Its That Time of the Year Again!!!

Its Starting to Get Spooky Around Here!!!

This year we're back with the Haunted Pumpkin Patch. You see, it seems that some crazy person decided to grow pumpkins in an old abandoned cemetery. This disturbed those interned there-in and strange things have been happening ever since....sometimes, people say they see the scare-crow moving on its own, or hear his plaintive cries to be set free by the unwary so he can once again wreck havoc on the land of the living. Or, they hear frightening ghostly whispers surrounding them once in the graveyard. If you get close enough you'll even hear our lazy gravedigger snoring as he takes a quick break from digging graves. But, be careful that you don't get too close, because what he's burying isn't all the way dead.....yet... In fact the unrest of the spirits was so great that it opened a portal to the underworld where nightly demons fly about looking to drag the unwary down to their doom.

Check out this super spooky shot of the Haunted Pumpkin Patch at night...

Some insane Halloween baby cuteness to balance the spooky.

Spooky graveyard full on! This year we changed things up a bit and the scarecrow is up on a cross and in the far back you can see our new addition, a sleepy grave digger snoozing on his shovel.

The front of the house has been taken over by spiders!!! Lots of big creepy spiders and cobwebs. They've even caught a giant fly! You can't see it in this shot but along the side of the house we have a new scene. Its a Hellhole with demons that fly around over the flickering flames of the pit! You can also see the rats on the stairs making a reappearance this year.

Just another neat shot, this time along the side of the graveyard. Doesn't the Scare-Crow look menacing? Wonder what he'll do this year?

Here's one of Irene's famous arty shots looking through the lock. I like how it frames the sleeping grave digger. On Halloween night a red spooky light will be emanating from the grate.

Ending with another impossibly cute Halloween baby pic.

You're invited to come on down and enjoy the show Friday the 30th and Saturday the 31st. Come from dusk on, we'll have hot spiced cider and treats for all.

Gone a little goofy with the fabric

Remember how I said I might staple some fabric up on the walls in the kitchen to make it look even more finished?

Well, I went ahead and did that

I suppose this added a few bucks to our cheapo kitchen renovation, but it was the fastest, most pleasant drywall experience I've ever had!

We actually had people who've never been to our house walk in the room and say "wow, nice kitchen" without even hearing the background of what the house was like before, and what we want to do to it, etc. Just any normal kitchen!

So naturally, I couldn't stop there.

<-- This is the living room before I splattered fabric all over it

<-- Here's an in-progress shot

Basically, I folded over the edges and shot 'em with the pneumatic stapler. You'd think a pneumatic stapler would be something you'd want to keep FAR away from a house with a baby in it, but Natasha slept right through most of it. The only thing she didn't like was attaching the hose to the stapler.. even the compressor kicking in didn't really bother her.
Oh wait.. wrong blog ;)
You're here to see the house..

And voila! You'd think we have walls back there!

The fabric in here doesn't lie as smoothly as the wallpaper-looking job in the kitchen.. but I only had a limited time while the baby was napping and I don't really mind the curtain-y effect..

The wainscotting in the hall needed to be 3/4 wall height in one spot where the lathe showed though the plaster. The rest is a low wainscott which looks sorta like we might've just done it because it looks cool. Not because our friends' 2-year old stood in the hallway and grabbed a chunk of peeling paint that is, conveniently enough, at exactly toddler eye level. No.. nothing like that..

And it's unanimous. Even the cat approves.

To-Do Lists...

Here is our To-Do List White Board...

If you click on the picture you can actually read what is says.. This board actually goes back to when we first bought the house as you can see.

The items that are crossed off along the left hand side are:

• 
  
  Find electrician for service upgrade.


• 
  
  Temporary water heater


• 
  
  Pick garage door


• 
  
  Downstairs doors (pick and finish and install them)
  

Down the middle it says:The stuff in red is things that are done...I don't know how to cross out text on a blog?

• Pick tiles for 1st floor bath, master bath


• Find roofer/pick material


• something about installing heating into the house


• buy tankless water heater/install


• fix 1st floor windows (all done along one side)


• Pick windows for sunroom, master BR and master bath


• Pick decide on flooring


• Pick fixtures for 1st floor bath


• Find dunk tank stripper


• Plan AV wiring

Along the far right hand side appears to be a list of all the things we wanted to do to the house asap....



Well we've done a new list and it looks like this...

As you can see we've had a slight re-alignment of our priorities....

1531 Morton St. Knife Catching Again

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.

Up for consideration is 1531 Morton St. $1,099,000 4bed 2.5 bath 2700 sq ft house that's $407/sq ft. built in 1910. The official knifecathers blog has already covered this house but since it was already in my Que to finish I thought I'd do it anyways, so here's my take on it.

I gotta say, this place is the most crack-smokingest craziest price of ANY house I've reviewed.

There's a story behind this one that is just too funny-greed gone way wrong I think.

Here's what 1531 Morton looks like from the front. When built it was a nice house on a large 6500 sq ft lot. BTW I guess the realtor got fired as the house is now listed as FSBO....I bet the realtor tried to talk some sense into the owner and some owners just don't listen.

Here's the google sat view of the place before the new 'addition'. You can see plenty of space and a little garage in the back corner. If I had a satellite view of the place now it would show an entirely NEW house in what was the backyard.!!!


The Story (from the realtor showing the house on the day we toured): Typical Alameda story, older women living alone in great big house can't take care of it anymore so decides to sell. Records show the current owner (which is some kinda fancy-pants green design-build firm outta Berkeley) got the place for a steal at the height of the market, bought for $550,000 back in '06. That number is suspiciously cheap for that time....bringing up the specter of someone taking advantage of a little old lady.... This firm then somehow convinced the city planning dept to let them build an entirely new house in the backyard (1533 Morton on sale for like $800,000+) and call it a 'condo development'??? Its ridiculous, I don't know how many palms they had to grease to get that pushed through but man....wow I just don't get it.

Anywho, fancy-pants developer builds new house in backyard (all spiffy green like) does an aerosol overhaul on the original house and lists them both separately, the original place for $1.1mill and the back house for $899,000!!!!

How much crack did he have to smoke before he though THAT was going to fly? I suppose the developer thought the market was going to keep go, go going the way it was and people would be jumping all over themselves to buy either of the places... Lets just say that, that's not happening....We've been to two open houses there and the reactions from the people touring the houses is just priceless.... '$1.1 mill FOR JUST THE FRONT HOUSE!!!, they must be joking' I must of heard 20 different couples say basically the same thing and just walk away shaking their heads...

So, this development company bought the place in '06 for $550,000, then sunk a bunch of money into fixing up the original house and then building an entire new house. What do you think the carrying costs of all this were? Its 2/3rds of the way through 09 and no one is jumping to buy these places. I bet that the developer is losing its shirt on this....and that doesn't make me feel bad at all!

Okay onto the house review:

You are greeted by these front steps...Very not original and VERY not allowed by the city...I wonder how they got this past the inspectors.

The front porch did have this cool hanging light though.

Just inside the front door were these original looking light switches..They looked neat and they still worked.

For some reason I forgot to take pictures of the main stairway and the main hallway...this room is just off to the left. One big giant room with two doors...guess what that means...yep they took down an interior partition wall (without permits) to make a 'great room' how McMansiony of them...

Here's the gas fireplace in the 'great room' Talk about McMansiony...that marble surround is so not period correct and it really sticks out like a sore thumb...

This is the room on the other side of the hallway from the great room. The house had lots of cool built-ins.

More ugly marble but a cool original built-in.

Walk down the hallway and into this modern kitchen. I thought this was pretty nice. All the high end fancy stuff. I liked the glass subway tile back splash.

Off the kitchen was this little deck space. See the house behind this one??

Just past the kitchen on the left was this tiny little half bath.

Also off this area was this little tiny room with a nice little built-in. They are counting this as a bedroom I believe and that's being a bit generous.

On to the upstairs, the bedrooms were good sized with decent closet spaces.

Nother bedroom.

Funky closet space in the main upstairs hallway without any doors or anything...looks kinda like they ran out of money before they could finish it.

There is this cool maids stair going down to the kitchen area.

Guest bath on the upper floor. Looks new..though I didn't see any permits pulled for this either....

This is the master bedroom. It had decent sized closets. Through the door on the right you get...

IKEA-riffic-ness. Another closet? A dressing area? I'm not sure what the purpose of this room is.

The master bath is right off the IKEA closet. It looks fine, very modern.

This is the view out of the master bedroom window. Look how close that house is! Woulda been a great spot for a garden. I think that there is maybe 30' between the houses. $1mill for a house and you don't even get a backyard...or a garage...

The bottom floor is not legal living space even though its set up that way... Okay the carpet in this area was not installed correctly!! Its a million dollar house and I almost tripped and broke my neck TWICE on the bulges in the carpet!! Through the door to the left you get..

A sewing room? I have to give the seller credit every room in the big ole house was staged...must of cost them some money....I'm sure it helped sell the place quickly....not.

the other side is set up like a man-cave with a poker table ready to go. The head height in this area was not 7-6 it was shorter than that. I also learned that the floor down here is the original wood sleepers on dirt...no concrete!! A $1mill dollar house and they couldn't be bothered to put in a real slab? Also the foundation is the original concrete foundation from when the house was built...that's not too bad except it probably means no foundation bolts, no rebar in the crete and no drainage.

talking to the realtor I learned this gem... The roof on the place has to be replaced in 5 years!!! Yes you heard that right, they want $1mill for a house with a roof that is basically failing....Why in the heck would you not put a new roof on? To my way of thinking the fact that they didn't put a new roof on, or the slab in the basement calls into question all the work they've done on the place.

Summary:

$1mill house with a bad roof, no parking and no yard.....and condo fees!!!

Its sad really, the original house was nice at one point. Heck, I would of loved to of bought this place in 06 for $550,000 that's less than we paid for our crap shack in 07. To make this house work for us we'd first have to invent a time machine and go back in time and buy it before this 'developer' ruined the place when they 'freshened' it...

This coulda been a nice place with a sensitive restoration and nice grounds...even if that woulda happened it would not be worth $1mill today...

Man, whoever thought that this was going to be a money making venture really needs to put down the crack pipe. This developer would be lucky if he gets $1.1mill for both places...

We Have an Attic Office Greg Brady Would be Proud of!

At least that's what our friend Mark said when he saw it....

The front room of our house was getting a little bit crowded with all our computer stuff and all the baby stuff...something had to change! Especially since we are having the nanny-share here 3 days a week...how are we going to fit two babies plus a nanny in this room? Answer..we're not! We decided to move all our home office stuff upstairs and devote this room to strictly baby stuff.

First, we had to clean up the top floor....We had already moved all the tools and house supplies to the bottom floor and now we just had to go through the wood we were saving and keep the good and be brutal and toss the old. That rats nest of wiring on the lower right was all the old scary wiring that I pulled out. They didn't use any bushings at the metal boxes and the wire was chaffed through at all the boxes!! Hello fire!

After we cleaned everything up we decided that we needed to go around with spray foam and fill all the large cracks-gaps-crevices where the roof didn't really meet the walls. There was a pretty stiff breeze blowing in through all the cracks and we knew we were going to freeze our buns off come winter. It took three cans of spray foam but I think I got all the big gaps. There still is some spots that could use some caulk but with the windows closed theres no breeze so that's going to be a big improvement.

We sorted all the wood and stashed in on the other side of the knee walls. Here's a shot of the room all cleaned up and ready for carpet.

Before we put in the carpet we needed to install several circuits for the office. We installed an overhead light with a switch at the door, two 15 amp circuits to outlets (so we can run two seperate space heaters or the AC) and one 15amp circuit for the computers.

Here's me wiring the computer outlets.

And magically its all done! We got a good deal on GFCI outlets so we used those...especially cause I'm not sure how dry those outlets under the window are going to stay.....lotta daylight coming in, in that area...You'll notice that the light is in fact working!

While I was doing the electrical Irene tackled the super-gross job of cleaning the door to the attic...we never cleaned this side cause well.. the attic was just storage but now the attic is officially going to be clean (shoeless) space so some cleaning was in order. Remember the black smudges are from the previous owners unwashed hands touching the door trim as he went in and out of the room....years of old man hand funk...bleh

Yummy! Nice contrast with the white paint underneath no?

We also re-foamed our lame-o chimney patch job. We also installed this high-tech water catchment system...We're hoping it won't leak so much this year but if it does this should funnel all the drips into one easily changeable container...no more having 36 containers spread around to catch all the random drips...we're just going to have to make sure we keep an eye on it as a single container will fill faster.

We bought some more cheap-a$$ Home Despot carpet and put it in.

After several hours of hauling things upstairs and Irene making a window shade outta an old Jack Skellington bed sheet (so ghetto) we're done!! And it already looks like we've been there a while with stuff everywhere.

What home office would be complete without a twin size air bed, a globe bar and a make-up station! Not ours that's for sure! Maybe this could be a guest room for one brave soul...they'd have plenty of booze to keep themselves warm that's for sure.

Using some 1" gas pipe that was left over from the 'great gas pipe' experiment I made a closet rod for all of our winter coats. They were taking over the coat rack at the front door and making the space feel crowded. Like the reflection from my motorcycle leathers?

Here's the home office from another angle showing my already messy desk. We had to install an AC unit in the window as its summer time and MAN does it get hot up here....Wow, with no insulation and the sun beating down the little shed dormer roof just radiates the heat. Check out my cardboard and duct tape air diverter! Classy!

And finally, The New Babies Room!!! We got room for the pack and play, the crazy swing, the nursing chair, tons of baby toys and those cool padded cubes that make great seats for adults or blocks for kids. Of course Tiny is staying where she's at. She likes to watch the kids...