Home/s

I popped the postcard to John in Wales into the post today. -walking those few blocks to the post office was a challenge, but the weather is absolutely lovely today (17C/62F), so I enjoyed my very slow saunter in the sun! 

Speaking of temps, I'm still hot under the collar regarding what happened in DC last weekend. The main brat who stood in front of the elder smirking (his PR firm says he was 'praying') has been invited on a morning chat show to, I guess, talk about how he was actually trying to take the air out of a rather tense situation. Yes, folks, he was actually the 'Gandi' of the melee in his MAGA cap who was, let us not forget, in DC to demonstrate against women's bodily autonomy. 

These sorts of anti-choice demos featuring entitled Catholic school boys were neither a feature of my teen years nor of my 20s. The numbers of people who are interested in wrestling bodily control away from women have certainly grown in my lifetime. It's a very unfortunate development. 

My Uncle sent me the below photo of Grandma's house in the Mission. She lived there with her first husband in the 1930s. Goodness knows how many hundreds of dollars were paid to buy this (then) not very old home. I think it's worth 2 million now. Bummer it was sold out of the family years and years ago. If I remember the story correctly, her son from that marriage inherited this and a few other properties and 'gambled them all away'. How nice. I could make some sort of sad collage of images of all the homes both sides of my family owned here. They are all G-O-N-E. 

Yesterday, we bid near the estimate on a small house out in the Sunset District. Because there were a few challenges with the home that would need $$$ to make better, we did not bid as high as we would have had there been no issues. The listing agent, who was also the owner of the house, reportedly received ten offers and ours fell short. I'm not unhappy, but living two blocks from the beach would have been pretty rad. 

Literal WC

We're probably out of our minds, but we think we might be able to afford buying property here in the city. The market, unfortunately, is still a seller's delight with contractors rapidly buying up fixers, making all manner of upgrades, then smacking a hefty price tag on the end result. And guess what? These babies sell right quick.

The more livable square footage, the higher the price. This mind-set seems to be leading some to make rather strange 'upgrades' to property before it going to market. 

The above pic shows some of the nuttiness we saw today. This house, a perfectly reasonable purpose built 2 bedroom/1 bath, was converted recently (the paint was still drying when we viewed) into a 3/2. If you look closely, you'll see that the bedroom closet was converted into a stall shower and toilet room. Mind you, the closets in homes from the 1920s until the late 1940s were all walk-in and fairly spacious. But just because there's room for a bathroom doesn't make putting in a bathroom a grand idea. Your bedroom now has no closet and you're sleeping next to a toilet. -hope the ceiling fan works well. 

One feature of SF architecture of the 1920-1930s that I really enjoy is the tile work. Inspired by Spanish-Moorish design, California architects sought to recreate a bit of the Old World here. Ceramic tiles adorning these homes were fashioned in Southern California. Two of the heavy hitters in California tile production were Catalina Tile Co. & Taylor Tilery.  One house we viewed today boasted a tiled external staircase. Below is one of the tiles. 

Part of a tiled stairway.

The color scheme of orange-green-black-yellow is a hallmark of Taylor Tilery. Catalina, by contrast, seems to have offered a broader range of color combos, many of which are a bit finer and somewhat muted. 

Here's a sort of blurry shot of the stairs--

The home was lovely as well. It did, however, have an illegal in-law unit on the ground level. I figure the current owners were probably making duckets as AirBnB hosts. We were cautioned that before inspections were to be made, potential buyers would have to make the in-law unit's kitchen look less like a kitchen. *sad trombone*