Selling Your Beloved, Blogged About House

May 9, 2016 Leave a Comment

I’ve thought about writing this post for a while. Picardy closed about 3 weeks ago. Yes, I assume you’ll have 2 reactions: 1) that happened FAST and 2) why have you waited so long to spill the beans!? I know, I agree with you about both things.

But there was a lot I was thinking about. It’s a tough post to write – how do I describe the adventures? How much information do I reveal? What am I feeeeeeling? A lot of questions for myself.

But I think I’m finally there.

When we were first looking for a house, waaaaaay back 7+ years ago, Chris and I were just breaking into working in Oakland. We had lived here for a year (I had grown up here, but had spent the last 3 years away). Chris had just moved here. I was going back to school to finish college. We skrimped and saved, but still, living in Oakland was expensive. We qualified for a certain amount, but because the housing crash was EPIC and we were in the middle of it, basically no bank would loan money to us for a fixer: we were young, had multiple part time jobs between us and the market was awful and people had received horrendously large sums of money on loans for houses without ever really getting their income verified. It was a good time for us to get a deal, but it was a bad time for young, part-timers like us. We had the income for a loan, but for a giant fixer banks wanted CASH. ALL CASH. And, well, we didn’t have $300,000+.

When my parents were young, they worked hard. They were married at 19, had kids at 21 and 24. One worked while the other went to college. They put their nose to the grindstone. They had the dream of owning a home, but couldn’t quite get there either. My great grandma loaned them money to purchase land and build their own house while my brother was in diapers and just before I came along.

And, so, they did the same for us. Passing it forward. My dad joined the house search with us and we were lucky enough for him and my step mom to help us purchase a house. Chris and I were very lucky – my parents had the financial means to help us out, and they were also trusting of us to endorse the adventure. I know, we were very lucky.

So that’s how we began our Picardy Project. Our rent was the renovation to bring it back to life. It was a financial investment for my parents, and a lesson in our future for Chris and I. As the years wore on we were able to save more and more money as we worked harder at our day jobs and as we needed fewer, large, lump sums to invest into the house. That fortunate situation allowed us to save for our future home – the house we are in now. We were able to save for a large down payment because as I’ve talked about before, the market is crazy now and the more CASH you have, the more people like you, I mean, will sell to you

I know, we were INCREDIBLY lucky. None of that luck is lost on me. Or Chris. Part of me has wondered if I would talk about how we financially landed in Picardy because I wondered if people would think we somehow cheated the system or got a free ride. I also know that finances are really no one’s business but our own, but I wanted to be honest about the whole experience. We were able to find ourselves a fixer with the help of my family, but we worked fucking hard to get it where it ended up.

So when we put the house on the market, there was a large joint decision that needed to be made. My parents were obviously the financial investment, but they also understood the incredible labor of love that we poured into that house. So we all came to an agreement that it would be a 50/50 decision.

We went on the market for $589. We looked at all the comps in the area and our agent let us know that nothing on the street had gone for over $6 before that she knew of. We were pretty confident with the price and our finishes, but we didn’t want to be greedy. So we thought it was a fair price to offer at. We had two weekends of open houses and there was an absolutely amazing response. Our agent let us know that on a good open house she has 60-70 visitors. We had over 100. We had friends and family visit the house while it was open and they shared all the amazing things people said about it. I know you should never need someone else to compliment you to justify a good job and that you should just simply have confidence in yourself. But I am here to tell you – that was an absolutely wonderful thing to hear. And it made me feel damn fucking good. Like, amazingly wonderful. I cried. It felt awesome to have people pay such close attention to the detail we put in, and have them appreciate it so much. It warmed my heart.

I started to get super antsy for when offers were going to be due (pretty customary nowadays around here to have a due date). We waited and waited as she slowly let us know that 5 disclosure packets were out, then a dozen, then about 20…and when we finished there were 30+ disclosure packets out. I was flabbergasted. Even my dad was. And he’s involved with real estate investments all the time and has purchased and sold ummm, I think 5 places in the last 10 years (Wendy never thinks she’s going to live somewhere for long…)

We waited with bated breath.

But on offer day, I had a panic attack around noon. I suddenly FREAKED THE FUCK OUT that we were going to have to say “NO” to people. For some ridiculously crazy reason I never thought about that. And suddenly I remembered the fucking feeling of losing out. Of being so amazingly excited to put an offer in, so scared of likely being rejected, but just hoping to be lucky. That feeling blows. It sucks. I hate it. And we were going to do it to a bunch of people. My heart sank. I cried again. Obviously there were lots of tears involved in this process.

At 4pm our agent called us and let us know that there were 25 offers. Yes. TWENTY FIVE. I was completely dumbfounded. When I called to tell my dad (he was at the dentist when the agent let me and Chris know) even he couldn’t believe it. And when he heard the amounts of all the offers he was even a little shocked. I mean, he literally didn’t believe it. Like, he said, “I’m not going to believe it until it closes escrow.” We were all just shocked at the amazing response that it got. We were all very proud of the house and knew it was an amazing space to hang our hats on, but it was just about the most wonderful thing to experience – so many people loved the house so much. I couldn’t believe it.

I had work that night at the A’s, so Chris and my dad went through all the offers with our agent and I conferred on the phone and via text when I could. Many of the offers included letters from the prospective buyers. I was able to read them as well as they were forwarded along and we weighed through everything. Many letters mentioned their appreciation of our attention to detail (which I was so appreciative to hear) as well as our blog (we disclosed that the home was blogged about, so many prospective buyers had read through parts of this website). In the end we chose a buyer who made a great offer and seemed to be a pretty wonderful lady. Her letter was so heartfelt and she seemed like a wonderful person to carry the torch of our first home. And from the perspective of me, Chris and my parents we felt immense pride at the record we set for the street and our neighborhood. It felt incredible.

But then came the hard part of saying “No” to a lot of people. So Chris and I wrote a letter to them. I don’t know if it mattered to them, or if they were angry about it, or if they thought it was stupid, but it made Chris and I feel better. We knew the feeling of losing out and we wanted to let everyone know how appreciative we were of the love they felt for our beloved Picardy house. It was a labor of love and we appreciated their love as well. It was an amazing feeling.

Escrow was fast and without one hiccup at all. It took 8 days. Our agent said she couldn’t remember the last time she had such a quick and easy escrow. I guess it was the universe’s way of rewarding us for the adventure of getting our current house. The day before escrow closed I went back to the house to do a walk through with the new owner and our agents. Chris opted to not participate because he wanted to close the book on the house and had already emotionally moved on, but I definitely jumped at the chance.

Our agent let us know she doesn’t really do that very often, but it really was a passing of the baton and she felt that both the new owner and I would benefit from it. I was scared and nervous, but it ended up being a really good experience. We all spent an hour walking through the house talking about things we had done, memories we experienced and what she was going to use each room for. It was a lot of fun. And it felt like the perfect way for me to close the chapter on the house. I didn’t really know if I ever wanted to go back after we moved out, but it felt like the best experience that could have happened. I loved getting to hear her love the house so much. And I loved getting to tell her how much we loved it. It honestly makes me teary eyed thinking about it again.

So, good bye Picardy house. This blog’s name will never change because you taught us so fucking much and we love you for it. We sweated, cried and laughed inside of your walls. You taught me to have an even harder work ethic, to always see things through to the end and to give back to something what it truly deserves. I hope you loved us as much as we loved you.

Picardy is FOR SALE

April 1, 2016 14 Comments

Well, the day has come, Picardy is for sale. In a weird way, I’m really excited. Probably because our savings account would like a friend at the moment considering how much money we’ve spent right off the bat at our new house getting all new services for things that are broken and not working. Also, for as attached as I usually am to animals or inadiment objects instead of people, I strangely am more ready to let Picardy go. Which is really refreshing. I think what ties me to it more is just that Zoe has said that she misses her old house, but I know that will just take time. We’ll still get to see out friends, we’ll still visit the street, we just have a new house.

I thought it would be fun to sort of do a “Before & After” post of when we first got the house, to how it looks now that it’s for sale and staged. Some of the photo angles won’t match up because the pictures I took 7+ years ago aren’t of the same angle as the staging photos. Let’s get to it

The front of the house before

And after

This makes me so happy. I loved the house’s architecture when we first saw it, but it definitely wasn’t shining as much as it could have. I love the paint we used and the landscaping I think is still one of my favorite projects of all time just because how successful it was.

The dining room

After

We of course used this room for our TV room, but I definitely feel that it’s better served as a dining room. I wish the photo on the website showed the hutch we built. But all the windows that are open to this room are also a really big plus.

Nook

This one is probably the most underwhelming, just because besides paint and a new light we didn’t really do much. But the room was awesome to start really.

Kitchen

Got damn I love that room. And god damn I think we did a really good job. It was so closed off before. I love how open we made everything. Love that. And I still love the color and the green granite. I will ALWAYS love those glass bin pulls.

The Den

We used this room as Chris’ office, but staged it as a den/office. I’m glad we didn’t repaint this room. I like the dark color in contrast with all the windows and light this room gets. And that round fireplace is still awesome as ever.

The front room (this is my favorite staged room)

Other angles

This room looks really, really beautiful. We used it as a junk pile room, lol. But this staging does it justice. It’s a beautiful formal living room and someone will hopefully love and appreciate this room for just that.

Our bedroom

I don’t love the staging in here, it’s too bulky and dark for my taste. But this room feels a lot lighter, and that’s awesome because it felt so cavernous before. And of course we added the bathroom that used to have the entrance off of the laundry room to be an en suite – one of my favorite things we did to the house…

The master bathroom

Hot damn that bathroom is pretty And WAY better than the disgusting mess it was with plywood floors when we moved in.

The main bathroom

I’ve come around to liking the light color I picked more. Though I still think it’s a little too cool. But it does make the bathroom feel really light and airy, so that’s good. I love this bathroom too. I like the mix of modern and traditional that we went with. And I still feel like even 5 years later after we renovated it, it doesn’t look too shabby.

The kid’s room

We staged this room with two twin beds to show that kiddos could share a room. I didn’t like the light color when it was still my office, but now I actually think it’s a great kid’s room color. And the little porch off of this room that was Zoe’s room adds some square footage to this space…

The animal room before (named that way because it was DISGUSTING and smelled like wet dog)

Super cute little play area for kiddos. This is nice because the bedroom that the kids would share (if there were two) isn’t giant, so having this little space to add to it as a playroom, or work area when they get older is really nice I think.

The laundry room

Light, airy and practical. Everything I would want in a utility space. I really love this room.

The garage

It definitely looks sad without all of our tools in here anymore. But hopefully someone who tours the house really likes woodworking or DIY and they put this space to good use because we’re leaving so many of the storage and workspace elements behind.

And lastly, the backyard

I wish we painted over where the smoke is from the BBQ, but what are you going to do, ya know? I love the backyard. I love the paver patio, the raised beds, the grass, the cherry blossom, the painted garage, the fact that there isn’t a garbage pile anymore

Well, what do you think? How do you like it?

Pretty crazy that it’s for sale now. If you’re a local the last open house is this Sunday, feel free to go look – I know I would, lol Last weekend at the open house our agent said that she had well over 100 people, and she said she feels like a good open house is 60-70 people. Lots of neighbors had awesome things to say because they knew what it looked like before. It really gave me a great sense of pride and I really felt awesomely proud of ourselves. I am usually incredibly hard on myself and have a hard time saying, “I did a good job,” but I really am proud of Chris and I. And it’s weird to think this project is “done.”

Offers are due in the middle of the week next week. So think really good thoughts for us! And of course, I’ll keep you updated 😉

Good Bye Picardy

March 14, 2016 Leave a Comment

MOVING DAY IS HERE!!! So while we’re running around like fucking chickens with our heads cut off allllllll day today, I just wanted to take a moment out to give a little ode to Picardy. This house, and street, and community I have loved so much for 7 years.

First off, one of the people I follow on Instgram is an artist called Phoebe Atkey. I love when her drawings pop up a couple times a day. They range from jewelry, to architecture, to fashion. And they are all S.T.U.N.N.I.N.G.

One day I thought the perfect way to honor our house would be to have a custom drawing made of Picardy. So I checked out her website and inquired if she did commissions – HOORAY, she did! I sent her some photos of the house and corresponded back and forth in email. About 10 days later I got our emailed drawing and another 5 or so days later I got our beautiful drawing in the mail

Amazing, no? I LOVE IT. I absolutely LOVE IT. I LOVE IT so so so so much. I CANNOT WAIT to frame it and hang it in our new house. It is beautiful and honors our sweet first home in the most perfect way. (And honestly I cannot recommend Phoebe more. Her prices were totally awesome, she was incredibly friendly, and well, her artwork is fucking amazing).

Now, more ways to honor Picardy….

I will miss the architecture

I cannot express the joy I would get each time driving down this street. Seeing all the sweet homes and seeing our special, sweet home. I loved when people who had never been down the street would express so much excitement at the gem they had found, “All these houses are so cool!” they would frequently express. That made me proud. It’s not like I had done anything special to get to take credit for this house or this street, but I still felt very proud each time I drove down it.

I will miss the sense of community

This street is fucking awesome. And the care with which all its residents take is amazing. People take so much care to live here. We have “Block Watchers.” They are folks who walk the street at various times of the day as neighborhood watch. We have a Yahoo group specific to our street so we can be all kept in the loop about goings on. We have Christmas Socials, Summer Socials, entire street wide garage sales…I mean, you couldn’t ask for a street that shares in community more.

I will miss Christmas and Halloween

Complete destinations in the area. We get SO MANY Halloween visitors, it’s insane. We go through pounds and pounds and pounds of candy every year. It’s gotten to the point where we only hand out one piece of candy to each visitor and we still spend about $75 each year in candy. I LOVE that so many people come to the street to share in our community. And the same goes for Christmas. That nearly every single house lights up (about 90% this past year) for the holidays is just about one of the happiest things to see in the evening in December. All the twinkle can’t help but make you smile. So. Much. Twinkle. And so much happy. I love that we have Christmas community celebrations for our street and for the larger community as well. It’s amazing. And makes people feel so much love. We’ll definitely be coming back for those holidays.

I will miss our neighbors

We hit the jackpot with our neighbors. People care so much, but also leave you be. A simple wave makes people happy, and then every few weeks or months you get a nice gab fest. We look out for each other. It’s just perfect.

I will miss Zoe’s (and our) friends

This one actually makes me pretty sad and makes my heart hurt a little bit. Our across the street neighbors have 4 kids – the oldest is in 6th grade and the youngest is about 2 weeks older than Merritt. Zoe LOVES their oldest. Like, ADORES. And he is the nicest older brother there is and is so, so, so, so sweet to her. I wrote down in her baby book how much she likes him. It’s the cutest thing in the world. If we’re getting out of the car and he waves to her she will come RUNNING into the house exclaiming, “Baraka wave to me! Baraka wave to me!” And one of my favorite things is to be able to just walk across the street and let our kids play together. We’ve of course become friends with the mom and dad and she and I text back and forth all the time. We’ve definitely become good friends. And that’s a wonderful thing. I love that Zoe has friends on the street that she could just run over and play with. My childhood best friend lived around the corner from me and that was awesome. Chris always laments how it was rough that he lived so far away from all of his friends and so he felt really isolated growing up. I hope hope hope that Zoe is able to have friends who live close by in the new house.

I will miss the memories we created

I can’t really actually think about this one too much. It makes me sad if I really dwell on it. Obviously we redid this house from the ground up. Every single room was touched. Every single room was transformed. We cried. We yelled. We learned SO MUCH while going through that together. But there was also so much pride and happiness in those experiences and I felt so much joy in that. Obviously the renovations gave us thousands of memories. But, then there are the supremely sentimental memories: we decided to have babies, we brought home our Zoe girl, we got married, we got pregnant with Merritt, we brought home our second adorably smiley baby girl and we started a business together. All here. I can still remember SO VIVIDLY the exact place where Zoe took her official first steps. There are so many sweet stories and tear inducing memories. I will never forget that.

Oh Picardy, how I adore thee

There are some things I will not miss. But let’s just gloss over those:

The people FLYING down the street going WAY TOO FUCKING FAST – because the street has no stop signs or speed bumps like others in the area so people use it as a thoroughfare. And seriously sometimes go close to 45/50 mph with kids running around playing. It ALWAYS freaks me the fuck out.
The crime – two immediate next door neighbors have been broken into, as well as our behind our house neighbor. That is close to home. Many houses on the street have been broken into and it feels like we are almost biding our time.
The residual crime – we live very close to a bad neighborhood and have had 2 cars drive down the street shooting each other once when we lived here for a year or two.
Wondering if the loud noises at night are fireworks, a car backfire or gunshots – about 3 weeks ago at night we were SURE we heard fireworks, but it actually happened to be a series of gunshots 1 street away

There are other little things here and there that I will both love/miss and some that I am not sad to say goodbye to, but that is my ode to this street.

We were lucky to move onto a street that had such a sense of history and community already when we moved here. And we felt so lucky to get to breathe life into a home that had been forgotten about for so long. We feel like we did this home good.

Work on the Office and Never Before Seen Closet

March 11, 2016 1 Comment

We’ve never really planned to do anything in this room – which is good because now the plan is to move. It’s weird though. I feel like with every room in the house there has been a final vision, or at least things I imagine doing. But not with this room. That’s a very strange thing to me. So it’s good that I’m not going to be missing out with this room, which is a bit of a shame because the round fireplace in this room is very cool.

One thing that does need to be done in this room though is repair to the ceiling

In all the time we’ve been here this ceiling has been peeling away. Surprisingly over the last 7 years we haven’t really had any plaster fall down on us. So that’s a good thing. But with it on the list of things needing to get done before we move it’s time to get to it.

Most of the time with this house the plaster has been so damaged that we need to do work to reattach it to the lathe. This plaster isn’t in that bad of condition, it just needed to be scraped down where it’s peeling and then a skim coat done over the whole thing. First Chris taped over all the egregious cracks. This helps for stronger joints when the mud is applied. After that was done he applied mud over all the cracks and uneven parts

Once that work was done it was time for a skim coat over the entire ceiling. Zoe has actually gotten pretty interested in a lot of the work going on around the house lately. She’s always been interested in doing what we’re doing and being a part of what’s going on with the grown ups. But it’s been really fun to see because it’s been a while since we’ve actually WORKED on this house on any sort of a consistent basis. It’s cool to actually get to work on things while having kids run around, but that one of them actually wants to help us. She was really good at slowly pouring water into our bucket while Chris thinned out the joint compound

She was pretty adorable during the whole endeavor

After the skim coat was done Chris applied the texture on the ceiling. And again, Zoe insisted on helping

Chris has gotten really good at replicating the original plaster texture throughout our house. We want to make sure any of our “new” spaces look like the original spaces. After texture was applied it was time for primer and paint. And then it was done! (again, Zoe “helps” lol)

It’s fucking WEIRD to see this ceiling bright white without peeling plaster. We were “supposed” to paint this room for resale, but decided not to. There are too many windows and doors and that curved fireplace, so we decided it’ll just get some REALLY bright bulbs instead. It’s strange, but it’s been 7 years. 7 years of peeling plaster. And how it’s clean and done.

Another weird space to see done. The closet. What closet? This is a GIANT closet and we never did ANYTHING to it since we moved in

There was great writing on the wall from the previous owners

And the plaster was cracked and damaged. We never did anything in the 7 years we were here though because we just lined all the walls with bookcases and put all of our DVDs in here (we’ve got well over 1,000 – I told you, we love movies). It was the perfect “DVD closet” for us. But again, now that we’re moving, it was time to finally get to repairing it.

There was a window in the back of the closet (the laundry room that backs into this used to be a porch, so the window in here looked out on the porch). It was taken out well before we lived here and the trim was damaged and only partially in place. We decided it made the most sense to close up the window and patch the wall with drywall.

Chris took out the damaged trim and then was left with the back wall that needed to be patch. He put up some blocking and then installed a drywall patch. After the patch was installed it was time to mud and tape. Not only the area where the patch was done, but throughout the space (there were lots of cracks and holes throughout).

After the patches Chris applied primer on the bottom portion of the closet where the wallpaper was. It was OLD and damaged, so we painted over it. But the primer wasn’t regular primer – it helped make sure the wallpaper adhered to the wall and blocked the stain in from the wallpaper glue. And it stank like shit. I HATED it. I’ve always been really sensitive to smells, and since having kids it’s made my smell powers have super strength. I’m normally the painter, but because it was so awful, Chris applied both coats

And then because he’s a rockstar, he also applied the color coat in here also unbeknownst to me. I feel like I’ve been painting everywhere lately, so it was a nice little treat to ask Chris over dinner a couple nights ago what paint I should use in the closet for the color coat only to have Chris tell me he’d already done it

That’s a good husband.

It was pretty quick an easy of a space to redo. I wonder why we didn’t do it 7 years ago…

Welcome

May 18, 2009

Well, I’ve decided to give this whole blog thing a try…..

Chris and my life has become all about the house, especially now that I’m done with school (yay!!!). So, I thought it might be a fun idea to have a blog about our progress on the house. A lot of time when people ask how things are going with the house my stories are preceeded by a long sigh. It’s not that I don’t like talking about it (because I do, I LOVE our house) but the process of working on it has been very tiring thus far, so sometimes talking about it can cause me to relive those tiring memories.

Now, with the blog, hopefully I can keep everyone up do date with what is going on, what projects we are doing, and how far along we’re moving. I’m not sure how good I’m going to be at this yet, so wish me luck!