Knifecatching 1200 San Antonio Ave

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

Okay I wasn't really planning on doing a review of this house but was goaded into it be a friend...
Usually I do reviews on houses that on paper look like something we would want to own and in a price range that we can afford....this place is neither of those things.

Today's House 1200 San Antonio Ave, a 5 bed 5.5 bath mansion of 6493 sq ft on a healthy 11,325 sq ft lot! Built in 1910 on sale for a cool $1.795 MILLION!! Zillow says the current owners bought the place in 93 for $845,000...dang that seems like a lot of money back then as that's' before the dot com housing bubble... according to the permit record the only legal work the current owners did on the house was install a spa and re roof....and they're expecting to get an oh 112% increase in purchase price?!?!!?

First off, I just want to talk about the open house. We were quite surprised that the place was actually open to the public. The giant gold coast mansions are NEVER open to the common people! We knew it was going to be a madhouse at the open as the house is owned by an internationally famous opera singer. We got their at 1:15 and the place was already full of people! I got to hand it to the realty company they have the fanciest 4 sided handout I've ever seen. They also had a small army working the open with Realtors on every floor (all 4 of them) acting like docents at a museum....That's also why I didn't get any pictures of the inside....I chickened out because of all the docents everywhere and the fact that there were already like 3-4 people in every room of this 4 story mansion! One of my favorite things about the open was all the folks that came super dressed-up in their 'rich people clothes'.....'I know you, you're a checker at Safe Way!' So entertaining all around...

Here's the only picture I have of the place. Go here to see the super duper website complete with the 'ode to joy' playing in the background (gag, how upscale). Actually check out the pics it'll make my review make more sense.

First off the main floor:
In a word pretty damn impressively gorgeous. Lovely woodwork, large scale rooms designed for grand entertaining. The mantles were gorgeous, wish I coulda got a pic of them. There's a nice solarium kinda thing added on to the side of the house. The kitchen was uh, okay I guess....According to the permit history the place was completely remodeled in the mid 80's and not really touched since....What was a fancy kitchen in 84 just looks well...passe now a days..Its got the original white solid color Corian counter tops circa 84'...the cabinets where especially shoddy by today's standards, they were just painted plywood, even the doors!?!

There is a spa in the back yard that the current owners put in but between that and the 5ish car garage there really is not very much backyard....this I don't understand, to my tiny mind if I'm going to own a mansion I want to have a decent amount of land around it. The house is on a corner so they only have one neighbor with an equally big house on an equally tiny lot and the houses were so close you can see right into the neighbors house and blah who wants that?(for $1.8M)

The basement:
There are not one but two separate stair cases down to the basement. Here, they did it right. They dug out the complete footprint of the house when they redid the foundation and added ~2000 sq ft to the house (not included in the ~6k number above). In the basement they have tons of storage, a wine cellar, a really great workout room, a giant man-cave with a working fireplace. I don't know why more people don't do this when they are redoing their foundations. Ya I know it adds cost but storage sells people!

The 2nd Floor:
Okay here's where I'm probably going to draw some flack...but I was not very impressed by the top two floors. There is a grand staircase up to the 2nd floor along with a smaller 2nd stair off the kitchen...This floor had a bunch of bathrooms and big-ass bedrooms and in scale it was very impressive-any of the bedrooms could of been a master suite in a normal house.

I'm walking around and looking at everything and something is just not right I can't put my finger on it right away and then BANG, it hits me. The fit and finish of this floor is comparable to the McMansions in exclusive gated communities they put up all over the east bay hills starting in the mid 80's. When they redid these floors they tossed all the historic stuff and installed, I kid you not, what looks like off the shelf home despot stuff. ALL the doors on this floor were HOLLOW PLASTIC cross and bible doors with the cheapest feeling door handles...all the trim looked like cheap painted MDF. I mean 4" MDF baseboard in a $1.8M house!?!?! The bathrooms where redone with the height of 80's McMansion style also...gold toned fixtures (gag) and non-historically correct tile, tile everywhere. The bathrooms suffer from the same plight as the kitchen, what was considered high-class in 84 just looks tacky today.... This final bit will seem super nit-picky but all the switch and outlet covers where cheap plastic off the shelf from the depot....or what ever was around back then. Also all the non-original light fixtures all over the house looked like cheap in-stock home despot garbage....

The Top Floor:
Originally an attic was converted into living space during the super remodel of the 80's. I gotta say, this must of been one of the most amazing attics in the world before the conversion, 20' ceilings, windows, and its just humongous. It was converted into a master suite with his and hers marble baths and a nursery. Its huge, the baths are huge, the bedroom is huge, the nursery is not huge however. This floor suffers from the same blight as the 2nd floor-it looks and feels like a Danville McMansion which I find VERY off putting.

Conclusion:
Hell, I don't know, looking at this as a non-wealthy person who knows what it costs to restore old houses in a quality way I just can't figure how its worth $1.8M. Maybe its geared towards someone who is so wealthy that they are looking at this as a fixer-upper?
There is ~$17,000 in termite work required also (I didn't see the report but this is what the realtor told me.) The permit history shows that a new roof was put on in 08 and in 85...but looking at the roof to me it looks like the roof was done in 85 so I don't know what the 08 permit was about...The shingles are odd...they look like compressed cardboard possibly impregnated with asphalt...they also all look like they are failing with the edges curling up on the majority of the shingles I could see...so factor in a re-roofing also.

What really bugs me is that everything that was touched during the big overhaul in the 80's was stripped away of its historical character...that's all the baths, the kitchen and the top two floors...and replaced with crappy McMansion, Home Despot crappiness....

I guess the current owners are smart? They bought the place soon after a major, expensive remodel was done...essentially just living in the house for 20 yrs, not doing anything to it and now they expect to get 112% of what they paid for it?

Disclaimer: All the above is just my opinion and only my opinion, so all you worshippers of the owner of this house can just suck it.

Knifecatching 2157 San Antonio Ave,

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

So I've got the urge to do some knifecatching again....its that time of year and lots of interesting houses have come on the market recently.

Today's house is 2157 San Antonio Ave, a 4 bed 2 bath 2165 sq ft colonial revival built in 1909 on a gorgeous 7500 sq ft lot for sale for $819,000.

Here's a shot of the front of the house. Its a good looking house. The front yard is good sized with several large trees. We could make it work wonderfully for Halloween.

You go up the stairs to a little porch, which I forgot to take a picture of, into a HUGE entryway...so huge that it seems like a waste of space (I also forgot to take a picture of it, what can I say I'm rusty).

To the left of the big entryway room is this nice formal room that faces the street. This is the only sorta nice entertaining adults room in the house? Which I find kinda lacking as with this floor plan its forced to be the family room also.

On the other side of the ginormo entryway room thingy is this nice sized dining room with a nice built in and a good sized closet with window.

Through the doorway you can just see on the left is...

The kitchen! This is a nice perfectly serviceable kitchen that appears to of been redone recently. (without permits)

The kitchen really isn't big enough for that table and chairs but around the corner where the ceiling fan is there is a decent sized alcove that would make a great seating area. (again sorry no pics)

Where Irene is standing right off the kitchen is...

One of the full baths....right off the kitchen...This is also not original to the house and also not done with permits. I don't understand the full bath off the kitchen on a floor with no bedrooms? Shouldn't this be a simple half bath? And who wants a stinky bathroom opening into the area where you're preparing food?

Go out through these nice double french doors and there is a nice little deck that I could see enjoying meals on in the summer.

A look from the little deck out at the super ginormous backyard. The backyard really is a park-like setting.

Here's a view looking back at the house from the other side of the yard.

Lots of tree's, plants, its a bit wild but it looks really nice.

In the far edge of the backyard is what was at one time a garage and workshop....this building has not been habitable for quite some time and is literally falling down...This would have to be rebuilt if you wanted somewhere to park a car and or motorcycles out of the rain and have a workshop..Its a good sized outbuilding but its a complete scraper and they landscaped the backyard as to make it impossible to get a car back here anymore..To redo this, if the city would let us..I'd estimate at around $20k to do a slab on grade building with electrical.

Walk along the side of the house and there is a doorway down to this little storage-workshop area. This area has concrete and we were told that it was done in '01 by the agent showing the house but it looks older than that to me. I can not find any permits for this work...Unfortunately only half of the foundation was done. The back half of the house sits on brick that's looking a little worse for wear. But hey, good storage. The giant gravity fed furnace is also located in this area. As well as the washer-dryer hook-ups.

There is an interior staircase to get from this bottom storage area to the main living floor.

I noticed this scary site on the way up the stairs. That's asbestos lining that fuse box and those fuses are bigger than what is supposed to be in there. Not sure where this goes but those old knob and tube wires are carrying more current and heating up more than they were designed to which means their insulation is probably failing somewhere inaccessible... Why have fuses still in a house like this? Got fancy granite in the kitchen but dangerously over-fused knob and tube wiring is okay? WTF? From the reports the electical appears to be a nitemare in this house with open splices and live 240V lines just laying around!?!?!

Stairway up to the second floor is not too crazy steep.

Here's a shot of the hallway from the top of the stairs. Nice-ish hardwood floors on both levels though there were several spots in need of refinishing.

To the right is the only bath on this floor of four bedroom including the master...This was also redone at one time as that tile is not original...I also could not find any permits for this work.

But its a nice enough bath.

One of the bedrooms. decent sized with a decent closet.

Another top floor bedroom.

One of the doors on the hallway opens to this scary site. Well its only scary if you've read the inspection report....

This is the smallest bedroom next to the master bedroom.

The master bedroom occupies the entire front part of the 2nd floor. Its a really good size. One thing I don't get, is that the windows in this room had broken sash cords?

Other half of master with grumpy mommy and baby. Like the wall of books but they used particle board shelves which are buckling under the weight!

There also is no friggen master bath?!?!? Do adults who are paying this much money for a house want to share their bathroom with their teenagers? Isn't that one of the levels of hell? To make this work you'd have to turn the little yellow bedroom above into a bath or but the master bedroom in half and but a bath here where the bookcases are...that would make for a smallish master bedroom and master bath...

In the master bedroom there is a pull down attic ladder that leads to what looks like an awesome amount of storage.

Cept..see how water is coming in along the chimney... and those heating pipes are absolutely covered in asbestos....not so good...

What the reports told us....

After reading the termite and home inspection report I'm a bit befuddled...the house has a TON of deferred maintenance issues. It seems like the majority of the windows are either painted shut, have broken sash cords or dry rot!?!

The inspector says that both heating units need to be replaced and that means asbestos abatement issues...

The chimney is basically about ready to fall down that's going to have to be removed.

There is a ton subterranean termite issues with the house. Termite report was ~$14,000

A lot of dry rot on the exterior where the ground it rotting the siding.

There's plumbing leaks in the bathrooms...

My Conclusion

The house has great front and back yards and nice curb appeal. The lack of entertaining space in the house would be a problem for us as well as the no master bath and no safe-dry-secure parking for our motorcycles and car.

Honestly, the place seems overpriced to me. Its not in a super amazing neighborhood. Its a good neighborhood, central-ish Alameda a little more East than us.

Here's my breakdown on what the house needs;

$100,000 to do a correct foundation job

$14,000 in pest work

$20,000 to do a whole hose copper repipe (galv water lines are looking scary to me).

$25,000 to replace both furnaces and do asbestos abatement.

$20,000 to rebuild the garage and regrade the backyard to actually get a car back there.

$20,000 to turn a bedroom into a mid-line master bath.

$5,000 to remove the entire chimney and haul away the bricks.

If you where to buy the house for the listing price and do all the work mentioned above you'd be into the house for at least $1023000. I don't honestly think that neighborhood can really support a $1 million+ house...even with the great yard...in this economy it doesn't seem realistic to me.

So lets see $819,000- all the work that needs to be done is... $615,000.

Think they'd take that much for the place?

What think you dear readers? I'm I totally off my nut with my way of thinking? I unfortunately know how much it costs to fix up old houses so why would I pay more for the house than it would ever be worth after I pay to fix the place up?

It just seems like people are not discounting their prices based on condition do you? Is that $819k a discounted price?

Watering System for the Tomatoes

So, I know I said that i'd do a watering system for the tomato plants on the deck last weekend...butttt... I had my hands full of other stuff.
Unbeknownest to me while I was performing a hyper-critical daddy job (napping with the baby to get her to stay asleep for a healthy amount of time) Irene went out and piped up the tomatoes for drip watering....

All that was left for me to do was figure out how to get the water to the drip piping. Since the remodel we don't have any outside spigots anywhere in the back half of the house!?!? It didn't make sense to me to run a line from one far corner of the house to the other so I went looking for another solution.

Luckily our house has several abandoned water lines in random places in the house. I found one with a newish looking 1/2" plug that I thought I could remove and figure something out.

Yay for lots of plumbing-fire fittings and widgets. I didn't need to buy anything to make it work. The drip tubing is 1/4" and with the sleeves will work nicely with these compression fittings. So, here's all the fittings that were required. The fitting on the right is the adaptor to go into the 1/2" fitting.

Here's the abandoned cold water line....Look at that ollllld galv water line and all that corrosion...the chances of being able to unscrew that plug without loosening ancient old pipes sealed by corrosion and creating new leaks is very low...
This fricken plug was put in by the foundation contractor to remove some plumbing that was in the way...they didn't use any tape to seal it they just cranked the life outta it! I had to use my 18" pipe wrenches to loosen it!?!? What are the chances that the top part of that pipe aren't going to leak?

Here's a wonky picture of the adaptor installed and the black drip tubing leading up through an existing hole in the wall.

Ya I know that this isn't fine home building..its just a temporary solution so I don't kill the tomatoes.

The tubing goes up to this super wonky zip-tied valve on the baluster near the back door.

Now I just have to open the back door and turn the valve and the tomatoes get watered....it's not wifi enabled and I can't turn it on from a web interface but I think Noel is working on that one?

Here's a picture of a great trip hazard I created with the bad route job I did...That first step is a doozy!

Here is the drip watering in action. I have to admit I don't understand this set-up. The black ring is a 'soaker hose' I think but to me it seems way bigger than it needs to be. Like is the water even going to get to the tomato plant? Also, as far as it being a soaker hose it shoots these teeny-tiny jets of water in completely random direction along its circumfrence? Some of that water is shooting on the plant. Isn't that bad? Like won't it sunburn the plant? I partially burried the soaker hose so there are no more jets of water shooting everywhere.

Now I just have to remember to turn it on and then figure out how long I need to turn it on for at a time to water the plants correctly...sounds like an experiment to me! Science!

Well I double checked for leaks and I got very lucky nothing is leaking!! Hurray! Maybe there is a chance of getting this multicolored tomato plant thing going. Man, I can't wait to make salsa with all of these tomatoes and with the peppers we're growing...I actually don't know when they are supposed to produce fruit...maybe we'll have some by the July 4th BBQ?

Garden Report May 7th

Yes another garden report! Why not!
Because I steal all my best ideas from the casa.
The tomatoes are not doing spectacularly....mostly because it was really hot and I can't seem to remember to water them like I should...

The SunSugars are bigger but there are a lot of black spots and yellow leaves down low? There are several flowers on this plant already.

This is why I liked having a water garden. You never have to water it!!!

The zebra look the best. Its grown a lot and theres no ugly yellow or black spots.

The pineapple tomato has definitely grown the most...but it also looks the worst....the lower leaves are yellowing-dying....but the top half looks great...I hope it makes it...

The basil and peppers pot is looking kinda sad. The peppers don't seem to of grown at all and I think I totally killed the basil...

Doesn't that basil look sad?

But never fear intrepid reader. I've got a basil backup plan. Our local Trader Joe's has these pretty giant basil plants on sale for $2.99. I already forgot to water this one so its a little droopy.....but I have high hopes for its survival.

Just to add insult to injury I think. Our local Safeway has an amazing assortment of heirloom tomato plants for sale in the veggie dept. How weird is that? What really bugs me is that they look great and they all have lots of flowers already. The big one on the right end is a pineapple tomato just like mine! Look how great its doing inside where its not warm and only has fluorescent lighting....its taunting me...

I think this post proves that I need to do a watering system for the pots on the deck if they are to have any hope of actually living and producing fruit. That's one of this weekends tasks-to cobble together some sort of drip watering system.

Bottom Floor Bathroom Project

Okay so when last we left off we talked about coming projects on the house. The main project we'd like to focus on is turning this room into a finished fabulous bathroom.

I'd like to restate that we already have permits to finish this bathroom.

Crammed full of crap which is our way...You can see that I've done the initial framing for the bath with backers for towel bars- grab bars.

One issue that I didn't think of at the time is what to do about this siding. I would like to carefully remove it and install the earthquake shear panels in this area. As you can see there are several soil stacks in the way that will have to be removed for access. Also the closest window is pretty rotted away to nothing and I've bought a replacement for it.

But, how to remove the siding without destroying it?!?!!? Any ideas? Then how do I strip the siding back to bare wood (safely and effectively as there is lead paint there for sure) and reinstall it?
I want to install house wrap and flash the window openings with peel and stick flashing. There also is a question on how far I should strip the siding. Should I do this entire side then I can flash that far window also. Unfortunately that far away soil stack is the one most used on the house as it connect the only working bathroom to the sewer main....that's gotta stay attached and working as much as possible.

That nearest soil stack shoots way up to the third floor. This stack is not being used at all so I think it makes sense just to remove it entirely and replace it with modern no-hub cast iron when we get to redoing the upper bath.

Check out what looks like an old boarded up window and the lame t-111 siding in this pic. More evidence that this back part of the house was probably a porch at one time.

Another shot of the weird old patch job and old window. It might be fun to put a window back in but the city won't allow it because the house is too close to the property line on this side for any additional windows. I don't honestly think I noticed this when we bought the house...

Here's the bathroom window with no header, and no weights that we want to replace.

Here's the fancy-cool new marvin ultrex window I bought to replace the rotted original....only problem is, is that for some reason I bought a replacement window that is several inches bigger in both dimensions! I'm not sure why in the heck I did that...I'm also not sure now if it'll work...

When I do get to replacing the window I'll have to reframe the opening and add an actual header like these we did on the other side of the house.

Along one wall of the bathroom half the height of the wall is foundation. We're not sure what we are going to do along this wall. One idea is to tile it as a wainscot and continue the tile around the room. Since we are planning on tiling the room in an antique tile style this idea should work out nicely. Irene has a tile plan worked out for the bathroom I believe.

Astute readers will notice that the sole plates in the bathroom are not pressure treated lumber. When building on concrete using regular lumber is generally a no no. I applied a water proofing membrane to the bottom of the sole plate which should be okay with the inspector but I need to check. If not he'll probably make me pull this up and redo it...which would mean basically redo the framing for the bathroom entirely!

The shower area is going to be the biggest puzzle to figure out. We're not doing a bath just a stand-up shower. The dimensions for the shower are 3by5' with the shower head probably coming out of the ceiling and the shower controls near the door to the shower which will be the 3' side nearest the door. Ya a diagram would help but the computer that has all those plans on it died on me and I haven't gotten it back from the shop yet.

The fun and exciting things about this are that I get to pour a mud bed-why not just concrete? and slope it correctly and form a curb.

Here is a picture of the type of drain that I was hoping to use. Its from a company called quickdrain and they are newish to the U.S. Using this drain I can do a simple slope towards the drain, not a fancy 4 way slope you have to do with a standard center drain. One problem is that I thought this company had a rear discharge model...which I can see nicely hooking up to the drain line in the above picture. With how the drain line is above slab I don't know how I'm going to get a standard bottom discharge drain to work unless I have a very thick mud bed. Also, I'm not sure if these drains are approved for use in Alameda... I could be looking at a pretty serious step up into the shower if I don't plan this right. When I'm old I don't want to have to take a giant step over the shower curb and into the shower...

Here's a shot from the quickdrain website that's very close to what we want to do. Except that the solid wall on the right will actually be a door.

Another interesting mystery to be solved is how to water proof the shower enclosure on the two walls. The quickdrain comes bonded to a nobel seal TS water proofing material flange. The nobel seal TS is interesting as it fully water proofs the floors,walls etc. Using this product I can just use regular plywood for the walls and the tile is thin-setted to the nobel seal. Seems interesting and much more likely to be a whole lot more waterproof than cement backer board with felt tacked up underneath it. Water is the enemy of old houses so what ever I can do to avoid it getting where it shouldn't I try to do.

I also need to figure out the plumbing but that'll be for a later post I think.

This Means War!!

No this isn't yet another post about how Winnans Construction has screwed us over....

This is a post about squirrels! Yes Squirrels! Alameda has the craziest squirrels that I've ever encountered. They have no fear of humans and plunder gardens without hesitation.

This is our neighbors avocado tree which hangs into our yard a good amount. Now of any kind of tree that you are going to have hang into your yard I'd say an avocado is just about the best kind. Before our neighbors cut the tree back we could reach out from our deck and pluck fresh avocados!! I'd like to say we could pluck avocados to our hearts content but nooooo. Half the time the damn squirrels would get to them first! They would always chew the side facing away from us so we wouldn't know the dang thing was ruined until we'd pluck it and find that it was half eaten!! Arrrrrgh!!!!

today I went out in the morning to water the tomato plants and look what I found sitting in Irene's shoes! I swear I didn't fake this, that this is exactly how I found it this morning. Some dang squirrel is taunting us!!!

I still have my BB gun from when I needed it to scare raccoon's away from our pond in the old neighborhood......squirrels are a smaller, faster moving target but I bet I could zing a couple in the butt.....

Nah, that'd be cruel right?

What Lies Ahead Part 2

When last we left off we were talking about the permits that we have that are due to expire this October. For fun here is a clip of the section of the plans that go along with the permit.

Here was the existing bottom floor as we found it. Love how the garage enters into the unit via the bathroom? and how the middle bedroom can only be entered through the bathroom also! Talk about a multi-use space.

Below we have the after that we're supposed to have finished by Oct! Sorry about the small size if you click on the picture its readable-ish. Wow, look at all that stuff!! What was I thinking! Basically the only parts of the above that are done are the slab-foundation, the radiant heating, the tankless water heater and some of the earthquake retro-fitting! That means we've got to do all the plumbing still, the wiring, I've got to actually install a kitchen! the bathroom(which is on a seperate permit), frame out the garage and utility closets, insulate and sheet rock everything! Just basically finish everything!

Ya, it'll just take a couple of weekends right!?!?!

Sheesh, what'd I get myself into!