House of HoodLims

97% Done!

2010-10-07T19:40:00.000-07:00

This past week we have nearly finished all the cabinets (still need to install some drawer fronts, glass, and knobs), installed our counter top, installed appliances, finished electrical work (still awaiting the shades for our island pendants), and we are now awaiting the plumbing, which is tomorrow. I cannot wait for what I consider to be the most important appliance: my dishwasher!

Here are some pictures of where we are at right now:

You can see we still need the shades on the pendant, plus we need glass on the side door of the island and in the upper cabinets:

Shot from one end to the other - check out our new fridge! GE Cafe, side by side.

Bare naked bulbs need some shades! Hood was purchased on Overstock.com of all places:

Counter top made of Brazilian soapstone and our farmhouse sink:

View of island and range:

These are called runnels I think. Some people call them drainboards. They help reduce pooling of water on your counter top as you are drying dishes.

Mixed hardware scraps make for some cool looking pull out drawers. Andrew will install the drawer fronts and hardware this weekend.

We will be putting things away and COOKING all weekend long! Yippee!!!

Kitchen is Almost Done!

2010-10-03T19:27:00.001-07:00

So yes, I suck at blogging. But here I am, a couple of months later, back at it again. We are about a week out from a finished kitchen, and not a moment too soon. I will be on October break for an entire week for the first actual week of a finished kitchen. Yay! I don't have to scrounge around for food anymore and beg from teenagers!

Our cabinets FINALLY arrived from Scherrs Cabinets. Of course, it didn't arrive in perfect condition and some cabinets were nicked and damaged. They easily accepted them back from us. The biggest issue came from this IDIOT who our contractor hired to install the cabinets. Well, wherever that guy went to cabinet installation school should take his cabinet diploma back. The dunce managed to put the doors on BACKWARDS so that the painted finished side was facing in, and the unfinished side out. If that wasn't bad enough, he put exposed screws on the outside so all you saw were silver screws on the outside of each cabinet. He was fired immediately by our contractor, who had to cover the cost for new upper cabinets. Argh.

Well, here they are:

View from living room:

View from dining room:

Pantry + Desk area:

Close up of desk:

Farmhouse apron front sink by Franke:

We also ordered some lights from Overstock.com. For our dining room chandelier, we ordered the Ventura, partly for the name.

Cabinets, almost done and organized!

This week should be countertop and appliances! Finally, a working kitchen after 3 LONG months.

Standstill

2010-08-30T20:52:00.001-07:00

So now we are at a standstill. We are awaiting the arrival of our cabinets. We purchased cabinets from this company in North Dakota, called Scherr's Cabinet and Doors. We were really happy with their sample, but I am not impressed with how long it is taking to get these cabinets. We pretty much cannot continue until we have those. We are also debating on paint colors and counter material. The cabinets are shipping tomorrow so we will see how it all goes! I believe we are less than 1 month away from our finished kitchen! Tomorrow I will create a post on all of our fixtures and finishings. :)

Floors

2010-08-30T20:43:00.001-07:00

When we first moved into this house we needed a major floor refinishing. We also had a LOT of problems with termite damage and urine damage to our floors. We hired Steve Jordan of Jordan Hardwood Floors to come and splice in new floors (this is where they pull out the damaged boards and put new ones in its place) and to refinish our 70 year old floors. He did such a great job, we hired him again for our kitchen hardwood floors.

Again, he had to splice in some new floors to add on to our existing hardwood floors. These new boards in the dining room are where we used to have that ugly indoor patio.

Old patio area:

Kitchen and dining area:

A different angle:

Attic

2010-08-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

Remember that scene in Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase gets stuck up in the attic while his entire family goes out shopping? He freaks out at first but then realizes he can reminisce and watch old home movies of his family while snuggling with old mementos. Well, I can lock Andrew up in the attic now too! Except our attic is super hot. As they were tearing off the roof Andrew realized how much attic space we had and asked DMH to create working attic for us. We had them cut a hole into the ceiling and install a telescopic attic ladder so we could extend it down and climb up to store items we didn't need (such as all of Audrey's clothes that she has already outgrown!).

Access in the ceiling of the hallway:

Hello ladder:

Wow, you are a long ladder!:

Audrey's bedding and clothes:

Look at all the space!

We Love Arches

2010-08-30T20:23:00.000-07:00

One of the prerequisites we had for a home was that it had to have arches. We love arches, and they do such a nice job of separating two spaces without using a door. Plus, they are soft, curvy, and pretty. We already had two arches in our house, one separating the entrance from the living room, and another separating the living room from the dining room. Now we wanted one to signal a separation between the dining room and the kitchen, while still keeping it open. On a practical note, we really needed the arch just to keep the ceiling up and supported.

I need to mention that all of the work has been done by Denis M. Hughes of DMH Construction. We are so pleased with Denis' work. He and his helper Eric are on the site every day, working hard, cleaning up after themselves, being completely courteous, and overall fantastic. I would highly recommend them any day. Denis created this arch for us:

Different angle:

With drywall:

Denis in the foreground, Eric in the back:

The new arch and the original arch:

Denis in the dining room:

The kitchen (view from living room):

More to come.

New Floor and Roof

2010-08-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

We needed to jackhammer out the old concrete in the patio area and pour in new concrete to make it even with the existing dining room floor. In addition to that, we needed to raise the roof line so that it no longer slopes down (like an outdoor roof would) but be at the same height as the rest of the room.

Old roof line:

Adios roof:

New roof line:

And new floor:

The space:

Kitchen Remodel - Before and Teardown

2010-08-29T17:49:00.000-07:00

Remember our kitchen before? Probably not, because we intentionally would skip it on our house tour. Well anyway, we had a tiny little kitchen that was split into kitchen space and laundry space. By split, I mean with a nearly one foot thick wall in between. We had taken the laundry unit out of there and turned it into kitchen storage space, but it was still so cramped. Additionally, we had a dining room that had a wall with open windows in it. Yes, you read correctly. Windows. The original house ended in our dining room, with two windows that looked outside. Sometime ago, an answer decided to turn the back porch into an indoor back porch, and enclosed the little patio space outside of the house and made it an "inside". I think I will have to post pictures for you to get the idea, if I can even find any.

The original kitchen:

This one is taken from the laundry area of the kitchen:

The refrigerator that came with the house and the only one small enough to fit the cubby (you can see the thick wall to the laundry area here):

The dining room that with the windows and door enclosed in with the patio:

A shot of the patio to the dining room from a different angle:

All of that was torn down with the hard work of the HoodLim men:

You can see the space where it was divided up into the original kitchen and laundry area here:

The dining room with the patio area:

You can see the original roof line where it is so obvious that the patio was outdoors. The concrete floor was demolished to make room for a new one:

The plan is to lengthen the dining area, open up the dining room to the kitchen, add an island to the middle, and a desk by the side kitchen door. Basically we want an open kitchen area. More to come!

The Nursery

2010-08-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

Our house was originally 2 bedrooms when it was built in 1938. In 1952, the family who was living here at the time added on a third room which is only accessible off of the second bedroom (our current master). That layout only allows for 1 of two options: an office, or a nursery. Ours was an office + laundry room, and is now a nursery + laundry room. Laundry doesn't get finished very often these days with a sleeping baby.

The room was originally wood paneled, right down to the bathroom. It was definitely interesting.

Then, it became our office/throw everything else that doesn't fit into the other rooms room, which I don't even have a picture of.

Now it is our daughter's room. My talented cousin Joyce aka Painter/Baker/Decorator Extraordinaire painted a beautiful tree from scratch for the nursery. Here she is in the middle of the night painting away:

I requested an owl for the tree to make it a little bit more interesting. It is actually kind of difficult to pick a tree that is friendly without being overly cute. A tree can turn sinister very easily. Here is the final outcome of the tree:

Andrew added some shelves:

We've been MIA

2010-08-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

I guess that is what a baby will do to you. What's new (besides baby poop and spit up of course)? Nursery photos and a new kitchen! Actually the new kitchen is in progress, but thankfully the nursery is done. :)

Finished Paint Job

2009-10-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

Finally, the painting, trim, gutters, and shutters are done.

Paint From the New Millenium!

2009-09-10T18:57:00.001-07:00

Our house is finally a new color, after nearly 40 years! In the last post, we put up pictures of the painting progress. Today, it is done. Pacific West Painting did a FANTASTIC job and we are so happy to have gone with them! We used all of our original materials (door, garage, etc) and they sanded it down to the point where it looks brand new. We could not be happier. The only thing that would enhance it would be some landscaping, but that is a whole other issue.

Here is the house:

And the garage:

Back of the house (we got new doors too, more on that to come):

And, just for fun, this was our original rendering of the house with a new paint job:

Kind of close, eh?

Paint in Progress

2009-09-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

We need new paint. The house hasn't been painted in who knows how long. Not only that, but our doors are falling apart, and our garage had a big hole in the back.

We finally set up a schedule for painting with Bill Dumond from Pacific West Painting. He sent his men out to prep the place and they have been hard at work! Here are some pictures of the progress they have made so far:

Remember this?

This is the back of the garage now:

And we picked a color!

Dunn Edwards Serene Thought:

Our trim will be Swiss Coffee, with a door the color of Red Contrast. We will also get shutters in navy blue (actual color still undecided).

Very exciting and necessary!

New Back Fence

2009-09-05T13:17:00.001-07:00

After about a year of talk, we finally set aside a weekend with our neighbors to build a fence between our two properties.

You can see their old seagrass fence:

Here is the finished result:

Much better!

Gardening Fun

2009-05-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

Back in the winter, we decided to start growing some vegetables from seed.

You may recall this:

Then we put them into our garden bed outside. We used a method called "Square Foot Gardening", which divides your plots into 1 square foot areas (as opposed to rows). You can read about more about Square Foot Gardening here http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

Here is the garden in the beginning stages:

After 3 careful months of growing, we had our first crop!

We harvested some Swiss chard and spinach for dinner the other night, along with lettuce for a salad, hence some bald spots.

Andrew is digging a trench for irrigation:

Lettuce:

Carrots with chives in the background...I think it is time to harvest!

Broccoli:

And a beautiful and healthy tomato plant growing in my compost bin! I can't wait to find out what kind it is:

In addition to all that, our avocado tree (which we thought was barren this season) rained down some manna on us:

Now it is time to plant tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and summer goodness. BTW, check out your local farmers market for some inexpensive veggie pots. We got a ton of tomatoes and squash for $1 each yesterday!

Windows!

2009-01-31T20:20:00.001-08:00

It hasn't been fun living with windows from 1938. To begin with, the glass was single paned and did nothing to keep the heat out on a hot day, or to keep the heat in on a cold day. Another problem was the cracked and peeling glazing. The third problem would have been the cracked glass. And last, but definitely not least, was the painted glass. Yes, you read that right. The previous owners PAINTED some of the panes in order to maintain some privacy from their neighbors. WTH?! Had they never heard of curtains?

Here are some examples of the original windows:

Lovely bird decal in the living room

One out of THREE painted windows on the north side of the house. This one is in the bathroom

Cracked glass in the back room

Gross window screens

Peeling glazing (paint) on the front bay

We replaced them with vinyl Simonton windows. In some rooms we can crank it open like a door (a casement window). In others, they are double hung so we can pull down the top part for ventilation. And they all open towards you (like an oven door) for cleaning. Awesome. We got the "perimeter" style, which really matches the lights we originally got from Lowe's.

One of the windows. You can really see the perimeter style here.

Men at work

The final result:

We would like to thank Westlake Windows and Door for doing a fantastic job.

If you would like to see all 69 pictures of the window process, click here.

Composts and Gardens

2009-01-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

So, we have been wanting to make a garden and a compost bin. If you don't already know, composting is a great way to reduce your trash and to make great soil for your garden. Basically, it is a bunch of natural stuff that decomposes and breaks down over time. We throw leaf litter and produce scraps in there, as well as any plants we are throwing out and coffee grounds. It is pretty neat to watch the pile reduce.

To find out what types of things you can throw into your compost bin, click here Composting 101

Here is our raised bed garden. We have put down tarp in there to act as a barrier from weeds and underground pests.

We got some seeds and started seedlings in the house. We have: mesclun, basil, eggplant, romaine lettuce, broccoli, swiss chard, jalapeno peppers, and bell peppers.

Here is a picture of the mini greenhouse:

Here are the little sprouts. The swiss chard is in the background with the red stalks, and the broccoli and romaine is in the foreground.

Pretty cool, eh?

Picture Moulding in the Dining Room

2008-12-21T11:43:00.000-08:00

All finished!

Baseboards and Bedrooms

2008-12-21T11:27:00.001-08:00

All of the baseboards in the house are up. We got the Victorian style from Lowes with a quarter round shoe on the bottom.

We also received our furniture from Overstock.com

We did a blue and brown theme in the guest bedroom to reflect the ocean. It is very calming.

Cousin Luis' painting, which was our wedding gift.

Bathroom - Done and Done!

2008-12-21T11:16:00.001-08:00

The tiny bathroom is finally finished! Here are the pictures of it:

The toilet is a Toto and the sink is a Kohler Memoirs.

The glass cabinet is the Cartwright from Restoration Hardware and I believe we got the medicine cabinet from Lowe's.

Pretty close to our inspiration pic, no?

Dogloo

2008-12-21T11:09:00.000-08:00

It has rained a couple of times in this last month. In preparation for it, we bought Harley a Petmate Indigo Dog Home from Petco. She actually goes inside of it and it doesn't leak like the wooden dog houses. It is nice and roomy, with a hallway that leads into the circular igloo. To top it off, I got an XL for the Large price!

Our New Addition

2008-12-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

The day after Thanksgiving, we splurged and got what I have always wanted...a Roomba! We named him Ralphie and he is a very good boy. For more information, check out the iRobot website. We have had him for almost a month and he does a great job in not only vaccuuming up larger dust particles, but he also gets all the fine particles that regular vaccuums can't seem to pick up. He is very thorough and no matter how many times we run him, he always picks up more and more. My advice though is to trap him into a couple of rooms at a time so that he can do a good job.

Here he is, on his dock (the bed that he sleeps in and recharges in).

Painting

2008-11-11T16:35:00.000-08:00

We need to get our house painted. We have now interviewed 4 different companies, and the prices varied as much as $5000 apart! Crazy. We need to get on it and also replace some of the glass before they power wash. Ok, done and done.

Cabbages and Thyme

2008-11-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

We put flowers in under our fence and on the side of the house. A day later, Harley dug some of it out!

The ornamental cabbages on the side of the house (Lowe's for only $3 each!)

The fence:

Little stepping stones with ornamental thyme to fill in the spots:

Mouldy Wouldy

2008-11-11T16:20:00.001-08:00

Andrew has been working on putting the moulding in the house. It is looking beautiful!

So far, the front bedroom is done. This is a picture during the process. You will have to wait for better pictures later!

The 1/2 bathroom. Hard to see but it has a chair rail, then crown and base:

The dining room:

Worms

2008-11-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

We have been worm composting, which is supposedly pretty darn easy to do. Of course, that means that I find it quite high maintenance. I am hoping my worms are still alive! For those who don't know what worm composting is, it is basically a way to use worms and your old veggies scraps to make compost fertilizer for your garden. You can find out more about how to make a worm composting bin by clicking here Cheap and Easy Worm Bin.

Here is a picture.

I overpaid for my worms from Petsmart because the thought of sending away for a box of 1000 worms to come via mail just creeped me out. I think I am having a hard time keeping this worm compost going because worms scare me!

The Bed - Completed

2008-10-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

Our bed is gorgeous, but has always lacked the complete look. We needed pillows, but it has been difficult finding the right pillows. Well today, I took the time to go to Ventura Target #1. I found a beautiful black pillow, but unfortunately, only 1. So I didn't buy it. Then I went to Ventura Target #2, and found the same black pillow...only 1. So I had to go back and forth to get both. I also found a pair of reversible striped pillow that I liked. Only problem is that one of them was labeled as $3.87 and the other has $7.49. Luckily for me, the girl at the register let me have it for the lower price. Here is the result...I still think I am missing one for the middle...maybe a roll.

Hmm...

2008-10-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since the last update. We are still working on the house, but we are also focusing on just living in it. Here is where we are so far:

Garage
Andrew has put one layer of stucco on the back where the hole was. He has also been cleaning it out and organizing boxes and our garage belongings.

If you remember, it was a big hole that was boarded up.

Here is a picture of the somewhat organized garage:

Bathroom
We are also working on laying down the tile for the half bath. If you remember, here is our inspiration bathroom.

Here is what the bathroom looked like originally:

Putting in some blue paint. The color is called Cincinattian Hotel by Valspar.

Laying down the tile:

The finished result:

Close-up of the tile. It is 2 strips of 1 inch white square tile, 1 strip of 1 inch blue square glass tile, 1 more strip of 1 inch white square tile, and then the 1 inch white hexagonal tile.

We will need to put down the moulding and the beadboard, which are currently in the car. We also need to grout.

Living Room

Just trying to keep the living room in a livable condition. Here it is, all cleaned up:

And to end this post, I will leave you with a picture of 2 friends:

Dshwashers and Dogs

2008-09-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

Everything is going well so far. We installed the countertop and dishwasher, then had a little dinner party!

Here is what is looked like before...what you can't see is the nasty cracked tiles on the counter:

Here it is now, with the dishwasher in place of that big hole (we have patched up some of the drywall in the kitchen but we need to paint it:

Andrew had to cut out some of the cabinet to push the sink forward...it will be covered up at some point...or so he says.

He has also been busy inserting a dog door into our back room door:

Unfortunately, the door door isn't completely finished.

And here is the user of the dog door:

Pooped after a long walk

With her new friend

That's all for now!

Cleaning Up

2008-09-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

We are starting to get things put away...sort of. We are slowly trying to pick up the stuff that was sitting around in the living room and putting pictures on the wall. Here are some pictures of the living room:

A little bit of a snapshot of the place:

We finally found a place to put our wedding centerpieces:

The very functional table that doesn't match the rest of the living room:

The too big wall with one picture on it...we plan on just putting all of our pictures there in black frames:

The tight dining room...large table + wine buffet = not much space:

We had some issues with our dishwasher. It didn't fit well underneath the existing cracked tile counter, so we bought an inexpensive laminate one to tide us over for the time being. It is a few inches deeper, so we can place our new dishwasher underneath. Andrew has been hard at work demolishing the tile and cutting out a space for the sink in the new countertop.

What was under the tile was DISGUSTING!

Close-up of the nastiness:

The new countertop (upside down) on the sawhorses:

The new countertop:

While Andrew was working on that, I was busy with something else...our bed! It arrived yesterday and I picked up the India Ink Duvet Set from Anthropologie. It is a great quality duvet and feels so nice! I should also mention that to match, we picked up a Thomasville Renovation chest from Target. It is the Terrace style:

Our bed in our room (if you notice, our curtain rod has balls on it too, to match the bed and chest!) :

And, of course, the newest (and oldest) addition to our family:

HARLEY!

I will post the finished kitchen later.

Our First Week

2008-09-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

We are in! Sorry it has been so long without an update, but moving weekend was hectic, and then we were without internet connection (which surprisingly, was not that bad!)

So this is what we have been up to. First off, curtain purchases. We have so many windows in the house that it felt like we were goldfish living in a glass bowl. We immediately purchased some curtain rods from Bed Bath and Beyond and curtains from Burlington Coat Factory (Andrew was astonished to find out that they were "More than great coats!"

We also had to work out a creative way to survive in the kitchen. As you may remember, we had the fridge that came with the house. It is small, but it is the only one that fits in that fridge cubby. Then we put the OTHER refrigerator (from the rental house) into what was the old laundry area off the kitchen. Now we have two refrigerators within 3 feet of each other! One is the beer fridge, and the other is the produce fridge. What more do you need?!
Our two refrigerators!

We also received some big ticket items: Our washer and dryer, and our dishwasher and range! WHOOHOO! WHOOHOO! We are so excited, except the dishwasher isn't hooked up yet.

My first load!

Our lovely GE Cafe range

and dshwasher

Hopefully our bed will get here today from Ethan Allen. Our guest bedset from Overstock.com should be on it's way within a week or so.

Whitaker Bed and Nightstand

Whitaker 5 drawer chest

It has been a mess in the house because we aren't sure where things are and how to put them away!

That's it for now! Hopefully we can update soon when the house looks better.

And There Was Light!

2008-09-03T17:30:00.000-07:00

Today Creico came back and put in all the lights and outlets. It looks great! Almost like a really NICE house. Well, all except for the kitchen of course. Nothing is going to fix that.

Living room with recessed lighting:

Lights in the shower:

The new lights in the front of the house (notice how all the bushes are gone?)

I moved in some of our clothing, like our 20 heavy coats we will probably never wear again. I was also able to put my shoes up on our built in shoe rack! I love all the shelves that are already there!

And last but not least, our newly painted ceiling! Of course, our walls aren't finished.

Tonight we have to finish bringing over the rest of the clothes and things we don't need and packing up the kitchen. It's getting so much closer!

GE Cafe

2008-09-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

I should also mention that we purchased a new range and dishwasher from Lowes. We wanted to buy a dishwasher even before we fixed up the kitchen because, well, I don't like to wash dishes. We added the range because the range in the current house is a little sketchy. The inspection declared it to work fine, but to be safe, we decided to just bite the bullet and get the range. If you buy 2 or more GE products, GE is offering a rebate. 2 = $100 back, 3 = $300 back, 4 = $400 back, and 5 products is $500 back. We will eventually need 5 products, but not all at once. We also got 10% off the Labor Day sale.

We chose the GE Cafe line because we were familiar with the GE Profile line in the condo and loved it. The GE Cafe works like the Profile but has a sleeker, more professional style.

Here is a sample kitchen from the GE Cafe page:

GE Cafe gas range:

Dishwasher:

They should be here in about 2 weeks! Yay!

Labor Day. Literally.

2008-09-01T21:24:00.001-07:00

Today we labored. We did a whole lot of work and got almost nothing accomplished!

We finished painting the front bedroom and the ceiling of the master.

The front bedroom:

I don't have a picture of the ceiling in the master. It is basically the color above (Lotus Flower) above the color First Sun by Valspar.

We also got to work on the outside of the house, ripping down the awnings. FINALLY!

Gone is the back awning! (before and after)

The front (before and after):

The aftermath:

We also broke out Erin and Mark's chainsaw and decided to massacre the huge hedges and bushes in front of the house:

The hedges (we caled them soldiers):

Chopping away!

We cut back the hydrangea too:

Our newest pile of trash:

We were unable to dig out the stumps and we did not even want to tackle the multiple birds of paradise plants. Yuck! Our neighbor gave us the recommendation of a tree trimmer and I believe we will be calling them ASAP.

We also met with a painter and discussed some options with him. We are probably going to sand down and paint the windows as opposed to replacing them completely. This is our exterior paint inspiration house (a neighbor's the next street over):

The house is grayish green with white trim, navy shutters, and a red door. Exactly what we want!

Oh, and here is a picture of the finished tile in the laundry room area.

I also moved in some coats and linens into the linen closet. I can't believe we are actually starting to move some things in!

Laboring Weekend

2008-08-31T22:35:00.000-07:00

So far, we have been hard at work! My parents came up again, as did Liz. As of Sunday evening, we've:
- finished the fence
- cleaned up the yard (again) and picked more fruit
- painted the first coat in the front bedroom and the back bedroom
- taped a line in order to paint our coved ceiling
- cut back some plants (thanks Erin and Mark for the chainsaw!)
- cleaned the absolutely disgusting kitchen and bathroom (thanks Mom!)
- laid down tile in the new laundry area (thanks Dad!)

Liz painting the fence:

The latch I screwed in:

Left side of the fence:

Right side of the fence:

The reason for the fence:

My first avocado!

The paint color in the front room. It is called Lotus Flower by Olympic and is actually very pretty:

Testing out colors for the ceiling in our master (the middle bedroom):

The new color in the back bedroom (the once wood paneled room). It is called Pale Sunshine by Laura Ashley for Valspar:

Dad laying tile:

And with the grout:

The clean bathroom! I wish I had a before and after:

The clean kitchen:

The fixed floor!

Remember how it used to look?

The floors make such a big difference! We can really see ourselves living there now! Too bad the room still looks a bit purple.

Tomorrow, we are meeting with a painter for our exterior. We will also finish painting the bedrooms. Don't forget to go to Lowes before Labor Day weekend ends! Thank goodness for a long weekend...or else I would be stressing!

Goodbye Laundromat

2008-08-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

The HoodLims are ghetto fabulous. For the past year, we have been going to the laundromat in our local run down suburban shopping center to do our laundry. We originally started by both washing AND drying at the laundromat. Then, around last Thanksgiving, a friend gave us her old washer and dryer set. Only, the washing machine was broken (which she told us about), and we never were able to get it going again. As a result, we did our washing at the laundromat, but took our wet clothes home to dry. Yes, ghetto fabulous.

Today we bought this Whirlpool Steam Washer and Dryer set from Lowes!

Here they are (we bought ours in white for much less):

We purchased it for less than the online price (the in-store price was at least $100 cheaper), PLUS 10% off for their Labor Day sale, PLUS 10% off for our change of address coupon! AND we got free delivery, and on our receipt we got something like $50 off of a purchase of $100. I am not sure on the exact price, but considering we are dropping about $200 a week at Lowes, I don't think that will be too hard to do.

If you need an appliance, this is a great week to do it at Lowes! They are even offering free installation prices!

I am looking forward to being able to my laundry without having to load up the car with two overflowing baskets, one giant tub of detergent, and a huge bottle of bleach!

Day 21

2008-08-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

First off, our bedroom color. We didn't paint the entire room because the drywall people were still working on the plaster around the door. This color is called "First Light" and I believe it is either an Eddie Bauer for Valspar or Laura Ashley for Valspar (a purchased at Lowes). It really brightens up the room, which was kind of dark before.

The original room and the closet:

Now:

Today, our hardwood floor guy, Steve Jordan, got in and did his first coat of polyurethane. It really brought out the great colors in the wood!

Here are some pictures...we can't actually go in and walk on it, so we had to take the pictures from afar.

The End of Weekend 3 and the Beginning of Week 4

2008-08-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

Darnit! I just realized that we didn't take a picture of our bedroom. I guess it will have to wait until tomorrow. Anyway, I have pictures of our living room after the paint dried. I also repainted the fireplace white to make the walls look less purple and more of a bluish silver gray (still not right but workable).

The newly white fireplace. You can see the difference in color if you compare it to the window trim.

Our drywall is finally taped. Mark Loyal's people need to now stay out of the house because our floor guy, Steve Jordan from Jordan Hardwood Floors is coming tomorrow to start sanding!

Goodbye!

A Painting Disaster

2008-08-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we picked out some paint colors. One was called "Foreshadow" by Olympic Paints, and the other was "Gray Mare". We started painting last night (see post below) and it looked fine. This morning Andrew and I headed over to the house separately (so we could leave separately or run errands separately) and when I arrived he had already gone to pick up some bagels.

Imagine my surprise as I walked into a PURPLE room! And not like a cute purple, but the purple gray of diseased flesh. Yum. It was so disgusting, that I immediately ran to the restroom and vomited. Yes, the paint color made me vomit. Not exactly a good reaction to your new living room.

You can't tell, but this was it:

To prevent me from vomiting again, we quickly hurried to Lowes and picked up a couple of new colors. I am not in love with them, but Andrew is, so I compromised to make up for the purple puke.

Silver Spoon (by Olympic - which, BTW, is not the best paint). We also painted the dining room a darker gray (name is escaping me right now). We are only painting the top half of the dining room and we will paint the bottom half white.

The dining room by itself (Uncle Art and Auntie Annie stopped by a little to help paint...the smudge on the bottom half was Uncle Art getting too excited) :

Andrew almost had a vomit moment himself when he saw me testing out these two colors in the front guest room:

I also tested out a couple of yellow colors for our master bedroom. If you remember, I wanted to do yellow, black, and white.

Any votes on which yellow?

It's Andrew's birthday today, and we are heading out to sushi! With a coupon of course. :)

The Beginning of Weekend 3

2008-08-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

The drywall is up! Mark Loyal and his people FINALLY put the insulation in the walls and starting putting the drywall up in the back addition room. You can also now see the division in the walls between the tiny half bathroom and the new laundry room!

This was the original room (wood paneled and all)

This is the room now:

The old bathroom area...it was nearly the entire length of the wall, except for a little closet:

Now - The laundry nook to the right and the wall of the new half bath to the left:

The new half bath:

We also got started with painting the living room. The color is called Foreshadow. It is from the Olympic Paint Line from Lowes. We are doing the second coat tomorrow. The color doesn't show very well in the picture.

Here is Andrew painting:

Goodbye Ocean...

2008-08-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

Carpet that is. Imagine our surprise when we walked into the house and all the carpets were ripped up and the first round of sanding begun! Remember this?

The carpet of sand, shallow waters, and the deep blue sea:

The same hallway without the carpet!

Steve Jordan pulled up the termite eaten slats:

The front bedroom (before and after):

Good Riddance!

Day 14? I think it might be Day 13.

2008-08-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

Today our floor contractor, Steve Jordan from Jordan Floors, came and laid down 2 inch white oak floors in the additional room. It looks great! Tomorrow he should replace some of the damage in the living room with new slats that match the original floor.

Here are some pictures of the new floors in the additional room:

You can see the difference between the new floors and the old floors inside the bathroom frame:

Steve Jordan should start refinishing the floors on Monday...then it is one more week while we wait for it to dry. After it is dry, we move in! Yay!

Days 11 - 13 aka Weekend 2

2008-08-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend my parents came up (with Harley!) to help out. One of my best buddies Amanda also drove up to lend a hand. We are so grateful for everyone who has come up to lend a helping hand!

The tasks this weekend were: make a fence in the backyard to keep the dog in, clean up the additional room to allow the floor person in, and prime and paint the walls in the living room and dining room.

We waked into a HUGE mess left behind by Mark Loyal's (our GC's) workers. We were PISSED! Thank goodness he told us he would send someone in to clean it all up.

Mess in the hallway:

Mess in the backyard under the orange tree:

My dad and Andrew spent most of their day Saturday cutting up and breaking cement to create a ditch that a fence could be inserted into.

The new trench in the cement:

The men, digging:

The partially finished result!

The women were hard at work too:

Amanda, working hard:

Leave me alone!

Mom:

Just kidding. We actually pruned the trees, primed and painted fence posts and slats, and primed the living and dining rooms.

Painting the fence:

The plaster people patched the holes, which allowed me to get priming:

We ripped up the carpet and here is how it looks!

The happy (and exhausted) homeowners:

Days 4 -10

2008-08-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since the last update. Things have gotten crazy. I went back to work full time, Andrew has been putting in extra hours at his job, we have both been cleaning in the two different houses, and just trying to get ready for this move. So here is the latest update.

Over the weekend of August 8th-10th, Andrew's parents came up to help us out with the place. Andrew and his dad spent the entire time taking off every inch of wood paneling and tile in the entire back room, which sent showers of nasty gray insulation everywhere.

The empty walls down to the beams:

The ceiling rafters:

Imagine this coming up to your knees!

While the guys were working on that, my mother-in-law and I were busy trimming the fruit trees. This was one serious job. The trees hadn't been picked in months! After a solid 2 days of cutting down fruit and trimming back dead branches, we ended up with about 300 pieces of fruit. The picture below is what we had left over AFTER giving away a few buckets.

The huge tree I worked on:

2/3 of the actual oranges we picked:

Andrew has also been working out a new layout for us in the back room. It was originally a long skinny bathroom area, with a toilet in one end, and a sink in the other (all wood paneled, of course).

Bathroom:

Toilet:

Sink:

The trick was to figure out how to squeeze a bathroom AND a laundry area into that small section of the room. We decided to completely knock down the walls and open it up completely, allowing us to reframe the area. We split up that entire area into 2. One for a tiny powder room, and sitting adjacent to that, a tiny laundry area. Andrew immediately got to work framing the walls.

The area formerly known as the wood paneled bathroom:

The dividing wall (laundry room to the right, bathroom to the left):

And then we decided we didn't have time for Andrew to do the entire area by himself, and get permits pulled. It would've delayed us another week at least! So we hired a general contractor, Mark Loyal, to finish framing that area and to drywall and/or plaster the entire house.

What Mark did (Andrew is standing in the entrance to the new laundry closet):

A possible tight squeeze in the new bathroom:

Pocket doors save space! These will be used to connect the master bedroom to the addition, and also as the door for the new tiny bathroom

To top it all off, the plumber is now working on the house, we are getting our plaster re-patched (from the holes the electricians put in), and the floors refinishing is all in motion!

Ok I am beat.

To end this, I thought I should show you a picture of Chloe the Cat and her Olympic pride:

Wood, Wood, and more Wood

2008-08-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

This morning I met with a couple of hardwood floor refinishing and repairs people. We have decided to only choose local people to work on the house, ie, Ventura people. Makes life easier to have them so close by, and I am also afraid some people are padding gas prices into their costs. I found two BBB recommended companies and had them come out ASAP to assess the situation.

Luckily, for us, the house has 2 inch white oak floors throughout, and a Douglas fir hardwood subfloor in the addition and the kitchen. Apparently, we can refinish the subfloor and have it pass as a hardwood floor, just sitting on the joists underneath the house.

Unfortunately for us, we have this area of flooring in the living room that has been damaged by termites and possibly urine. Either way, it is not pretty. We will probably have to splice in new oak slats to match the ones we are taking out.

Here is the problem area:

So far, from what we can see, the rest of the house's floors look to be in pretty good condition. I hope there are no surprises lurking underneath all the carpet!

And now, for More Wood:

I love Craigslist. One person's trash is another person's treasure. As you might have read previously, we have been tearing out the wood paneled room. I believe the wood in there is a knotty pine. We were creating a HUGE pile of it, and I didn't feel right about just throwing it in the dump when it could be recycled (I just didn't know what to make out of it). So, one quick Craigslist posting later, I had not one, but THREE people interested in taking the wood off my hands! After a couple of hours, I had to delete the posting and a very nice person came to pick up all the wood for his new shed.

The pile is getting smaller!

Planning for a Garden

2008-08-07T23:00:00.000-07:00

We have been into vegetable gardening this year. It all started with a couple of tomato plants and some herbs in the fall. Since then, we have successfully grown:
- about 10 different varieties of tomatoes (DELICIOUS!)
- tomatillo plant (just now producing fruit)
- lots of basil
- cilantro (grows too quickly and goes to seed)
- parsley (you can cut this down to the stems and it grows back!)
- thyme (starting to flower and go to seed)
- rosemary (mmm fragrant)
- tarragon
- oregano
- Mexican oregano (don't know the difference in taste, but it looks different)
- chocolate mint (keep mint in its container, the roots will spread and take over)
- lavender (I think that's what it is)
- chives (never cut these, not sure what it tastes like)

Of course, we have had to be smart about where to grow these due to our lack of space. Not so in the new house! We are planning on creating raised beds for our garden, and 2 compost bins behind the garage (which also needs to be fixed).

Here is the area (pretty big, no?):

Imagine two compost bins in the corner:

To find out more about composting, you can visit these sites:

EPA

Backyard Gardener

We may or may not add a vermicomposting site, which is where you use worms to eat your kitchen scrap greens. I don't particularly like to handle worms, but they do make a good "tea" for your garden.

To read more about vermiculture, visit these sites:

Savvy Gardener

Cheap and Easy Worm Bin

Our goal is to possibly enter the Ventura County Fair next year! This year we saw a lemon that was the size of a human head (no joke, will post pic later)!

Remodeling - Day 1

2008-08-07T22:01:00.001-07:00

Just one day of owning this home and the remodeling process is underway!

First, we needed to rewire the entire house. After interviewing a few people, we decided on Chris Creighton from Creico Electric Company. They were highly recommended and have the grade of AAA on the BBB (Better Business Bureau). Today they started drilling holes in the walls to run wiring, and even installed a new electric panel on the outside of the house (as opposed to where it was, in the kitchen).

Here is how it looked before:

After:

The writings on the wall (mock up of wiring):

Old Electric Panel inside kitchen (sideways shot)

New Electric Panel Outside of House

Andrew has also been hard at work, ripping out the wood paneling from the add-on room.

Here is a picture of the nightmare that was the room (of course, you can see pictures from a previous post)

Tearing it down:

The partially finished result (we actually have about 3 walls completed):

Stay tuned...LOTS more to come!

Homeowners!

2008-08-07T21:47:00.001-07:00

I should've posted yesterday, but we are now homeowners! We got the keys yesterday and I immediately made a few copies. YES!

August 6th, 2008 - We own a home.

So Close!

2008-08-06T08:15:00.001-07:00

So there was a week long delay in escrow. First we had the insurance issue. Then, the investor who the bank was selling the loan to wanted a second appraisal (because the one 2 weeks ago wasn't good enough?). Apparently this is the new thing that investors are doing with the whole housing market meltdown. THEN we had to wait for papers to go back and forth from the mortgage person to the lender to title people to us, and all the way back again. Yesterday we got funded, which means our loan went through! Today, we are recording and getting the keys! Yay!

Our New Bed

2008-08-01T08:46:00.000-07:00

We bit the bullet and bought the Quincy bed from Ethan Allen. I don't think I have ever been the owner of an actual bed before. Just a frame and an ugly headboard. Then when I went to college, I couldn't afford a headboard. Now we are on a mattress on the floor! So I think we are due for a bed.

We did complain about the price to the salesperson. He replied back, "Well think about it this way. You probably wouldn't think twice about spending $30k on a car would you?" To which I responded, "You really don't know us. We just amortized the cost of the bed over the next 10 years and are buying it because we figured out that it was 50 cents a day and we could find something to cut out of our lifestyle to pay for it!"

I mean, please. I carpool with two crazy people just because I refuse to buy a new car and refuse to pay for a tank of gas a week.

The bed should arrive at the end of August.

Further Delay in Escrow

2008-08-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

Apparently the investor who is buying the loan from the bank wanted to do ANOTHER appraisal to see if the house was worth his money. Was the appraisal 2 weeks ago not good enough? We just lost an entire WEEKEND, which pushes everything back about a week! VERY VERY unhappy. I really hope we get in on Monday.

Delay in Escrow

2008-07-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

We are one day behind in the closing of escrow. First of all, we had to deal with the nightmare of a landlady. Secondly, the home insurance agent was out of the office and didn't send in our paperwork. Lastly, the earthquake knocked down the phones and fax lines at the title company. So instead of getting the last loan documents signed yesterday, we will *hopefully* do it today and send it back in. We are stressing and hoping we close on Friday, August 1st, and not Monday or Tuesday. Who wants to pay the interest on a whole month if you don't have to?

Crazy Landlady

2008-07-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Argh! We just told our lawsuit happy landlady that we were going to move out at the end of August (which is the end of our year long contract). We also asked her to sign papers for our loan saying that we paid on time every month. What an ordeal!!! I wonder how I can warn people about her and the rental property without her turning around and suing me!

So far, she has sued:

Noah's Bagels
Her old real estate agent who "fired HER"
A cleaning company

She also tried suing the last tenants, but the renter's dad was a lawyer. Scary!

Master Bedroom Color Inspiration

2008-07-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

I am still loving the black bed from Ethan Allen and the black chandelier. I also really like a black and white bedding to go along with it. But how can I keep the room from looking like a bordello? Paint it yellow!

I saw this picture on www.jessicaclaire.net

Here is a close up of the bedding (also from Jessica Claire):

The bedding set is called Waverly: Metro Damask Comforter. You can buy it from Target. Reviews are mixed and I will probably stay away from this purchase.

Someone also recommended the India Ink Duvet Cover set from Anthropologie. I think it is very close, but I am not sure if I like it as much as the French style seen in the Waverly.

I am thinking I like the idea of white beadboard on the lower portion of the walls too. Hopefully it won't make it too Pollyanna. I have not decided on that yet!

First Bathroom Purchase

2008-07-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

Today we bought this from the Restoration Hardware Outlet Store:

We got it for about 10% less than the sale price online. It is from the Cartwright Collection. We plan on adding this from the collection too:

Tip: If you buy from an outlet store, be sure to use your AAA discount. It saved us an additional 10% on top of the 40% already being saved by going to the outlet. I bought my wedding dress the same way.

Bedroom

2008-07-18T14:59:00.001-07:00

If you have been to our current place before, you probably know that we don't have a bed. Not only are we bedless, but we have no furniture whatsoever in our current room. Our rationale for this was that we didn't want to buy a bedroom set when we didn't know what size and shape our future bedroom was going to be.

Now that we know what our new bedroom looks like, we can start planning out our bedroom set. Here is a bed we like, the Quincy, from Ethan Allen. Now the question is, how can we get this bed for half the price?

I also found a chandelier I really loved from Home Depot:

Unfortunately, this chandelier is only being sold at Home Depot Canada. Argh! They have beautiful chandeliers at Home Depot Canada. It really seems quite unfair that our Northern neighbors get all the beautiful products while we are stuck with ugly lighting at our Home Depot.

Bathroom Inspiration

2008-07-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

Wainscotting, a light blue, and hexagonal mosaic tile...perhaps with a border.

(border design from restorationtile.com)

Interest Rates

2008-07-11T14:42:00.001-07:00

Today we locked in our mortgage. Points are a percentage of your total loan amount which you have to pay on top of your monthly loan + interest (I believe this is called Principal + Interest, which equals PI). The "TI" of PITI is the addition of (property) taxes and (hazard) insurance. You can deduct points on your taxes (in some cases), which hopefully means that in the long term we aren't paying as much. We locked this in after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae started tanking in the stock market. Scary thing! Interest rates have been getting higher by the day. When we first started looking (A few months ago), they were around 5.75%. Better lock this in before it gets any higher!

Escrow

2008-07-09T22:59:00.000-07:00

Today we signed some escrow papers on our house. Basically this transfer the title of the house over to us when we close.

On another escrow front, we are VERY unhappy with our real estate agent, lawyer, and escrow people in Chicago (the ones handling the condo). As of now, they shall go unnamed. Courtney, you know who they are, and I am NOT HAPPY. Our condo closed on July 7th. The money was to be overnighted to us, ensuring a delivery by July 8th. Today is July 9th, there is no money, and what is worse, the lawyer and his escrow people are pushing the blame onto each other. Each says they it was the other's responsibility to get the checks out. To top it all off, the REAL ESTATE LAWYER decided to put the check in the mail, like a birthday card. WTH? And this guy passed law school and the bar? You don't put tens and hundreds of thousands into the regular mail. You get it certified, wired, FedExed, whatever!

Courtney, please pass around this negative referral to any friends and family you might have who may or may not use this agent and his crappy referral of a lawyer.

Kitchen and Dining Room Inspiration Pictures

2008-07-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

Kitchen

We both want white cabinets in our kitchen offset by gold or bronze counters. I think we like the cottage look, just not the shabby chic kind. We also like the glass fronts in the cabinets. In reality, I think we just want to recreate the condo kitchen as much as possible. :)

Dining

I like the look of a two tone wall. We also like the chair railing and the picture frame moulding below. While I love the color gray in the picture, it might be too different from the color and style of the kitchen (but closer to the color and style of the living room). The dining room lies in between the kitchen and the living room. This is our inspiration picture anyway.

What Needs to Be Fixed ASAP

2008-07-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

1) Complete electrical overhaul. House needs to be brought up to code.
2) Complete plumbing job. Water pressure is low.
3) New glass in windows
4) New stucco and drywalling in garage
5) Flooring - replace, refinish, or install, depending on the room
6) Take down wood panels in rear bedroom and put up drywall
7) Remodel main bath
8) figure out what to do with 2nd wood paneled bathroom
9) Remodel kitchen
10) crown moulding and paint

Why We Like Our House

2008-07-08T23:53:00.001-07:00

1) Location! - walking distance to beach (either less than 2 miles walking south, or just over 2 miles walking west), 1 mile from awesome park with ocean view, and 2 miles to downtown and our favorite happy hour bar!
2) Neighborhood - all custom homes from 1920s to early 1950s. Most have been remodeled and the neighborhood is safe and friendly.
3) Schools - Great elementary school (Loma Vista Elementary), middle school and high school
4) Freeway access - about a mile away from the 101
5) Fruit Trees - 2 avocados, 2 oranges, 1 peach, and one orange/lemon tree, all on a sizable backyard
6) Arched entranceways - they were almost a must have on our list
7) detached posterior garage - no ugly garages to look at in the neighborhood
8) cove ceilings - cool
9) original hardwood floors - need refinishing
10) original brick fireplace
11) two bay windows

Home Inspection

2008-07-08T23:17:00.001-07:00

Home inspections are highly recommended, yet not required by law in the state of California. Why one would not get a home inspection, I don't know. Do it and save yourself the headache of being surprised when something bad happens! We were prepared for the most, since the home is from 1938. Luckily we had another home inspection report to work off on from the previous potential homebuyers of this house. Let me tell you, just by reading the original report, it did NOT look good. In fact, the house sounded like it was just rotting away. Huge money-hole here.

We decided to get a back up inspection so that we could get a first hand look at what the house needed. The first home inspection was good, it just wasn't done with us there, so we weren't sure how bad of shape the house actually was. We contacted Andrew's second cousin, Bill Fetzer of The Inspection Connection who recommended Andy Hasler of National Property Inspections to us.

Andy was very courteous, on time, and thorough. In looking at the house from the outside, he was worried. After getting inside and underneath the home, he felt a lot better. To quote him - "My opinion of the house has gone up since seeing the inside and under the home." Whew! We know the house needs a lot of work (complete electrical rewiring and replumbing) but it will be worth it. The comps in the neighborhood are a LOT higher than what we paid, so hopefully whatever we put into the home will only help increase its value!

Here is a link to pictures from inside

Here is a small sample of homes from the neighborhood. I actually think we took pictures of a lot of ugly homes in the neighborhood and it isn't a true representation of what is actually there.

Loans and Mortgages

2008-07-08T23:08:00.000-07:00

Our advice? Save save save! We thought about doing an FHA loan with 3% down, but after doing some more saving and waiting, we were able to do a conventional loan with a 30 year fixed rate. Having a conventional loan means that there are less stringent rules on what kinds of properties you can buy (and have financed). An FHA loan is government backed. You can get one with less of a down payment, but you have to jump through more hoops and they might not finance certain homes with higher needs.

We highly recommend doing your own research and crunching your own numbers before talking to a loan office. We started with Mortgage for Dummies and The Complete Idiots Guide to Buying a Home. They are easy reads and great for beginners. Andrew also did Excel spreadsheets up the ying yang of our finances. This made us less of a easy target when meeting with loan officer. Also, do yourself a favor and do a BBB check on your mortgage company.

This is probably the least fun job but the most important. Trust me, you don't want to be an unarmed bozo when it comes to dealing with these people.

Goodbye Condo

2008-07-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

Andrew and his parents have jointly owned a condo in Evanston, IL for the past 7 years. Recently, they sold it. This is a home where Andrew lived while in undergrad and graduate school. In 2006, I joined him, and we made it our first home for over a year. It was a beautiful historical condo with convenient amenities. Most of all, it was a place with filled with wonderful memories, and we will really miss it. Sadly, on our one year anniversary, it became someone else's home.

We Found One!

2008-07-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

After a few months of searching, we finally put an offer in on a Spanish Colonial Revival style home in midtown, Ventura. Unfortunately, we were in a multiple offer situation (yes, it does happen, even in 2008). In fact, homes in midtown were being purchased and pulled off the market within a couple of weeks here in Ventura! What is this, 2005? We ended up losing that house to a higher bidder. We were back to square 1.

Back in April, we went to an open house in an awesome area. Unfortunately, the home was pricey, and a total fixer! It was hard to see beyond all the work it needed, and it definitely wasn't worth it for the price tag. The house was sold and went into escrow quickly, so we forgot about it.

A few weeks later, it popped up again, but we just ignored it. Later, the price dropped. In June, we decided to take a look at it again with our agent. It was much better the second time around (without the hustle and bustle of an open house)! Apparently it had fallen out of escrow twice because the previous buyers did not have the finances or energy to fix the home up. We decided to put in a lowball offer on it. After only two low counteroffers, we found out that WE GOT THE HOUSE!

House Hunting in Ventura, CA

2008-07-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

We decided to start looking for a house in January of 2008. We have been renting a home in East Ventura since last fall. Ventura is a beach community with mountains to the north, and farms to the east. The entire town stretches narrowly from west to east. Downtown (and the beach) are on the west, and the east is more suburban with newer construction (and takes about 15 minutes to get downtown!) While our neighborhood is very safe and friendly, it is out of the way from EVERYTHING we like to do in town. We are also in a lease until August 31st, 2008, and don't want to rent forever!

Here is our current house:

We contacted Stuart Monteith and Dale King. You can visit their website at www.homesbystuart.com Stuart works mostly out of Santa Paula but her partner Dale handles Ventura. We did not make it easy for them. Here are some of the things we wanted on our list.

Wants:
older than 1940
rear or detached garage
arched entranceways
original hardwood floors
big yard with grass
mature fruit trees
architecture!

Dale and Stuart pointed us to the Ventura County MLS so we could get cracking. It was hard for us to find anything that fit our needs in an area we liked. Houses were either in yucky neighborhoods, or just completely lacking in architecture, or in East Ventura (where we don't want to be anymore).

We searched online everyday for months, and visited a few more homes. We finally narrowed our search to Ventura, and the Midtown area.

Welcome!

2008-07-08T22:20:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the House of HoodLims! We decided to start a blog to keep everyone (including ourselves) updated with the house purchasing, remodeling, and gardening process. Who knows how this will go, but it will be neat to read if we can keep this up!