The Waiting Game

Tags

window treatment, window treatments

The question everyone has been asking my husband and I lately now that we’ve been in the new house for seven weeks and three days: “How’s the house coming along?” The usual response for most people posed the same question in a new home would be, “Oh, unpacking boxes, painting walls, putting up window treatments and pictures. It’s going great!” But for me it’s been, “Uhh… good?” Not much unpacking, no painting of walls, except for the one window pictured below that didn’t have a window treatment, I haven’t touched the stained cellular blinds and except for a fishy towel holder nothing has been attached to the walls. Here’s our second bedroom/ office today, almost two months after moving in:

For reference, here it is with the staged furniture when we bought it:
We have the house at a point where it’s relatively functional for us to live in and then we stopped unpacking. Why? We’re working on plans with professionals for a major house change  which is where our budget will be going which means we can’t afford to do some other things or it makes sense to do them once the other construction has been finished. And one of those big things is refinishing all the floors in the house which means at some point the whole house will be repacked and moved out of the way so if we can leave a few already packed boxes untouched, it’s one less we have to pack in a few months. It’s a little frustrating but looking at the silver lining, in a few months the house is going to be transformed! Once that’s done, lookout walls, I’m coming for you with a paint roller in hand!

Also in house related news, we should be closing next week on the old house which will generate a heavy sigh of relief from my husband and I. Having more than one house to worry about isn’t really as fun as you might think. 😉 We’re excited that a young, engaged couple will be buying it as their first home.

I am meeting with our architect this week to finalize house plans and then I may eventually share them. Lately I’ve had a lot of “first world problems” like trying to think of designs and layouts for more than one bathroom all at once. It’s a very exciting process but it’s also very time consuming especially for a novice like me. Any one have any recommendations for working with an architect?

The jam giveaway winner has been announced. Jump over to that post to see if you won!

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The Vision for Your Home

Tags

architecture, design, home, interior design, real estate

When you move to a new home– be it apartment, condo, house, or whatever — do you start thinking about how you’re going to make that space the best space for you inside and out? Maybe you can picture exactly where your couch should go or a new wall color that would really make things feel more “you?” We talk about a space or a building having “potential” and I think what we really mean by that is that we are able to see the vision. The vision that makes that place a home but it might take trying the couch on a different wall or updating light fixtures or maybe some new landscape outside. And sometimes, it’s hard to even know where to start or you have to make a few attempts to get it right.

Our first home was a fixer-upper that needed so, so much updating. Some folks told us when they first saw it they thought my husband and I were crazy for buying it, but we had a vision. It took a few years to make that vision a reality, but once it all came together I think it was hard for people to believe how far we had come. We’re back in that position, with a house that maybe is a little bit of an easier pill to swallow, but it’s still a long way from where we envision it ending up. I’ve been working on the new house plans with an architect and our general contractor (and our kitchen guy, and a structural engineer, and anyone who will listen…) so we have some big changes in the works on the interior but we also are thinking about the exterior. Here’s the street view of our house currently:
The paint is new because it was painted before we bought it, but it was obviously a crappy rush job. The roof is about six years old but it appears that they chose the cheapest shingles possible so it doesn’t look to hot already. The trim is lacking a bit between the roof/side of the house and though the front of our house is stucco, the whole rest of the house is wood siding so it’s not exactly consistent. Not to mention there’s a few cable, phone and other wire lines running to odd places on the exterior. So from far away, not that bad, but up close she’s a little rough. Which means we talk about our vision in the long term: What paint color? What type of roof? How would it fit into our neighborhood? Front and garage doors? And then I use Photoshop to give a rough makeover. Our house has a few Spanish style homes so this was my first idea since we love Spanish style:

But when we talked to our contractor he reminded us that tile roofs (besides being more expensive to install) actually affect your foundation because it’s much heavier than a standard roof plus you can’t walk on it to do things like clean gutters unless you know specifically where to step and it can be more dangerous to walk on in general because it can be more slippery. That effectively talked us out of that idea. Not to mention in the above image that I envisioned the vinyl window trim not being white but that’s not very realistic. Basically this one wasn’t going to happen so it was nixed.

Once our dreams of a Spanish home were nixed, we decided we needed to embrace more of our home’s original features. I don’t know what exactly you call a California split level home, but where we’re leaning is still bringing in some of the Spanish influence with the color, maybe adding a pergola over the garage to add architectural interest, having a darker roof since we are leaning toward a light, warm color, and maybe a door that’s a pop of color but still within the Spanish exterior colors. Still new garage doors but maybe in white so they match the vinyl window frames.

The vision of your home should continue to change otherwise you may end up with orange shag carpet and avocado appliances that were “on trend” when you got them but not so anymore (I’m looking at you chevron trend… ). But you have to have a starting point.

Tell me, how do you refine the vision for your home? Do you use any online tools to edit your home or an example home to choose paint colors? Or maybe just look to magazines or websites for inspiration until it clicks? I need advice, so let me have it!

Surprises of homeownership

Tags

back fence, hot ashes, nature, outdoors, plants, rain water

In our first home we had to strip our backyard down to dirt and level everything out before adding grass and landscaping. One day while I was digging, or weeding, or leveling, because that’s all we did in our backyard for many months, I was around our back fence when suddenly the ground below one of my legs collapsed. In that moment, my life flashed before my eyes as I saw myself falling into a giant sewer and being carried out to sea! Fortunately I threw myself backwards and landed on the ground with only my leg in the hole… a hole that was (luckily) not a sewer, but was caused by a rusted out, old, buried aluminum trashcan. We have no idea why there was an entirely buried trashcan in our backyard just waiting for me to fall into it, but there ya go.

Where exactly am I going with this rusty things buried story? Well, we have a back corner of our new yard in the new house that was being taken over by ivy. Some was starting to climb up trees so before it got too far I wanted to cut cut it off. Meanwhile, there was something kind of large and entirely hidden from view under this plant.
Now our new backyard and our old backyard have at least one thing in common, I just wish it wasn’t cylindrical and rusty. But at least I didn’t fall into it this time! The above is actually after I already started cutting away at the ivy since it was completely unnoticeable before. Can’t tell what it is yet?

That’s right, a rusted out steel drum. It looks like at one point it had a lid to it that disintegrated which means, bonus: it was completely full of disgusting rain water. And why would this be hanging out in the yard?

I believe it may have been used for the hot ashes from the fireplace that it’s right next to. We’ve been told that the fireplace actually is something the city technically allows as something that has been grandfathered in but this one is under the canopy of some trees so we’re not likely to use it for backyard get togethers any time soon. The fireplace and the drum appear to have been here for long enough that the tree has started eating it. You can also see how high the water was in the picture below.

I don’t think the tree wants to let go.

Since I wouldn’t have been able to tip it over to drain the water with the tree growing into it, I had to use a chisel and hammer to make a hole so that the water could drain. Because standing water is kind of a disgusting no-no.

It just took a few whacks with the hammer and chisel to make enough of a hole that the water pressure allowed any sediment to clear and water came gushing out. It’s now drained but still quite full of tree debris. I’m thinking the entire removal of this guy is probably going to be a husband job? After all, I was the one who had to use the hammer to smash some of the monstrous spiders that emerged from this ancient artifact. Sometimes I have to be a team player! 🙂

Our New House

Tags

before and after, diy, home, house, new hosue, ouse, projects, real estate

The big reveal is finally here! This is our new house!
And in case you can’t tell by just that one picture, it’s a bit of a 1940 fixer. But a move-in-ready fixer (as evidenced by the fact that we’ve been living there for about a week!). I’m using some of the pictures from the listing (like above) and some I took, I don’t know how to attribute pictures from a real estate listing so if anyone knows… let me know?

On to the fun stuff! We’ve now got a larger and still flat lot. Our first home also had a flat lot, something I only mention because in our area there are lots and lots of homes built precariously on hills. The new house has a rectangle piece of land where most of it is behind the house so instead of big side and front yards, we’ve got tons of usable backyard! In the front yard alone we have a grapefruit and another citrus on the other side of our yard. Can someone tell me what kind of tree is in the left of the above picture?

Here’s a good look for your garden: A leggy rose on a tipping over chainlink fence gate. NOT. We’re going to need to work on the landscaping around here. Not pictured, there’s a hedge along the street side of the house (just like our last house!) that I already loath. You’re going down, hedge. Let’s enter the house:

You guys put kitchen cabinets in doorways too, right? No? That’s weird? That’s what I thought.

In the image above, to the left you see the dining room (there’s another doorway on that side) and to the hard left unpictured is the living room. We’ll return to that, but we’re going to go right, up the stairs since this is a split level home. Also to the right behind the entry door is a giant closet (with no light?) but we’ll skip that.

Up the stairs we go! You can see into the bedroom we’re using as our “master” for now, to the right is the 2nd bedroom/office and to the left at the top of the stairs is the world’s smallest full bathroom.

The above picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s so small you can only turn in a circle and that tiny toilet still means my long legs touch the tub when making use of the facilities. So how are we going to upgrade? Well, I like the bathroom in this location but as you can see the roof line starts to cut into it (and there’s a closet basically behind that tub in the bedroom) so right now we think that left wall gets pushed out into what is currently space made in the roof so there could be a full window. It may bump out into the kitchen headroom but I’ve already thought of a solution for that which I’ll explain further down. Before that, check out these fun bathroom features which make us not use this shower for now:

While I may be a little down on the bathroom, rest assured it’s because I’m stoked to get started on changing it which makes my heart flutter. I see white subway tile in our future.

In the “master” bedroom we’ve got some paneling and a ceiling following the roof which I will admit, I find charming and like it. I know it’s not everyone’s style but I think it’s cozy. However I do believe the paneling lets the sounds of the house settling come through louder than drywall, so not on our short list, we may need to check out insulation options or possibly drywalling at least part of the room.

All floors throughout the house need to be refinished but we’re waiting until construction stuff is finished since we don’t know where we’ll land with that work. The bedrooms up here were originally carpeted so you can spot some carpet glue and nasty spots. When the house was painted they didn’t cover the floors (they meant to refinish them) so there’s also paint spray in some places. The closets kind of got it the worst but they’re still functional. This is the rest of the bedroom and my closet (the husband took the one in the other room).

The other upstairs bedroom is in the front of the house and is our office. The staging picture below makes it look super tiny with a twin bed but it’s actually about the same size as the other room.

The quirkiest thing about this room is that the linen closet is in here, you can see it behind the entry door below.

Back downstairs, let me show you the living room. This is one of my favorite parts about this home.

Big open beamed ceilings. And that fish? It’s (allegedly) real and though this is staged, it was the previous owner’s. We’re told he caught it. I asked to keep it. Martin the Marlin is now still in the house!

Below is a picture taken from the dining room looking at the living room. It’s a good size and while I still am perplexed by floor vents, it will definitely accommodate plenty of seating. Again, these floors eventually will get worked on. And I haven’t picked any colors yet in the house. I’ll figure it out down the line…

This is what I call the “sunroom.” It’s an unpermitted structure attached to the house that will need to come down. It wasn’t built on a foundation and since we live in earthquake country, we want all structures to be safely permitted. Plus we have some big plans for this part of our lot (hint: they involve kitchen and master bedroom) so this structure needs to be removed anyhow. For now it’s just extra storage space.

Back inside, from the dining room looking at the kitchen:

Looks can be deceiving, the cabinets in here appear to be mostly original but with a newer wood veneer applied to them. Translation: Disgusting cabinets on the inside. But the granite countertops are actually nice looking and may have some repurposing in their future.

Remember me talking about the bathroom upstairs and kitchen headspace? If that becomes the plan, the wall you’re looking at above will jut out on the top of the wall. Which would be awkward except that we could add low cabinets that look built-in to make a large pantry. Maybe add a shorter wine fridge. I kind of am in love with the idea but we’ll see where it goes.

The layout of the kitchen is a little piecemeal and as hinted at, will be changing hopefully soon. This ain’t my first rodeo with kitchen renovation so I’m looking forward to tackling it, knock on wood! I’ve been Pinteresting it up on the kitchen lately. See the doorway above with stairs down? We’ll head there in a moment.

Oh, that old Wedgewood stove? It’s likely original to the 1940 home and is in great working condition. Plus now I never have to wonder how long to leave my rib roast or biscuits in the oven.

Outlets in the oven? Makes perfect sense. By the way, I don’t really understand the griddle on this thing. Do I use a pan ON the griddle or cook directly on it? Or is that just a cover (I don’t think that’s it). I’m just going to stay away from that for now.

Okay, down the stairs from the kitchen into a space that used to be garage. The door on the left below goes outside, the glass door on the right is a pantry and the door directly ahead is a full bathroom.

A rather nice but low ceiling-ed bathroom. The bathroom, pantry and a finished garage “living space” were unpermitted and added to this two car garage. We’re hopeful about keeping a half-bath down here (removing the shower) and probably will need to remove the pantry.

Here is our two car garage! The rest of the space is to the right and that wall at the end with a door is maybe 8-inches from the actual garage door. The ceilings in here are super low due to heating and AC ducts which may or may not remain that way. I’m looking forward to this being an actual garage again even if it is just because we want to put a bunch of shelves and storage in here. And a laundry area.

Back through the house to the backyard, the crowning jewel of this house:

There’s some work we’ll be doing ourselves back here but I can say that the deck comes out with the sunroom and my garden lives next to that (dilapidated) white shed. That other building you see? Totally stinky (smoking…something) and totally unpermitted. It will come down. And the greenhouse? TBD but likely will be removed and if I want a greenhouse, it will probably be smaller and not located right in the middle of the yard. The good news is: there’s plenty of room for a chicken coop!!! As long as the building removals reveal no skunks this time, we’ll be all set.

This next view is from the upstairs bedroom and gives you a better idea of the layout of the yard. On our “someday” plan will be extending the patio or a deck from the house about as far out as the sunroom and deck go out now (because remember, the sunroom/deck all get removed). There will still be plenty of room for some croquet playing and gardening.

My other current favorite thing about our yard is the peach, plum and pear trees. I’ll get some pictures of just how many pears we’ve gotten so far but it really amazes me. Looking forward to preserving some this weekend!

Here’s your final view of the house from its back side:

There are plenty of projects to keep us busy, just how we like it. We prefer to own a home that we can make our own and we are truly looking at this house as a blank slate. While we only added about 100 square feet to our living space (not including all those unpermitted spaces) we greatly improved the neighborhood we live in. We’re a few blocks from a wonderful park with a community center that has bocce ball, softball/baseball fields, tennis courts, a skate park and even a community garden! Two blocks away is a little commercial area with some restaurants, shops and a post office. Our commute is also a little better now so we’re doing better all around! Welcome to our new home!

Before and Afters of Our Old House

Tags

back steps, before and after, front porch, home, house, lighting fixture, mail slot, monster truck, moving, new house, old house, true yellow

This past weekend we packed up all of our belongings and officially moved into our new house. Our first night at the new place was Saturday after just two trips in this monster truck that my dad rented:
Before I show off the pictures of the new house– luckily I remembered to get some empty house shots before moving– I’d like to wrap up the chapter for this house by showing how it looked when we bought it and how we are now leaving it behind. You can see the before and afters of the front of the house here (even though we subsequently painted the front porch) and some backyard before and afters in my 2nd Housiverssary post. We lived in this house for just shy of four years and made so many wonderful improvements.

Up first: The living room.

When we moved in we immediately tore down that awning over the back steps that can sort of be seen in the top picture. The floors were refinished, the walls and ceilings were painted, the fireplace was refinished and now has a gas insert, the wall heater was replaced, a new light fixture was put in the dining space, and all windows in the whole house were replaced.

The front door was also replaced later down the line since we hated having a mail slot in our door. The big mirror over the fireplace was taken down and sold on Craigslist! Once I saw how beautiful the floors were without stain, we opted to go with a clear finish to see the color of the wood throughout the house. A great choice!

The extra bedroom in our house, lovingly referred to as “the yellow room,” was our office and guest room. It was a “grellow” (green +yellow) color when we bought it but was repainted to a true yellow, has more refinished floors, and received a lighting fixture update.

Ah, the “master” bedroom. In the front of the house, this bedroom was slightly larger and has two closets. While I’d been jonesing to turn this into one larger closet, we never got around to it before moving. Instead, this room only had new paint, new windows, new floors but not much else.

The garage at our old house was meant to be a one car garage but when we moved it it was just full of junk. There was also an upper storage space (that black space in each image) that we used. Our plumbing and electric was redone throughout the house and when that was done we moved the washer/dryer and removed a utility sink. Down the line our water heater was also replaced and a once non-functional door in here was replaced with a functional door. My husband added some shelving on both sides of the garage, some of which isn’t shown below, but allowed me to have way, way too many kitchen gadgets. Thanks, husband!

The one and only bathroom in the house was original to the 1947 home and we had it redone as we were moving in. New fixtures, new tile, new cabinet behind the toilet, new window, new ceiling fan thing. The plumbing was replaced throughout the house and we even had our sewage pipe replaced. I did however have a love hate relationship with just about every color I ever painted the bathroom and there were probably about four of them?

And last but not least, the crowning jewel of a change in the house (besides the floors): The kitchen. Somehow we lived with the original 1947 kitchen, sans dishwasher for over two years. What you see in the “move in” image below really is what it looked like when we were moving in. We put the refrigerator in that alcove on the right and there was a wall there. When we redid the kitchen, the wall was torn down and space for the refrigerator was made in the garage. This kitchen was very good to us with the updates and I can’t wait to do the same to this new house.

There are lots of wonderful memories that we will hold onto from this house. My husband proposing to me in this dining room, hosting our family and friends for barbeques and game nights, our first (and second) Thanksgiving being hosts, and so much more. No one can say we didn’t put blood, sweat and tears into this place, it’s hard to believe we’re not going to be living there anymore. So hard to believe, my husband made this face in our last picture together in the house:

Goodbye old house, we’ll miss you but we’ll never forget you. We can only hope that the new owners love you as much as we did.

Moving time!

Tags

boxes, home, home buying, houses, lucky folks, moving, new hosue, new house, real estate, transportation

Boxed up and ready to go over here. Our big move is tomorrow, and yes, we are doing it ourselves (with my dad and step-mom, and sister, and aunt). And a big ol’ rental truck. I’ve been trying not to think about moving out of house #1 yet so it hasn’t really sunken in. Or the fact that house #1 hits the market next weekend.

Meanwhile, house #2 is ready for us to move in. While we originally anticipated getting a few things started with our contractor over there, it is beginning to look like we’re going to have to tackle some bigger things upfront. Which is both good news (woo, getting it done!) and bad news (woo, there goes more money!). If you follow me over on Pinterest you know what I’ve been prowling lately (besides food).

With each visit to the new house I come back with at least a pound of pears so we’ve been working our way through those. If I’ve seen you in the last week, you’ve probably been given pears. Or if I know I’m seeing you soon, I’m giving you pears. And some lucky folks are getting pears AND zucchini! Once we’re settled in I very badly want to make Pear Vanilla Jam because I have so many pears and I think it’s going to make a great Christmas present. Probably ruined that surprise for a few people just now. So… act surprised later. K?

A few more things to throw in boxes and then we will be in our new house tomorrow night! Wish us luck!

We bought a new house!

Tags

first house, nature, plants

That’s right, we bought our second home! Almost four years ago we bought our first house and here we are moving on up.
This new house is in the same city as we live now but in a nicer neighborhood with a larger and more usable lot. It’s not a ton larger than our current digs and also has some projects for us on the horizon but we are looking forward to moving in this weekend! It’s been less than a month since we even knew this house existed but we received the keys on Friday and already moved my garden (read: lots of tomatoes) to the new garden so now we’re all set to really move in– because naturally I wasn’t moving without my tomatoes!

I’m excited to share more about this new adventure (and the adventure of selling our first house!) here soon. In the interim, we’ll be trying to use up pears from the new tree and zucchini from our current garden, wish us luck!

Hi, Neighbor

I feel ill at the moment. After going through the bidding process for several tree trimmers, I was assured that our trees (a large cypress and large camphor most of all) would be “cleaned up” but the privacy the camphor provided in our backyard would be maintained. Instead, I came home to find that my mums, hydrangea, a new fern and new spider lily in the front yard were just about completely wiped out and that we have a new view from our backyard directly into the neighbor’s house. Here is the back tree before:

And after:

I would rather have a terrible haircut knowing it would return than this. Trees don’t just sprout new limbs and magically fill in this kind of damage.

Is it really more expensive to live in California than the East Coast?

Tags

california bay area

This Friday I’m bypassing my usual Farmer Friday post not because there isn’t an orange pumpkin (SO EXCITED) in my garden or a bunch of humongous green tomatoes on the vine but because this blog isn’t just about gardening. And I’ve also neglected to post any recent DIY or cooking projects (on of which includes a sander and another which includes cherries, but not those two things together).

This post was going to be about what I would do if I randomly received $2 million — assume that’s the value after taxes and fees and such– to spend as I please. That’s no small sum of money. But then after I donate a small part to charity — which I would do because when all I won was a turkey last year, I still felt that donating some of our Thanksgiving feast to those less fortunate was the right thing to do– I realized that maybe just putting a “large” down payment on a house may not actually get me that far. BUT, and of course there is a but here, I would still argue that while buying a million dollar home without the large salary to support it may be hard, it would still be easier than if I lived on the East Coast in a state like Connecticut, New Hampshire or even Massachusetts.

I want to be clear I’m talking about the San Francisco Bay Area versus the East Coast, primarily Boston area. The reason I chose the East Coast is because I’ve been making this argument to my husband ever since I asked him to move to the left coast with me from the Boston area. We now own a house and live within our means in the Northern California Bay Area. While some things are definitely more expensive here, there are other things that are more expensive in the east.

Skip to the bottom if you don’t care about all my research and arguments and just want to see my conclusion.

Let’s consider housing first. I love to look at houses online in our area and wish that we could suddenly afford a super nice big house, I’m an American, after all. Bigger is better. I happened upon a beautiful house and started doing the numbers. Here’s the house:

Huge outdoor fireplace? Yes. Separate studio space (on the left)? Absolutely. Amazing views, updated kitchen and baths? Check, check, and check. Huge price tag? Of course. The asking price is just over $1.3 million and they will probably get it.

So why would it be better to but this house in California as versus somewhere like Massachusetts? Because property taxes are lower! Yup, California introduced Prop 13 in 1978 which limits CA property taxes to 1%. The counties add a few little things on top of that but generally it may only take property taxes to about 1.2% of your property’s assessed value which is the land assessment plus the building assessment and that has limits on how much it can increase year over year. We’ll leave the notoriously high-in-property-tax state of New Hampshire out of this, but what about Massachusetts? According to the Tax Foundation, “Massachusetts’ combined state/local property taxes are the 8th highest in the nation per capita.”If you compare property taxes on a $500,000 home in CA (1.1%) to MA (1.75%) you end up paying $32,500 MORE over a 10 year period in taxes. That just means you could have bought a more expensive home in CA in the first place.

If you’re looking to buy a home on one of the coasts, California is the better bet. People think it’s more expensive here because, well, generally speaking there are more high-value homes. Between Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orange County and San Diego we have a lot of urbanized coastline with some high-priced homes. Property in urban areas is in higher demand but there are still affordable homes to be had.

What about renting?

My husband and I have friends right now who are looking to move in the next couple of months so we’ve actually been more exposed to the Bay Area apartment hunt than we normally would be. There’s a great tool at padmapper.com that will pull in apartments (and sublets and room shares) from all over the internet, display them on a map and let you narrow down your search. For a two bedroom apartment in a decent part of the city, I’m going out on a limb to say that Boston and San Francisco have comparable prices. The apartment in the image above is a two bedroom, two bath for $2,500 per month WITH parking. It also has a view of the ocean and a remodeled kitchen. It’s in a safe (but foggy) part of SF. Apartments in similar areas (without the fog and ocean view) of Boston are about the same for a nice two bedroom.  Let’s call this one a tie.

Are living expenses higher in California? Not if you ask me. Yes some of our other taxes are higher according to the Tax Foundation (sales tax, gasoline tax) but we also save money in some other ways. For example, generally our produce is cheaper than the east coast because so much of it is grown in California. I believe our liquor laws are also more lenient and we pay less tax on wine, beer and alcohol. More importantly, on average we have lower heating costs. And at least in Northern California, most places don’t have or need air conditioning because it never gets so hot/humid that we need it (we do have some dry heat). But on top of that, salaries in California are higher.

Here’s another cool tool that allows you to enter your salary, where you live and where you would move then see the results of what would cost more/less at CNN Money. I picked the arbitrary round number of $50k as a salary to compare my current city, San Francisco, to Boston:

I’m not great at math, but according to that, it would be about 25% more for living costs in Boston and my salary would be lower. But then again when I flip it around the other way as living in Boston and moving to San Francisco it tells me that California is more. I guess I really am not great at math.

My Conclusion: It’s neither more or less expensive. It’s about the same in the end cost-wise to live in Boston or San Francisco. That being said, I would argue for the fact that for some people, the Bay Area is a much more enjoyable area. We have world class skiing a few hours away, year-round hiking trails, world class wine tasting, good sports teams, surfing for surfers, golf for golfers, races for runners and all sorts of clubs, groups and organizations for people. We have some amazing food available to us, great music and music venues and top notch educational institutions which makes this area a hot bed of culturally aware intelligent people. While Northern California does get some chilly weather, we never have to shovel snow or scrape inches of ice from our cars, our days are longer because we’re closer to the equator (more sun than Boston!) and we don’t really get humidity with our heat.

In the end, even if it were more expensive to live in California, spoken like a true Californian, it’s totally worth it.

The Joys of Home Ownership

This is never a pretty site. Unless you expected to have your backyard excavated on a random weekday. Why was it being excavated? Well, it stemmed from this. But it turns out it was this:

That’s a sewage pipe. A clay sewage pipe. You see, when our house was built almost 65 years ago, a clay sewage pipe was the way to go. Not so much any more.

Luckily they were able to leave the deck alone but the pipe does cut across the corner of the deck at an angle. Fun fact, one guy dug both of those very giant, deep ditches by himself.

I have decided to omit the more gory pictures that involve more sewage action because I’m not actually trying to deter anyone from buying a home. But it’s why homeowners are supposed to have a reserve fund. Last year it was making repairs after our neighbor’s fire and this year it’s fixing our plumbing.

Our backyard should be mostly back to normal by the end of today and we’ll be able to not see our waste water drain through our backyard. It’s the little things in life. But it could have been worse or it could have taken longer to fix which would have also been worse so I’m glad we got it quickly taken care of.

What are some of your unexpected home adventures be it in a house you own or an apartment you rent?