April 16th: Bad Cats pinball machine

A friend of Julia's works on/has a lot of pinball machines so we got this one called Bad Cats on long term loan. I almost got a hernia helping carry this thing upstairs

Chris gets a haircut with Bad Cats glowing in the background

April 9th-11th: wall-o-doors, carpet, wall-o-stuff

new found access to the windows let me properly hang the rest of the plants

Chris and Julia were feeling left out of me and Al's wall-o-windows gang so they made a wall-o-doors to enclose their sleeping loft

pretty!

they also bought and put in brand new carpet!

and started unpacking and putting up the last of what remained from their boxes onto the minty wall...AND moved the fish tank (lower left) to this wall making for nice ambient lighting in the evening! Looking like a home!

Jacob helped Julia set up this frame, a project from ReadyMade which we then put a bunch of succulents into. It's on the floor for now so the plants can root into the soil and moss, but it will get hung on the minty wall.

Begining of April, two months in

Outer wall of Chris and Jules' room is painted mint!

We got rid of the leftover wood pile that was monopolizing space in the living room so we could reconfigure it

Julia unpacked and/or moved the boxes that were stacked over here...

so now we can have window access! ahhhh!

in the boxes she unpacked was a bunch of kitchen stuff that got put up: 3 shelves (including one with things to hang pots from), spice rack, magnetic knife holder, and really cool bulk food storage things I can't really explain.

Also, behind the boxes that were unpacked was a better table for setting up the sewing machines! So the craft corner is more comfortable

March 13th: mural wallpaper

Chris put up this way cool forest photoographic wallpaper on their east facing outer wall ( the one the latter is leaning on here)

here's the view from me and Al's room. So now we can pretend our windows actually face the outdoors, ha!

February 19-20: shifting furniture

Chris moved some wood out and shifted the dinning set and couches over more towards where they are supposed to be

He also set up a stereo and records on a shelf which cleared the space for the dinning set and we moved the island into the kitchen.

February 19-20th: Chris & Jules-painting

Julia, forever mudding

bedroom with submarine lamps (you can only see one here)

their loffice is up and running!

most of their space is now painted a nice sagey green

February 15th: building history

I went to the Oakland Public Library's Oakland History room to see if I could find out more about our building. The librarian there couldn't find anything but put me through to Betty Marvin: City Planner at the Oakland Cultural Heritage Survey. Up on the 3rd floor of the building downtown where you go to pay parking tickets, is her little office...an Oakland History enthusiast's dream which includes files on any building in Oakland of potential historical importance. So I sat down and read through the file she pulled for me on 1919 Market St.

The building was built in 1923 by the same architects that had done the Castro Theater (SF 1922) and would later do the Paramount Theater (Oakland 1929) as well as the Telephone & Telegraph building which was, at the time (1924) the tallest building in SF. One of the two architects also would be the lead consultant of the Bay Bridge (1936) design team.

The building was built as a storage/maintenance space for California Transit Co which in 1929 merged with Greyhound. My understanding is this building is the first home to Greyhound Bus Lines on the west coast/ birthplace of their west-coast section (Pacific Greyhound Lines). Greyhound was there until 1955 when a plumbing contractor Scott Co bought it. Not much information about after that, as I understand it's still owned by this plumbing company, but I'm unclear.

the file for 1919 Market st.

historical report of the building

bottom left is a photo of a bus in front of our building when it was used for bus storage and maintenance

newspaper article about big art parties that happened (and still do, there was one on Saturday night) in our building