means that people graduate from high school at 18 and they basically float around for 10 years until they find construction as a meaningful career,” says Sanchez. “There won’t be enough talent to fill that void, if we aren’t lifting it up in the schools.”
In her “College and Careers” class, Sofia shared with me that a presentation was given by a local plumbing union, stating that the electrical and plumbing trades are lucrative and viable long-term career options for students.
This is great news for many of our industry colleagues who search month-after-month for viable candidates to hire!
The effort to create an educational system that is relevant and enables students to step into a real-world career more quickly also upgrades the utility of OUSD public schools at time when they face increasing pressure. The most recent teacher strike highlights the budget and political issues the system has been facing.
Oakland is not the only school district offering these types of pathways for students. San Leandro offers even more varied options including the San Leandro Academy for Multimedia (SLAM) and the Social Justice Academy (SJA) and Academy for Business and Finance (ABF). The district has always maintained Its Auto and Wood Shop.
The San Leandro school district website states, “The purpose of the Academies is to help students excel through rigorous courses and introduce them to career options and paths for after high school. Acceptance in an academy requires an application.” Sofia also interviewed for the position. Read more
As Oakland Magazine reports regarding the OUSD career-track offerings: “In the past couple of years, the Oakland school district has placed a greater emphasis on career technical education under its new ‘linked learning’ initiative, also known as ‘wall-to-wall pathways.’ In linked learning, nearly every Oakland public high school student in the city must select an academic career path or academy — such as health, engineering, computer science, biotechnology, or architecture and design — by the 10th grade, with hopes that it will encourage more students to graduate and motivate them toward real world careers.”
Sanchez addresses the stigma of blue-collar careers such as those in Construction. “I’m not going to lie and say it’s been easy. But my work has been working with individuals and trying to show them that skilled trades also are applied math and sciences. It’s all part of the same realm — architecture, construction, and engineering. All three go together. You can’t have one without the other, and there’s just no success without the other. If an architect designs something, but there’s never an engineer, and it never gets built out, all he did was a nice drawing and stuff.”
You may not realize it, but painting is as much about the process a painter uses as the painter themselves! At Arana Craftsman Painters, we leave little to chance because we follow a tried-and-true set of steps.
These crucial steps are our “secret sauce” so to speak and it has allowed us to consistently build a reputation of reliability, exceptional quality and professionalism over the last 17 years.
The steps to exceptional exterior painting include:
Protecting your home and environment (surrounding surfaces, land- scaping, vehicles, etc.)
Scraping/sanding to remove old layers of paint that will negatively impact the integrity of your new paint at a standard that meets our 5 Year Warranty
Five Year Warranty
Thorough cleaning of the exterior of your home or property to remove any contaminants
Priming, Caulking and Patching
Exceptional Painting
These are our “3P’s” of a successful project and the key to why people love working with Arana Craftsman Painters!
Planning & Staging
Pre-Job Walkthrough: Our Production Manager will meet with you prior to the scheduled project start date to confirm the start date, scope, sequencing, and colors. Essentially, all expectations are reconfirmed to assure a smooth handoff between our Estimator and our Production Department. Proper communication is the key to exceptional quality and to you having a great painting experience. At this point, when we arrive at your project, our Crew Leader and Crew have a solid plan as to what processes will take place first, and in what areas.Lincoln-street-2-1
Color Consultation: Arana Craftsman Painters works with top San Francisco Bay Area Color Consultants and on projects needing a consultation, the Consultation is included in our bid. Having colors chosen ahead of time makes your life so much easier. We’ll even put up swatches so you can see the color in real life and make a final decision.
Set-up: We set up a neat and organized area for our equipment, tools, and products, a home base, where we can safely and efficiently manage your project.
Dedicated Team: In addition to a dedicated Production Manager, every project has a dedicated Crew Leader who works closely with you, our Production Manager, and our office, to assure timely resolution to any challenges that arise, as well as quality control, sequencing, and assuring that you have an amazing painting experience!
Protection
We invest heavily in all the correct tools and materials and use quality plastic, drop cloths, paper, and tape to protect the surfaces of your home and environment that are not scheduled to be painted.
Preparation
Paint will not adhere properly without expert preparation. Proper preparation is the cornerstone of exceptional quality.
We sand, scrape, and prime as appropriate to ensure proper adhesion. We contain particulate and dust exposure per Environmental Protection Agency safety standards and Arana Craftsman Painters is an EPA Lead-Safe Certified Contractor. EPA Lead-Safe Firm
For the safety of everyone involved, are all the painting contractors you have bidding on your project EPA Lead-Safe Certified?
After primer is applied, we patch, caulk and fill for aesthetic and in some cases sealing purposes or to prevent water incursion.
Cabinet painting is the easiest way to create a major change in your kitchen without demolition, dust, and downtime. You don’t have to break through walls or change out cabinets in order to experience a complete refresh and transformation of your space. It’s also an economical and eco-friendly choice, preserving our forests (and budgets) by re-using existing wood rather than replacing with new.
The photos we are sharing in today’s article are from a client’s gorgeous Mediterranean mansion in Piedmont. The kitchen cabinets were a combination of painted (olive) and a serviceable blond-wood stain. Taking them to the next level with a refinish and paint, and choosing to unify the look with a single cabinet color, utterly transformed the room.
The Process: After carefully removing all of the cabinet doors and drawers, every surface has to be thoroughly sanded, and any needed cosmetic repairs are made to the underlying wood at this stage. And then we apply a stain-blocking primer to prevent the color of the original wood from bleeding through the layers of new paint, which is the last step.
For the painting industry nerds among us: this project features Renner paint (www.rennerwoodcoatings.com) — a product we have been working with more recently that we are really liking. It has more urethane than similar finishes, which means it dries a little harder and is potentially longer-lasting.
While repainting is a much cheaper option than tearing out the old and installing brand-new factory-painted-and-baked cabinets, we like to make sure our clients understand that new cabinets would be more resilient than refinished ones.
Given the beating that all kitchens take, especially in the higher traffic areas — around the sink and silverware drawer, and on the side of the island or countertop that hosts tall stools, the need for touch-ups with refinished cabinets will be more likely. This is a very important factor to consider. Thus, if you are a DIY-type, or not too finicky about scuff marks, refinishing rather than replacing might work well for you.
For the past 10 years, Ernesto and I have been sending our kids to summer camp in one form or another via the Parks and Rec Department of the City of San Leandro. Of all the camps we’ve tried for them over the years, Chabot Day Camp has been one of their absolute favorites. Our kids are now 18 and 15, and this summer, one of our kids will be returning as a Counselor in Training or “CIT”, i.e.: assistant to the Senior Counselors who themselves, year after year, return to Chabot Day Camp. You know it is a great program when Counselors and kids keep coming back to see each other and to recreate the magic from the summers before.
In operation for three generations, Chabot Day Camp is held in Chabot Park (not to be confused with Lake Chabot) and runs like the famed sleepaway camps we tend to think of as mostly only occurring on the East Coast — just without the sleepover part or the travel!
One of the many fabulous staffers, who has shown nothing but love for our kids over many years, a constant for the program, is Camp Director, Liz “Skippy” Hodgins. Not surprisingly, Liz was a camper herself as a kid, and she joined the staff in 2011. “This is my twelfth summer, and I love it!” she says.
Liz describes why the camp and location are so special: “As soon as you step into Chabot Park, you are transported. It’s a magical place where kids can just be free and be themselves; they can be goofy and silly and no one is going to tell them to be quiet or stop singing and dancing! At the end of the day, kids go home so dirty and smelling like eucalyptus. And then it’s shower and lights-out. The kids are tired, the staff is tired — everyone gets 10 hours of sleep!”
She adds, “Camp is a great opportunity for kids to unplug, be outside, make new friends and engage in activities that boost self-esteem and build team-building and communication skills. For example, in arts and crafts, we really focus on the process. It doesn’t matter what the end product looks like! What the camper decides to do with the materials, how they put their own stamp on it — my favorite is how the results all look a little different!”
As Rec Supervisor, Liz oversees the staff at all of San Leandro’s camps: Chabot, plus Camp Hooty Hoo, located across town, and two preschool programs at different locations.
With Chabot Day Camp’s two-week sessions, the kids have ample time to settle in, bond with their Senior Counselors and CITs (who all have fun nicknames), and enjoy all the activities that one associates with sleepaway camp: campy camp songs (Flee-Fly, Flee, Fly Flo and Calam-eye, Calam-eye Calamine Lotion), capture the flag, dodgeball, art projects, and a home-grown theatrical performance at the end of the second week.
“Family Night is on the last Wednesday of each session. Families and staff and campers gather over food, we put on a show: each group sings songs or makes up a skit, or a dance routine. Some are funny and some are serious. The groups practice all session for this. Kids step outside their comfort zones, come out of their shells, and show their families what camp is all about.”
Besides the fact that the camp provides a fun, safe place for kids in nature during summer, what I as a parent appreciate most is that the program fosters relationships and leadership skills by providing a track for kids who have grown up going to the camp to become Senior Counselors in a paid position or even employees of the City’s Parks and Recreation division — which operates a variety of community enrichment programs throughout the city.
Another aspect of the camp that makes it special is how the city has kept it as affordable as possible. Fees for each two-week session currently range from $285-315 for residents and $333-365 for non-residents — and lunch is included in the price.
I grew up in a small town on a farm and sometimes city life is challenging for me. I miss the orchards and wide-open spaces and freedom of movement that was part of my childhood. But moving to the Bay Area gave me the diversity of community and a little more excitement with the bustle of city life that I craved.
While San Leandro is way more city than country, it retains a small-town feel with friendly neighbors and a great local school district, safe, flat streets where my kids can walk to school, and have had their share of running amok with their school and neighborhood friends. Also, my family’s farm had cherry orchards, and this city is known for the cherry groves that used to be here: the cherry is in the city’s emblem and they still hold an annual cherry festival, just like in my hometown.
Our kids have thrived here, and Chabot Day Camp is just one of the many reasons why we love San Leandro!
Most people know about the “Painted Ladies,” the famed San Francisco Victorians, and some may also know about the populous and sprawling houseboat and floating homes community in Sausalito, but few have heard of the tiny, eclectic Barnhill Marina in Alameda.
Tucked away in a nook just beyond the entrance to the Webster Street Tube, this small harbor community is made up of a collection of floating homes, many of which are just as brightly colored as those famous Victorians, and some of which Arana has had the distinct honor of helping to restore and maintain as well as beautify, with paint.
As noted in a recent article in Alameda Magazine, “Barnhill Marina is a colorful community of 42 houses bobbing peacefully on the Oakland Estuary in Alameda across from Jack London Square. To be clear, these aren’t houseboats — these are floating dockside houses that have no motors and aren’t designed to go anywhere.”
The reality of living on a houseboat is that there is no solid ground.
When painting this lovely home, our team, featuring Julio and Raymondo, had to very quickly adjust to balancing on ladders on floating docks and barges, which float alongside and independently of the home — that is also floating.
The huge, heavy, flat-platform barge itself was a three-person operation to move into position — on the estuary-facing side of the house.
(Unfortunately for our photographer, the barge had already been moved back to its storage location when she returned to take “After” photos. The homeowner suggested borrowing a kayak. Julie ended up taking pictures, as best she could, teetering on the outer-edge walkway of the floating home itself, and getting a view of the home from the deck of a helpful neighbor.)
Like so much of the Bay Area, the architecture of floating homes is varied, and the color schemes are bright and bold. The striking color palette for this project was selected with the guidance of our recommended color consultant, Cass Morris. Notably, the homeowner had a very strong opinion on the starting place for the process: her favorite colors are blue and orange — and she adores them together. She has a beloved bike in these colors — why not her house?
Colorful homes and very personalized homes are a hallmark of this community, as described in Alameda Magazine: “Artists, working professionals, and retired people all cohabitate in (this) little oasis of zany-colored, kitschily-decorated mini-Victorians. Some are big kayakers, sailors, and paddle boarders — others just enjoy observing the water.”
While at Barnhill Marina, anything goes, and usually, the bolder, the better, this project’s colors were (like all projects that Cass consults on) chosen with an eye toward how the home will look in relation to its neighbors. The pops of orange against the blue echo the gray body with red trim of the home on one side, while also harmonizing with the orange body of the floating home on the next berth down, and echoing the warmth of the sunny yellow exterior of the home when facing the other direction.
And though kitsch can be the name of the game for many residents, with Cass’s help, this homeowner elected to simplify some of the nautical-themed features of her home and even some of the traditional Victorian gingerbread details by having us paint them one solid color rather than the previous multiple-colors — creating a sleeker, more modern look.
This technique of color placement can change the character of the home’s presentation without making more substantive physical changes.
On our advice and using our contractor referral, the homeowner took the necessary steps to restore the home and increase its longevity by installing new siding on two exterior walls. This work is in addition to the regular restoration practices that we employ when doing a whole-house exterior paint job: Arana removed the peeling and failing paint, sanded all of the window frames and detailed wood elements, and spot-covered the nailheads with a rust-preventative red-oxide primer (these spots are visible in our “During” photos), and gave the home a full coat of primer.
This primer stops future bleeding and streaking seeping up from underneath — a chronic problem in the salty marine air, and which would mar an otherwise-lovely decor.
Hands-down, this is one of the most fun projects we’ve done! And I think we can all agree that it is Cass Morris’s most uniquely bright and bold color selection project, to date.
A question we get a lot at Arana is, “What can I do to refresh my kitchen, without going into a full-scale remodel?”
Of course, our answer is, “New paint colors!”
Also hanging new wallpaper (a service we provide) can add layers of interest to a space. Changing the colors of just your cabinets can make a space feel personalized and make it come alive.
Some of our favorite collaborations with interior designers and contractors in our portfolio focus on cabinet colors. In this first example, on a project designed by LMB Interiors, painting the cabinets, changing out the hardware, and wallpapering one wall, all made a revolutionary change in the feel of this room:
Design credit: LMB Interiors. View more photos, here.
Granted the new tile and countertops also helped. But it is noteworthy that there were no structural changes to the room. A refresh, rather than a remodel.
This next kitchen received more of a design-build treatment. But what we want to highlight for you is how the specified cabinet color, an unlikely taupe tone, personalized the space, added drama, and beautifully grounded the other details of the design (also by LMB Interiors), including new tile, drawer pulls and plumbing fixtures, and the family’s collection of ceramic jugs.
And then, for this Rockridge classic turn-of-the-century Craftsman-style home, we were tasked with the job of painting ever-so-carefully around the gorgeous factory-finished blue cabinets. We were so pleased that the homeowner agreed to a high-gloss, oil-based white. We loved the choice to paint the rest of the cabinets a different color, and how each color and finish highlights the distinctive grain of the wood top on the island.
This kitchen is part of a wonderful indoor-outdoor project we did with McCutcheon Construction. We also painted the exterior of the home and the new, expansive, back entrance.
After several years of living in that beautiful home of yours, the natural processes of wear and tear have taken a toll on some of the fixtures inside your home. Chief among these is the cabinets in your kitchen, they’re literally an eyesore, what with the discolorations and the general lack of interest they add to your kitchen. It’s time for a change.
That change though will usually mean you have to spend some green, to get some new green into your kitchen. You could surely do something else with that green; probably reinvest it in your 401 (K) or other useful venture. With that money saved, a forest somewhere doesn’t have to lose a beloved member of the community of oxygen providers for the planet.
What’s the solution? Repainting your old cabinet and giving it a new lease on life. But why would that be better than, say, refacing, or even replacing them?
Benefits of repainting the cabinet
Economical
The main point of repainting your cabinets is to save you some serious green, as well as keep the oxygen makers right in the place where they’re needed most. Replacing the cabinets requires a lot of wood that as you know, costs a pretty penny. Aside from this, the accessories that go with it are also quite expensive.
A team of professionals who will assess your cabinets and then come up with a plan to clean, sand down, and then repaint them, and repaint the surrounding features, is actually a fraction of the cost of refacing and replacement.
Convenience
Your home is usually the place where you feel most at ease after a long day of work. Imagine having to be without it for several weeks. That’s exactly what happens when a replacement of kitchen cabinets is going on. You will lose the ability to use your kitchen for a minimum of three weeks. Depending on the amount of work needed to be done, this period can increase to over eight weeks.
Repainting is the most convenient and least time-consuming option. In one week, you have a gleaming kitchen in colors and patterns of your choice, ready for you to use.
Face Lift.
Ever had to work in an environment that wasn’t in the least bit appealing? Yes, that’s the same environment that has developed in your own kitchen. A drab, discolored, and worn kitchen will just suck the life out of the activities you undertake in the kitchen. A spot of repainting the cabinets will help inject life back into not only the cabinets but the kitchen as a whole.
From the improved look to the freshness that the repainting will add, your kitchen will become lively, and an excellent place to have a discussion with your spouse or child while you work. The beauty and the magic of the spruced-up kitchen will make the heavy conversations easier to tolerate.
If your kitchen cabinets don’t need to be completely broken down for a new one, then a repaint is the only thing you will need to inject life into the once drab kitchen.
For A Free Cabinet Painting Estimate Call 510-567-9559
The holidays are a great time to celebrate those around us. But let’s just say we here at Arana would not blink an eye if you took these suggestions and applied them, liberally, to amassing your own gift pile.
Succulents as art, group craft, and decor
Living succulent arrangements from Sarah Dunn’s Wild Goddess designs are a good choice at any time of year, but since wreaths are a thing for many people in December, we especially wanted to point you toward the art she creates from the wide range of colors and textures that these drought-tolerant plants-as-art offer.
With names like “Abundance,” “Gratitude,” and “Inspiration,” these sustainable and gorgeous wreaths cannot fail to touch your heart. Each hand-crafted creation combines varieties of Echeveria, Graptoveria, Jade, Kalanchoe, Sedeveria, and Sempervarium for a unique composition of shapes and colors.
If you like to DIY, Wild Goddess sells “Dream Boxes” with succulents, framing, and instructions to help you manifest your vision. Or, you can schedule a workshop with Sarah, great for corporate groups, grown-up birthday parties, bachelorette parties, creative collectives, and/or any gathering of family or friends who want to create something beautiful together.
Learn more: wildgoddessdesigns.com
Art as art
When we think about buying art, often it’s an investment. And sometimes, it takes time. A while back we wrote about one of our favorite local galleries, SLATE contemporary located on 25th Street in Oakland, and the concierge service they offer for your home art selection: bit.ly/arana-art-guide
We 100% endorse that thoughtful process, and, can we also suggest that sometimes buying art is about falling in love at first sight?
December is a lovely time to visit the wine country, so why not stop in and see SLATE’s special exhibition at Cornerstone Sonoma, a combination marketplace featuring shops, tasting rooms, live music, and home to Sunset magazine’s “Gardens + Outdoor Test Kitchen.”
SLATE’s current exhibition at Cornerstone, CROSSING BOUNDARIES (bit.ly/slate-exhibit), features works by artists Silvia Poloto, Martin Webb, Christy Lee Rogers, Gordon Studer, Rob Snyder, and Marta Moreu.
Located in the SBHG Gallery @Cornerstone Sonoma, the venue SBHG Gallery at Cornerstone Sonoma is just a 45-minute drive from Oakland: 23570 Arnold Drive, Sonoma, CA 95476. The show is open to the public through January 2, Wednesday through Sunday from 11am–5pm, and by appointment. To schedule an appointment or for additional information, please email [email protected], or call SLATE’s Gallery Manager, Robin Reiners, at 208-720-4547.
