But the cactus like plant in cb’s truck has fierce thorns as well, I have that in my yard. Don’t know what they called since I am not botanically oriented.
The thorny tall things in my truck are Aloe Vera. Low ones are Agave. I did identify the tree by going to fancy nursery…it is Pittosporum (spelling?) Silver Sheen. I like it because it only gets 10-15ft tall and its wispy, not dense. It needs a little more water than the rest of the plants.
I had to buy 2 and 5 gallon because the big mature ones were $150 each. Still not putting a damper on the white abyss!
A bougonvillea trellis? I’m partial to flowers though.
A swath of sea lavender would be really pretty although it wouldn’t add height. CB, did the agent bring a buyer through today? How did it go?
Thank you for remembering…
Yes, buyer’s agent showed up early and had a long discussion with my agent outside. The buyers evidently live 2 blocks away and are renting and have been looking for 6 months. According to their agent, they know exactly what they are looking for.
They stayed in the house for 30-40 minutes and even asked to go under the house in the crawl space. After crawl space, they came upstairs again to look at views. It was a husband and wife, maybe about 50-55. The airplane noise didn’t faze them (they have been renting nearby) and the stairs didn’t faze them. The only issue they had is that his sister would not be able to make it up the stairs if she came to visit.
The wife adored everything and thanked me profusely for leaving the charm in the house. They have looked at a lot of remodels where all of the old OB charm went out of the house. I know that she really loved it, but he might be more practical. They could care less that the back room is considered ‘non habitable’. They were going to make it a guest room. They were outside with their agent for a long time (which is always a good sign). But, we have not heard anything.
It certainly would be ideal at this point if I could sell. First, I could get out from under the mountain of debt quickly, don’t have to try to landscape any more, don’t have to keep fiddling with stuff and we wouldn’t have to stage (savings to my agent which I know she will pass on to me). But, my agent is always cautious because she wants to ‘test the market’ to get the best offer.
I walked in this morning and the floors were dry and gorgeous! Even though I specified a matte finish for the polyurethane there is still a slight ‘sheen’ on the floors. The hint of grey wash really toned down the ‘yellowish/honey’ tones of the old wood. Now, if I can just keep the gorillas from wrecking the floors with paint or tools!! I was watching Rehab Addict and she is diligent about making everyone put booties over their shoes to work in the room. That would last about 10 seconds around my carpenter. He would just wear the booties outside and let them pick up all the dirt and rocks.
We got some more trim work done. Installed shower fixtures and faucets and finished all the plumbing in the main bathroom. Installed baseboard in main bathroom and some of the house.
Finished some more landscaping (installing all the stuff I bought on Sunday when I found the right tree) and spent hours painting coats of semi gloss onto the new baseboards.
I got to spend half my day on my hands and knees with my butt in the air trying to install the plates on all the receptacles. Of course half of them are too recessed (because electrician put them in before we had all the crazy requirements for shear walls and 5/8" drywall), are mudded in by the drywallers or just basically crooked:) I almost electrocuted myself trying to clean some paint off a receptacle.
Heating system is done and ready for inspection.
Is the GAF Tigerpaw really better than the pink paper? With such a difference in price.
^^ Put on latex gloves to reduce electrocution…
That GAF Tigerpaw is left over from roofing job. My roofer swears by it and I believe he actually brought most of it left over from another job. We are just using it to protect floors since we have some left over. Normally use the red rosin (pink paper), but not when we are trying to keep water off floors.
After refinishing a wood floor you cannot put anything on top of it for several weeks. It needs to ‘breathe’ - no masking tape or blue tape allowed. Dirt and grit will get trapped under paper or cardboard that is laid down. Only thing we are allowed to lay down to protect floors is old sheets.
We had some leftover whole house wrap for our T1-11 installation. You only can sell it with a deep discount. We cannot return it because it was leftover from leftovers. Plenty rif-refs from all over the place tried to sell leftover construction material. Open boxes of nails/screws at $10 whereas you have to pay $40 at HD.
CB, the reaction of your first set of potential buyers sounds really promising. I am looking forward to lots of excitement as people get to see the house close-up, followed by that bidding war I’ve been waiting for!
If I were one of those early potential buyers seeing things at this stage, I would feel motivated to bid on this jewel before everything is 100% finished and others discover this treasure. There is so little left to be done that they can “see” the finished product in their mind’s eye and know that it can only be better than it already is. I hope you sell it before you have to stage it, cb. It looks amazing.
Well, unfortunately the buyers that came through yesterday decided that they will not make an offer. They loved absolutely everything about the house except the stairs. Because they are older, they decided it was not smart to buy the house because it would become harder as they age. It might be in my interest to come up with some drawings or plans for alternative ways to access the house from the alley or something. Rumor has it that the City might sell half of the paper alley to homeowners. Don’t really have time to go down that path.
Oh well, onward! Now I think we will have to stage.
An interesting thing is happening. A lot of the other people who tried to buy the house 6 months ago are calling my agent and asking listing price. Had one couple stop by on Saturday and want to tour the place who had put in an offer 6 months ago. One agent asked “How did you get the listing? The jack@#$# who was selling it made it clear to my clients that they had to list with him in the future in order to buy the house.” So, I was not the only one who got cornered by that agent. In the end, I think my offer was highest and he had to present it to the Seller’s Estate Administrator… and I played along so he thought he had the future listing. He hasn’t contacted me for about 2 months, I think he gave up.
Just as a reminder, the listing agent who sold this to me estimated future selling price all fixed up at $710k. My agent estimated future selling price at $750-$750k. Thank God they were both wrong 
Here’s another wrinkle in the complexities of listing price, value and the potential bank appraisal. A listing just came on the market for a dinky little ‘cottage’ that is about 5 blocks in the wrong direction on the same street as my property. 2 bedroom/1 bath, only 740 sq ft, no views, same size lot, very dark and dingy in below average condition. Short Sale priced at $550,000 - bad news for me!
I’m just patiently waiting for the one right on corner of Guizot and Cape May that went pending at $899k to hurry up and sell so that we can have a good comparable. Although nothing in this neighborhood is ‘comparable’ because every house is different in many ways. My experience with bank appraisers is that they only give about $15k-$25k extra value for views. They don’t even have a scale for minimal views, medium views and outstanding views. However, buyers are willing to pay a $100,000 to $150,000 premium for excellent views. Go figure!! I know that I would pay a high premium for excellent views because that is something that I can enjoy every single day.
Cb, bank appraisers in San Diego include short sales in their comp lists - ? Wow. That short might go for more than the listing.
It is funny what people pay for. Just last night, we were talking that we paid about $20K extra (in 1999!) for this house because it had a much easier access to the busy road we had to take to commute. We decided against a very nice home because making a left turn out of that neighborhood onto that road was nearly impossible.
The house is lovely. The floors are great! I’m sure the right owners will fall in love as soon as they see this place. I can see the reluctance of an aging couple–stairs are definitely a barrier that can be a hassle (says the woman with crutches and broken fibula).
On the other hand, we are convinced the 66 steps to the front door kept my in laws as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
Are you sure you don’t want to put an escalator? CB?
We actually DID put an outdoor chairlift for my inlaws, so my MIL only walks up 1/2 the 66 steps instead of all of them. They do take up a significant portion of the stairway though, which makes it a narrower step for others who aren’t using the chairlift. We also looked into a possible indoor chairlift when my SisIL was in end-stage cancer.
I took some pictures today of the landscape but I just looked at them and they are horrible pics, front of house is in a shadow and you cannot see anything. Let’s just say $230 dollars later I can’t see one stupid plant in the photos
Installed toilets today. I say toilets plural because we had to take out the one that was new about 5 months ago when we started the project that is now covered in paint, disgusting and probably impossible to get completely clean (grunge under the seat hinges) and a hammer dropped on the lid and broke it. It’s more trouble to try to special order another lid than to just buy a new toilet and put it in. I made the guys empty out the broken toilet and put it in the box. Saving it for the next project to shove in for the workers when we start the project. This is the 3rd broken toilet lid from tools over the years.
Installed about half the baseboard in the main house. Now there will be hours of caulking in the baseboards, puttying every nail hole and then painting a final coat to make them look really nice and cover the caulk on top. Here’s a hint about caulk… do not ever leave any caulk at the top of baseboards. Caulk is an instant dust catcher and is impossible to keep clean. Make sure that you paint one coat over the caulk to stop the caulk from turning black. If caulk gets onto vinyl windows - looks horrible in days. Use a Magic Eraser slightly damp to get all the caulk off of stuff.
But the biggest issue today was trying to get the stove in. It is a ‘slide in’ stove and the marble installer put a piece of marble across the back. After an hour to determine if the gas line and gas valve will tuck into the back of the stove OK and that the electric plug will not get in the way (after tearing off the drywall and fudging some things), we discover that the stove won’t go in all the way. We just cannot figure out what is going wrong. There’s a gap in the back at an angle. First we think he has cut the piece wrong. But low and behold, after much head scratching we measure the countertops. I have never seen this before… the countertop to the left of the stove is snug to the cabinets and 24 1/2" from the wall. The countertop to the right of the stove has a 1/2’ gap out and is 25 1/8" from the wall!! Big problem. Waiting for granite guy to come fix this mess. I don’t think he can tear out the entire countertop to the right because it is glued down and backsplash is glued down on top of it. He is going to have to cut some kind of notch to get this stove in. And, the stove has to get in and working for final inspection.
And today I found out that the City requires a ‘special inspection’ for HVAC installation. I have to pay someone to come out and do a duct seal test to make sure that hot air is not leaking out of the ducts. What a freaking bureaucracy!! Did I mention that I hate getting permits?? Had to spend the whole morning finding someone that would show up at a reasonable price. Then all kinds of getting on the computer to ‘register’ the HVAC system so that I can get a certificate. Getting tested tomorrow. This is probably going to delay things another couple of days to get my hands on the piece of paper for the City. Oh, and it costs $200 for someone to come out and test for about 40 minutes.
I think it would be very feasible to build an outside Chair Lift on the alley side of the house that would go to the deck and then someone could enter the house through the French doors. But, that will be on the Buyer’s dime