We own our house and there are two small houses on the back of the lot that we rent out. Here is the front of our house from across the street and then closer up. I really like our house a lot. It was built in 1916 and is a classic "Arts and Crafts Bungalow". Yes, we have cactus on our porch.

These are our back two houses. They were built in 1918. Small, but cute.

We are remodeling one of them for my 88 year old Mother In Law to move into. This will make it easier for us to take care of her. My wife knows what she wants and is very good at interior design, so I'm letting her handle the contrator and making decisions about what to do back there.

She talked to Dar, our contractor on Tuesday last week. She told him what she wanted to do and he said he'd start demolishing it on Weds. In two days, it looked like this. This was the bathroom and a closet. It's down to studs and no ceiling.

The houses were built with Lath and Plaster and none of this cheap dry wall stuff you get today. This was built when men were men and houses were...um...harder to build.

I think we might be getting some dry wall after all.

This is "Post and Tube" electrical. It's not quite up to code these days. They used ceramic tubes to go through the wood and posts to hold the wire away from the wood. These are the wires in the bathroom, above the old sink.

This was the kitchen sink with a tile counter. Now it's a hole.

The claw foot tub is now in our backyard, along with the pedistal sink and the toilet. .

My wife was talking to Dar and Dana, our electrician. Dana also works at Home Deport, where he saw a bunch of supplies being bought by some TV production people and asked them what show they were doing. Then he told my my wife that... (continued below)