Yay! New House, new possibilities. This home’s warm rustic wood beams soar over an open living area surrounded in light and lifted by a lovely wide plank pine floor in a natural finish. The house is a two story ranch built in 1966 into the sloping terraces of the Pacific Palisades, just above Rustic Canyon. Her gardens and lovely blue paned windows and doors are the features of fantasy living! Truly a dream house.
This is what she looked like online when we first learned about her.
At first, we referred to her as Silver Springs. Along the lines of the Stevie Nicks lyrics “I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me,” but also because – FUN FACT – Stevie Nicks owns a home a few doors to the north. (Though I hear her digs are secretly for sale.)
We toured the home back in Feb. I loved it, Jeff liked it – but it was at the top of the budget and we were going to have to immediately do some work to make it work for us. The previous owner had converted the third bedroom into a closet and we needed that bedroom back. So, Silver Spring broke our self imposed rule: If budget equals max then renovation equals minimum, and vice versa.
This is a view from the master into the third bedroom that we’ll need to reclaim. The dude has plans for turning this room into a boy’s video-game lair. And Sarah was telling us about one of her clients that has a Fathead graphic of the deathstar on the wall, so thanks for planting the seed. They are into that now.
So, why in a market that is hotter than hot wasn’t anyone scooping up this gem?
I was pushing hard to keep her top of mind, despite her needed renovations. They seemed minimal to me and I could picture us all living here happily. I had overheard the agent mention something about some inspections and disclosures, so we inquired. We were soon sent a couple of geological reports from 2002 & 2014 that indicated the house some some severe settling over its lifespan of 60 years. This was intriguing and discouraging and it basically had us feeling a little wishy washy on the possibilities.
Over the course of the next couple months, we noticed that while all other homes were flying off the shelf, this one stayed put. Then it saw a price drop. We’d had enough bad luck with other offers, that I decided to go back for second visit. Heffe couldn’t make it, but my intention after some thinking, was to make sure it met just a few criteria, namely that we could convert that closet back to a bedroom with ease. But also, we needed to check on some of the structural issues.
The depth of these issues resulted in a report that suggested a proper fix by propping the home up on some caisons, 30 physical feet down through a top layer of fill dirt to the “alluvium” bedrock below.
Here are the fun facts.
This lovely two story home was built in a traditional midcentury ranch style, though the entire main floor is elevated above a two car garage and spare apartment that rest in the slope of the yard. The garage is covered by a partial trellis arbor, similar to the arbor that Sarah fabricated for the Venice Beach inspired renovation that she worked on last year.
Here are the scary facts.
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