Our house!

The star of the show is a set of pictures of our house, with plans and clickable image maps, courtesy of Keith. These pictures were taken at various times between November 2000 and August 2001. If Keith ever gets his act together we have some pictures from after the remodel.

Some background on the house:

It was built in 1942, when this section of the Excelsior was known as the Stonecrest development. This type of house was known as a "Junior 4" because it had basically 4 rooms upstairs (kitchen, living room, two bedrooms). Sometime in the 50s or 60s an extra room was added in back, making it a "Junior 5". However, since you have to walk through another room to get to the extra room, it isn't technically a 3 bedroom house.

The house had been in the same family from the time it was built until this year; we bought it from the children of the original owners.

In 2007 we did a huge remodel of the house, adding on another wing and almost doubling our square footage. It was a crazy year, but it's done, and the house looks great.

• Five bedrooms: three being used as actual bedrooms, one as an office/rabbit room, and one as a sewing/guest room
• Three full bathrooms
• Family room, big living room/dining room, completely remodeled kitchen, storage room
• CAT5 cable to every room (well, not the bathrooms!)
• 2 car tandem garage, but we're using part of it as laundry and workshop areas
• The house is about 1000 square feet on the main floor, and about 450 square feet each upstairs and downstairs
• The lot is around 5000 square feet, just under an eighth of an acre. Doesn't sound like much to you suburbanites, but that's about double the size of the normal lot in San Francisco. Because of the curve of the street, it's about 22 feet wide across the front and 67 feet wide across the back. The remodel generated a huge pile of dirt, which is currently sitting useless in our backyard.

How we bought the house:

Well, we'll spare you the gory details of our search. Suffice it to say that we were looking at the height of the Bay Area housing craziness, when there was no end in sight. This was the 115th house we saw and the 5th house we made an offer on. The fates were smiling on us this time and less than 24 hours after first seeing the house, we had our offer accepted. We were in escrow for two months, closed just after Chi-An's birthday at the end of July, and then moved in at the end of August.

People have been asking us whether we got hosed by buying our house at the time we did. It depends on your point of view: Yes, housing prices have stopped increasing exponentially, but that's for the entire Bay Area, so relative to the housing we might buy next, we're relatively static. Also, the mutual funds in which we were invested got hosed a lot worse than the housing market, so we actually made out quite well, overall. Even with the housing market crash, and all the money we put into the remodel, we'd still come out ahead if we had to sell.

What we'd like to do (sort of in order):

• Fix or replace laundry sink
• Fix our yard (front and back): we'd like to make a level play area, perhaps with some terracing, remake our vegetable beds (not that there was ever anything interesting in our old ones), and take better care of our fruit trees
• Clean up the rest of the garage, and put up shelves and work tables
• Get a smaller table for kitchen, and a dining table for the living/dining room
• Fix or replace drywall in office
• Replace office light fixture
• Ladder up to reading nook in master bedroom

What we did before the remodel: (unless otherwise stated, we did all of the work ourselves)

• Ripped out the carpet. When we bought the house, it had a dark brown shag carpet (henceforth known as The Bear), circa 1970s, wall-to-wall throughout the entire upper floor of the house. Chi-Dad, Juliette, and Chi-Kai helped us to remove The Bear, thereby making each room seem twice as large. (8/00)
• Had the hardwood floor previously hidden by The Bear refinished. Much of the flooring in the back room was replaced due to water damage. (8/00)
• Had the 'cottage cheese' acoustical gunk scraped off the ceiling in the living room and hallway (8/00)
• Had the electrical system upgraded, adding outlets throughout the house, and flourescent overhead lights in the basement (9/00)
• Had some basic pest control work done (9/00)
• Cut down a sickly lemon tree and a huge overgrown bush in the backyard. (10/00)
• Cut down many ugly berry trees blocking views and choking other plants (10/00)
• Started a compost pile for all the fallen leaves and apples (10/00)
• Replaced the 70s style hanging light fixture in the kitchen with a flush non-ugly fixture (2/01)
• Took down the kitchen wallpaper and painted the walls a light blue (4/01)
• Painted the living room and hall ceiling white (4/01)
• Had the old deck demolished and a new deck installed (4/01)
• Painted the back of the house white (7/01)
• Made curtains for all the rooms, including two door curtains for our bedroom and the library (10/00-7/01)
• Took out the old carpet in the toy room and replaced it with a white remnant carpet (8/01)
• Bought a new front-loading clothes washer, clothes dryer, 27" television, sectional couch, dishwasher, and refrigerator (9/00-8/01)
• Insulated under the office, put up plywood to replace the old drywall (yes, drywall, outside) under the office, and painted (9/01-10/01)
• Replaced the drywall in the kitchen skylight with painted plywood (12/01-1/02)
• Had the back/side patio, and part of the front patio, removed, and had a new back slab poured to allow water to drain away from the foundation (6/02)
• Planted an echium and some alyssum in the front yard (winter 02-03)
• Painted the back office (now bedroom) (spring 03)
• Had the aluminum-frame windows and the two back doors replaced (spring 03)
• Made a vegetable garden and terrace in the side yard, with bro Chi-Kai's help (summer 03)
• Painted the nursery (fall 03)
• Replace the oven and stove (2004)

Return to our main home page
last updated: 09/28/06