New Home

445 Oakland Ave.

As most of you know we finally, after a very long search, closed on a house. The house is new to us but by no means new. 445 Oakland was built in the 1940's. It is move in ready yet still very much in the realm of fixer upper. Mostly we need to repair the "fixing up" it received from the previous tenants and to enlarge the bathroom. We've been looking for a place where our sweat equity would help transform a house into a place we can be proud to call home, at least for a couple of years.

What About Details?

Yes I know you're anxious for all the gritty details so here is how the house stacks up:

• 3 bedrooms –2 medium sized by our standards a.k.a NY and one small.

• Living room with a nice view of the Mount Diablo Mountains. (This means we'll have a great view of the snow that occasionally falls on the hills in the winter.)

• Kitchen with granite counters (yuck!) and newish cabinets.

• 1 bathroom which is really, really tiny! (For those who remember the one our Brooklyn apt, it is about the same size.)

• 1 spare room that is really just a walk in closet, a nice tall attic (which we're hoping to convert to more usable space), and an outdoor shack which will become Archil's painting studio.

The house has very tall ceilings compared with all the other places we looked at. They're 10' tall and most others were in more like 8'. On the whole the place feels very bright and airy with good morning and afternoon sun. It's on a corner lot and we have about 5,000 square feet of "yard." Unfortunately, there is a lot of concrete that will need to come up at some point but there is also a lot of grass and other potential garden areas. I'm eager to fill the front yard with native plant species that don't need to be watered or mowed.

Outdoors there are a number of wonderful fruit trees. So far we've been able to identify lemon trees (2), a key lime tree, 2 peach trees, 3 nectarines, 1 cherry tree, an apple tree, but there are still a few we can't identify. We have a few cactus in the back, some irises, and a couple of mystery plants that I've been told are called potato shrubs which welcome visitors at our door.

Can you tell I'm excited about the prospect of a garden?


The Neighborhood

We have been living in Willow Glen since we moved here last February. And, we would have loved to stay in Willow Glen, but economically that wasn't very realistic. We did try and bid on a number of lovely fixer uppers. Instead we're a bit further east in an area called Alum Rock in a neighborhood known as Mayfair. This is an area that has some real history! The Mayfair Improvement Initiative transformed the area dramatically in the late 90's and early part of what ever we're calling the first decade of the 2000's. The Mayfair community garden is one of the oldest community garden's in San Jose. We're just a block from it. We're across the street from the elementary school (but we'll be working to keep Nye in his current school since it's better.) Down the street is the Mayfair Community Center and the Park.

So far we've met our neighbor in the back Eugene and our neighbor Al who lives diagonally across the street next to the school. Eugene has lived on his corner since the 1950's and Al has lived in his house for the past 26 years. Nice guys! Eugene keeps chickens so we're eager to hear how that sounds in the morning. Considering that we haven't even moved in yet we're feeling pretty good about our luck in neighbors since they're both very friendly and knowledgeable about the area.

The Back Story

Our housing search started in October of last year. We were very fortunate to find a great Realtor, John, who was willing to show what felt like about 100 houses. He also shared with us good insights about various neighborhoods. It's a shame we weren't ready to purchase a house 6 months sooner because houses were selling for less than the asking price. We started looking just as that turned around so that houses are now selling for more than the asking price and house flippers are very eager to scoop up all the low hanging fruit. We were out bid on a lot of lovely properties. We were very fortunate to get the Oakland house at asking price.

Because it was a bank owned property there were lots of hurdles to jump through. Arch and I first though "Oh this will be about a 15 step process." We felt so prepared and patient. We soon learned that for every step we took, 2-3 more steps were being added to the process by the bank. Then there was the craziness at signing when we discovered that all of Archil's forms of ID were expired and most are misspelled! (Thank goodness for nice people who have a sense of humor.)

I think looking back on it I'm sure we'll begin to see the humor in some of the contortions that we had to go through. It certainly feels worth it as we walk through the rooms and start to make plans for moving in!


Future Plans: Work, Work, Work!

Our list of projects is pretty long. We started this weekend with the interior demolition of the shed so that it can become a studio space. I spent most of today trimming trees and plants so that the house looks more lived in. (Let me tell you that trimming a rosemary shrub is a wonderful sensory experience! I just wanted to roll on the clippings afterward.) Tomorrow I'm working to change fixtures in the bathroom and Arch will be finishing the shed work.

For those who may feel eager to sweat, here is your "open invitation" to come on out to Callie. We'll have projects to keep us going for a while! Of course if you do come out and visit we won't make you work the whole time. And, I promise to make some fresh lemonade with juice from our lemon trees to help cool you off!

Moving Date:
April 24th - 25th

New Address:
445 Oakland Ave.
San Jose, CA 95116

Our cells and e-mails will stay the same!

Love,

Sara, Nye & Archil