This is going to be so exciting, congratulations!
great catch, congratulations.
Congrats, cb! Good job sticking to your price, and hope it goes smoothly with the city.
Congrats, CB – I think we’re all excited to follow you on this next renovation! Seems like you really have great instincts and I bet you do this time too. Good luck with the city and I hope the house isn’t in the coastal zone.
When I was last in your area, I drove around Point Loma with my sister and BIL. If I recall correctly, it’s an extremely hilly area, as well as an extremely desirable area. I think you scored big with this one. Fingers crossed!
Love that Point Loma area!
Can’t wait to see the “before” pictures.
There was a tenant with a lease in the house for a couple of years. My understanding is that it was a Minister and his wife. This guy redecorated everything and even put in his own bath faucet fixtures. Let me just say that he had an extreme decorating taste (according to agent it was him that did the design work and painted gold on everything, not the wife) - I call it the Liberace house, others call it the Louis something design.
The grandmother outlived her child and the grandson was the heir. He moved her to assisted living about 2 years ago and leased the house (probably for ownership reasons, he was not legally the owner yet). She passed away immediately and he was stuck with the tenant situation.
The grandson put the house up for sale as the lease was expiring because he was tired of being a landlord. When the house was originally listed about 90 days ago the tenants were still living in there so the listing photos show the Liberace house in all it’s glory. He had to evict them out during the first escrow and now the house is completely vacant and a lot of the chandeliers, bathroom fixtures, etc were removed by the tenant because they belonged to him.
I’m hoping you all might be able to help me with some Empty Nest / Retiree market research. I have to determine what ‘style’ I am going to take this house that will appeal to the target audience. My gut says that this house would look incredible with a ‘modern’ type of design. Clean lines, frosted glass, etc. this house needs a lot of curb appeal. So as an example of where I am thinking of taking it, I would like to change out the one car garage door at the street to the frosted glass with wood trim type garage door, just to give some design to the front. And follow that type of theme in the re design.
Something like this
http://www.houzz.com/photos/1006075/golden-gate-heights-modern-entry-san-francisco
My question is this… what are the Must Have features for a retiree house? I would really like to get this house to the ‘lock and go’ type thing where someone could just lock up and not have to worry about a lot of yard maintenance… and go traveling for a bit. Here is my list so far
Single Level
Entry from garage into house
Low maintenance yard with automatic sprinklers
Laundry near bedrooms ( I don’t think I can do this… laundry in garage right off kitchen and cannot really be moved anywhere)
Lots of storage in hall cabinets and garage
New systems - HVAC, water heater, etc. so no worries
Move in brand new - no repairs or renovations needed
Open concept kitchen and living
Separate defined dining space large enough for family table
Guest suite (if possible) for family visits
This can be an area of contention.
In my state, if a tenant modifies or installs something permanently (basically, if they can’t just pick it up and walk out with it) it becomes property of the landlord. If the tenant removes a plumbing or lighting fixture, I could ding their security deposit or sue them to replace it.
Plus, I would never let a tenant do their own plumbing or electrical, even if they were licensed. Too much liability.
My understanding is that they got written permission from the landlord to do their changes. I agree that it could be a problem having a tenant put up a chandelier or put in plumbing. But it has all been removed and the ‘original’ items were replaced by a plumber and electrician. Doesn’t matter to me because it is all getting gutted and removed anyways and replaced by a licensed electrician.
those are nice, if you do end up with such nice garage doors, I hope you’ll also put down some nice garage floor coating to give the garage a ‘finished’ feel. I wish we had done that in our house before we moved in.
Single level is good but also think about making it wheelchair or handicap accessible, so it would be truly feasible to age in place - wide doorways, offset hinges, grab bars around the tub and toilet (or at least frame it so they can be easily added, walk-in or roll-in tubs or showers, seats in the tub/shower, toilet height, adjustable sink heights, lever-style door knobs, etc. Google “making a house wheelchair friendly”, there are a bunch of web sites with suggestions.
Alarm system - it is probably easier to install these when everything is torn up anyway.
I’m surprised lawn sprinklers are still legal in CA.
I like the garage door and I also like 3scoutsmom’s idea of the nice floor in the garage. I can tell cb wants to go shopping already!
That was me - I called it the Sun King house, or Louis Quinze. Now I guess it looks like Apres le Deluge.
Re the empty nester - I will be happy to give my input. One thing that we are experiencing in our new home - with all that storage, make sure most shelves are within reach. DH and I have had many discussions where I say “we can’t put that there, I can’t reach it and I no longer want to have to use a footstool” and he says “I don’t want to bend down to reach inside that floor level cabinet”. Just sayin’
Oh please please…can you save some of the gaudy pics for us to see…with the Liberace look?
To be honest, it’s good that they took the stuff. It will save you having to dispose of it.
We rented a condo while our house was being built. There was no dining room light at all. We got a very simple one and put it up. It was nothing fancy…and we asked the owners if they wanted us to leave it. Yes! Turns out, one of the things their buyers wanted when they sold…was that light! Too funny.
I’ve never followed one of these threads from before renovation to completion before. Can’t wait!!
The solution to floor level storage (especially in the kitchen) is to install pull out shelves. You can get Retrofit pull out shelves for all the lower kitchen cabinets and they are life savers. I honestly won’t even bother to get down on my hands and knees to rummage around for things. There are a lot of great kitchen organization retrofits. You can buy most of them on the Internet or at Lowe’s.
Wheelchair or Walker ready is a good idea. I have to research whether we even have enough space to widen all the doorways, but maybe we could concentrate on the master bedroom door and master bath door, and making a wide easy flow through the living area. I believe that there is one step up from the garage into the kitchen which will be hard to fix (not enough room for a ramp), but we could design the small little walkway in front to have a ‘sloped’ path to the front door.
I think a walk-in shower and wide doors are great, even if one is not elderly, but please: no grab bars! As a 62-yr-old, I don’t want to walk into a house and feel like I’m in a nursing home. Framing things so that they could be installed if needed is a great idea, though. So is a sloped walkway.
Spectacular garage door, I must say. 
I love the garage door!