YAY!!!!! WE'RE URBAN BEE KEEPERS!!!!!!!

Oh, Wait, No.......

Here's an update to the bees in the wall story.

Well have we got bees....we gots lots and lots and lots of bees....

Y'all will remember from an earlier post that we have a bee hive in the wall on the North side of the house.

When we bought the house it was cold outside and there where only like one or two bees that we'd see.  We knew we had to remove it but we didn't think it was anything that big of a deal...

Well, now that its warm outside the swarm of bees outside the hive entrance is quite HUGE!!!

You can actually see the cloud of bees quite clearly in the afternoon from the neighbors yard....if the cloud of bees is proportional to the size of the hive then...we have a fricken huge hive!!!

Turns out its really hard to take pictures of bees, even with Mrs. Madmadscientist's fancy pants camera but here are a couple of tries.

Those shots were taken in the morning when the swarm was still small. 

I think I've figured out where they are in the structure of the house.

Take a look at this pic.

I can hear a clicking/water dripping noise from that area. I think the bees came in at the pipe penetration and expanded horizontally into the joist bay.

But Wait, There's More!!!

A couple of weeks ago there was like a freaky horror movie sized swarm outside the house for a couple of hours....guess what that means??...yep the original hive got too big for its britches and divided!!

Where did the new colony go???

Oh, about 10 feet to the left and started a new hive!! Also in our walls!!!! Hurray!!!!! We're urban beekeepers!!! I don't know if this is normal but the ground outside the old hive was literally covered with dead bees? Maybe it was a bloody coup?

Here's the entrance to the new hive.

That's the exhaust pipe for an old gas wall heater that was in baby madmadscientist's room at one time....somebody removed the heater and patched the wall but didn't bother to remove the venting pipe!!  I guess that they thought that the single layer of duct tape would be a sufficient barrier....

Here's a shot from the inside. You can just make out the ghosted outline of the old wall heater.

If you put your ear to the wall here you can totally hear bees buzzing and going about their work. It looks like they have access to this entire stud bay....Hurray!!!!!

So, now we've got two hives....all we need now is a chicken coop and we'll be super hip urban farmers!! Hurray!!!!

Help!!!

We need to remove these bees ASAP. My neighbor on that side is getting pretty pissed off at us for not doing it sooner. The bees poop all over their car (it's yellow) and they wash it a couple times a week now....

Also, we can't really reroof or repaint until they are gone...

I looked into having them removed safely by a pro.

It seems like such a raw deal for us. Here's how it works. You pay them ~$600 per hive and they will come out and bust into your walls and remove the bees and the comb and the honey. Then you are responsible for cleaning up the rest of the mess (which I've heard is substantial) and repairing the damage yourself!!! We don't even get to keep the honey!!! All told, I'm estimating that it will cost like $3k to solve this issue....

OR...

I can buy some poison and nuke both hives and be done with it for under $100....

I don't want to do that. I understand how important bees are to the survival of the human race. If the bees go, we go a couple of weeks later...

But c'mon bee keepers...do you see why more hives get nuked than safely removed?

My ideal solution:

I'd like to work with the removal team to remove the portions of the house that need to be in a way that will make it as easy as possible to replace. Then I want the dang honey!!!! We could give it away as gifts to our neighbors to make up for the inconvenience. Then, well, I don't want to pay for it of course...

What I find funny about urban bee keeper folks is when you tell them the situation they really, really, pour on the 'don't kill them please!!!!' stuff but then when you ask them to remove them they're like, 'oh we only take hives if they are in a bush reachable without a ladder'!?!?!?!!? LAME!!

C'mon beekeeper save-the-bees types. Put your money where your mouth is!!!

Realtor Schenanigans Part 4.

This was also written a while ago but I was persuaded not to publish until we closed on Chez 2.0

Good Lord, is this going to be a never ending series?

This next Realtor Story is something that I just think is weird-lame.

I don't think I know of a single Alameda-based Realtor that showed Chez 2.0 to a single client??? Wait, I can think of two off the top of my head....

Okay but here's the weird part.

I know that for sure there were at least 8 potential buyers who wanted to tour Chez 2.0 and their Realtor couldn't be bothered to show it to them!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?

They either had their clients contact my Realtor for a showing directly, or they called him up to arrange for him to show it to their clients??

Seriously, WTF is up with that???

Is that not their job? What's the good reason these people could not show the house to their clients?

I know Chez 2.0 was a unique case where it wasn't going to appeal to a ton of people. In fact, I'd say that these 8 Alameda-based buyers with Alameda-based Realtors who were interested in the house enough to want to schedule a special tour were probably the majority of that pool....

So I ask again, what's the good reason for the Realtors to not do their job? Laziness? Animosity towards me? It's not like Chez 2.0 was very far for any Alameda-based Realtor to go???

Way to go Realtors, earn your pay!

I learned another thing about the business.
In past reviews, I've often said how annoying it is when you go tour an open house and the Realtor showing the house is not the selling Realtor and they don't seem to know a damn single useful thing about the house?  I was always like, what's the friggen point of you taking up space then???

Well, I recently had a Realtor set me straight about why that happens. According to this source, doing open houses is the #1 way for Realtors to get new clients. That sorta makes sense from my experience. Usually when I'm trying to ask the showing Realtor a question they interrupt me half way through to press me about whether or not I have my own Realtor. When I tell them I already do I can see them slump and then they start to act like I'm wasting their time!!!

So, I get why a Realtor would want to show a house which is not their listing. Now I also get why they usually don't know a damn thing about the house, they don't care. They are not there to help sell the house they are there to primarily get new clients. Okay I get that.

Here's what I don't get: The listing agent knows that too!! Why in the hell would they ever, let anyone else show the house?

Seriously, I don't understand this....

Realtor Schenanigans Part 3

This post was originally written on 4-13-11 but I've delayed publishing it until today as I was convinced that I should do nothing to further piss off the Alameda Realtors. I think that I've vagued it up enough..


The title of this post probably should have been...

Third Open House Not Such A Success

What I'm about to relate to you, dear readers, has me sooooo pissed off that I just want to, I don't know what....and the fact that it happened in my house during my open house really makes is personal.

The Story

My Realtor had a personal emergency and couldn't make it to our third open house...so he asked around the offices at blah-blah Realty and got a very eager volunteer to do the open for him...when he told me who the volunteer was I had instant misgivings as I personally do not have a very positive view of this Realtor's character....

Apparently the open went okay with ~25 groups of people attending down from the 35 we've had at previous open houses.

Now, I know that my neighbors have been thinking about buying our house..which we were really excited about as we think that they would be good owners of Chez 2.0. They'd been to every open house and had been working with my Realtor. He'd shown it to them several times and their brother and their father. Point here is that he'd already been working with them for a while.

On that day they went to the open expecting to see our Realtor there and to talk to him about making an offer on our house....instead....that dirtbag Realtor, who was doing my realtor a 'favor', convinced them to drop him and use the dirtbag as shim could 'get them a better deal' or that 'my realtor would screw them over'.  Now I happened to see these neighbors a couple days later in front of Blah Blah Realty as they were waiting to write an offer on my house!!! I chatted a bit with them and that is when I learned what had happened.... Now, I don't blame them, they are first time home buyers and this is their first time EVER making an offer on a house...I know what that's like, they were totally freaked! Up was down, down was up, and they were just terrified....and this dirtbag Realtor took advantage of them while they were in that state and that really pisses me off...as these are nice folks.

Annd shim did them no favors, we know these people, we would love to have them own our house and the process didn't need to be adversarial... we all could have sat down and figured out a price we all could have lived with...helped by the fact that with my Realtor working both ends of the deal I was getting a break in commission which I was hoping to pass on to them in the form of a lower price....now, all that's out the window...

Our History With The Dirtbag

A couple years ago when our Realtor was going through some health issues, this dirtbag Realtor tried to steal us away by telling us: ' Your Realtor is having some health issues and can't give the job his all. You should really go with me as I can give you my all'...not an exact quote but it was something to that effect.

But Wait, There's More

At the same open house he tried to steal another Realtor's clients away!!! I'm told that when this second Realtor found out this Realtor gave shim a good dressing down in front of the entire office.

So, for those of you keeping score, this same Realtor tried to steal us away from our current Realtor in the past, managed to steal away one of our Realtor's current clients and tried unsuccessfully to steal another Realtor's clients during our open house...

Is this Realtor not indicative of everything wrong with this business???

I talked to the boss

I was so pissed off that I called shim's boss and we had a nice long chat where I outlined everything above.

I don't know if anything useful will come of this but I seriously hope they do something about this.


Update
Nothing to update, 'the boss' never got back to me, which he said he'd do. So I've never learned if the dirtbag was disciplined or what...it's been three months since our phone conversation and the only thing he did was ask my Realtor to ask me to not run this piece...


I think the dirtbag is still working there.
Here's the crazy thing...this Realtor has a rep. Talking to other Realtors at other agencies' they knew of DB and knew to steer clear of shim. What I heard most was, 'DB'll try to screw you any way s-he can.' I even talked to several of DB's fellow employees and wow, is this person bad for morale.

In sales, you would never keep a salesperson around who has a rep as a dirtbag and who has tried to, or actually has, stolen their fellow employees clients. Geez, in my former line of work someone like that would have been shit-canned so fast and rode outta the office on a rail.

Ugh...

That's It! Its Official!!!!

Chez Neumansky 2.0 Is Now Officially Someone Else's Problem.

Over a week late but it's done. The title was transferred, some funds were transferred, and now 1310 Pacific Ave. is somebody else's problem.

Originally we were hoping to clear enough money to get the new place repainted and re-roofed....but that's not going to happen...then we were hoping to clear enough money to get one or the other done....but that's not going to happen...Now, we just hope we cleared enough to pay for the legalization of the basement unit...we've already paid over $8k in permit fees for that so far...

At least now with only paying one mortgage, our income is going to be slightly higher than our outgo and we will stop bleeding money.

Sale Post Mortem

Well, let's see....it took waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer to sell Chez 2.0 than we ever thought....

I don't have the official MLS info but Zillow says it was on the market for 112 days! Yikes!!! I don't know if the 'days on MLS' figure is to the close of escrow or to when the house is marked pending or what? But still, that's a lot longer than we thought.

Why we thought it would sell faster.

We put the for sale ads up on Craig's list and within a couple of days we had a nice couple tour the house and agree to buy it for the then asking price of $495k!!! Wow, we where stoked!!! The wife was an architect and the husband was a contractor seemed like the perfect fit! Then reality sunk in....they where both in foreclosure on two separate houses!!! No bank in the world was going to loan to them...

This literally happened within 2 days of posting it on Craig's list. We thought, 'dang we must have priced the place right.'

Rundown on Buyers.

Yep, we had more than one group of people interested in the house.

Besides the above.

Then we thought we had it sold again for $475k.  Things were looking great and the buyer was well-qualified for a loan...when it became clear to the buyer that the 203k loan requirements were not going to allow them to use illegal contractors and skirt the permitting laws they bailed as they felt that doing it legally was going to cost too much...

Then we thought we had it sold again for $465k. This time to a contractor who said he wanted to fix the place up for his daughter. Turns out this person could not qualify for the loan either....

Then there was the nice family from Berkeley who agreed to buy the house for $465k but that they couldn't qualify for the loan unless they sold their current house....

It gets fuzzy but it seems like that there were plenty of people who wanted the house, including some very nice neighbors of ours who we really wanted to sell the house to, but who just couldn't qualify for the FHA 203k loan.

What Worked For Us.

I think probably the Craig's list ads were what drove the most people to the open houses. It was also put on the major Real Estate Web Sites but honestly, I think it was Craig's list that drove the most people....it sure didn't seem like it was the local Alameda Real Estate agents trying to sell the house.

What Worked Against Us.

Obviously, the condition of the house. Having stopped mid-project was not a good thing for us. I think that when most people looked at the house all they could see was the mess it was in and not the house it could be when finished.  What was funny was that when people brought their contractors with them the contractors were like, 'All the hard, dirty expensive works been done already. If you are going to do this at all buy this house!!' That's like an actual quote from a couple different contractors.

The FHA 203k loan. For some reason people just couldn't wrap their heads around the idea....we never really could figure out a nice, tight elevator pitch way to get the idea across... That, and the fact that the 203k mortgage is not a cheap way to buy a house and they have pretty strict underwriting standards.

This Blog. I don't think that it's a coincidence that every single person who was interested in the house was either without a real estate agent or had an agent from a different area. I think that the animosity generated by my house reviews among the Alameda Realtor community really bit us on the ass, so to speak. And I'm sure some Realtors reading this are doing a little happy dance now that I 'got mine' but really, was it worth it? Possibly denying yourself a commission and a client a house?

Our Worst Nightmare Come True.

We sold the place to an investment group (for a low ball all-cash offer) who were not the most pleasant people to deal with. Being nickel and dimed to death is a phrase that comes to mind. They say that they are going to remodel the house as a single family and have it back on the market ASAP. One of my old neighbors said that it looks like they are already starting construction which would be interesting as they don't appear to have pulled any permits yet for the extensive remodeling they will have to do....

Of course when it does come on the market I will be there at the first open house and a review will follow.

What We Should Have Done.

Mrs. MadMadScientist did the math and if we would've strategically defaulted on the house back in January we would have come out about $10k ahead of where we are now...but hey, at least we still have our good credit!!! I wonder how much that's worth......

Even though we got screwed on price it feels good to be done with it and to only have one house to worry about...

Almost Done!!!!

The Following Pic Says It All!!!!!!

Got the very last of our stuff out and very shortly Chez Neumansky 2.0 is going to have a new owner...

Going to celebrate tonight with a yummy dinner and a yummy bottle of red wine.

I've been convinced to not write a single thing about the Alameda Real Estate Market until after the house closes...As soon as this place closes expect to see several blistering opinion pieces from me....

Lights! Camera! Action!!!

We're in a bit of a holding pattern now until the Major Design Review is officially, officially done...the city won't let me put in any more building-zoning applications until then...super...so...

We Have Lights!!!!

The PO's apparently took all the light fixtures with them when they left...so the selling Realtor came in and installed some super-duper sweet Home Despot $9 Specials!

After much, much, much searching on the interwebs for lights that we liked that didn't cost a zillion dollars (sorry rejuvenation hardware) we went with lights from a company called Quorum International and the collection is called Barcelona....and yes the lights cost more than $9 each.....

Here's the collection of boxes we got via UPS.

Notice how the box in front is totally destroyed! That box also has the most expensive light! Hurray!!!

Now here's the pile of crappy lights that we took down.

Here's a training montage of me trying to figure out how to hang the lights. EVERY SINGLE LIGHT had to be custom mounted. The mounted screws had to be cut much shorter and the central threaded brass rods had to be cut to fit also (with out munging up the threads!)....so, it took a lot longer than I was expecting...what doesn't.

That and hanging lights on 11' ceilings single handedly, was a bit of a challenge.

On To Pretty Pictures Of Our New Lights!!!

The dinning room light!

The dinning room light up close.

There is some disagreement between me and Mrs. MadMadScientist about how high this light should be... I think it should be where it is at like 6' off the floor. Mrs MadMadScientist thinks it should be higher. What do y'all think?

Here's a shot of the new entry light and stair landing light in context.

Now here's a close of shot of the 'birdcage' entry light.

And the landing light.

The second stair way landing we had to do the same light flush mounted as the ceiling is lower.

It's odd but to us when the same light is on a chain it looks older and more authentic.

Continuing on up the stairs to the next landing..ya that's a lot of landings, we put in this sconce.

I was worried that it was going to stick out from the wall too much and be in the way but it looks pretty good in that respect.

Back down in the main entry area we hung another semi-flushmount light. One thing to notice here is that the 10" wide home despot lights can hide a myriad of problems...

Here's the big chandelier half way done.

And here it is all done! Pretty!

One thing that I should know but don't is. This chandelier has 6 40W light bulbs...shouldn't it be as bright as 2 100W bulbs? It sure isn't...in fact its exactly perfectly dim for a party but it's not going to be bright enough to read by or clean by...hmmm...

Another thing we realized AFTER all the lights were up... All these ceiling lights on the main floor NEED ceiling medallions....which means when we do install them I'll have to probably take most of the lights down to install the medallion and then re-install the lights.... Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!

We also installed the Gargoyle light from Chez 2.0 into the library. One thing that we didn't realize when we installed the light is that when standing on the sidewalk outside the window perfectly frames the light! Like we meant to do it!

Closer up shot.

That's it for now.. next up, Down Spouts!!! How exciting!

Conversion of Two Studios into a Single One Bedroom Apt.-Design Ideas

Okay, so now I've got a rough draft of what we want to do with the basement. I need a plan for converting the two studio apartments into a single one bedroom....

Here's the existing layout.

Here's the design conditions.

1. Do as little rebuilding and demo as possible.

2. Be able to keep existing tenant in place while work is going on.

This was my first idea.

But duh, problem with this is that I would have to put the tenant out to do this as she lives in the lower unit.

Then I thought, well why not use the other kitchen as the bedroom.

But that makes for a VERY small bedroom...

So then I thought up this uh, dodge?

With this idea I end up with a big bedroom and a huge closet. I admit I'm sort of designing this for the current tenant who is a grandmother with two young grand sons who spend a lot of time with her. With this design she can have her private space by closing the door to the bedroom and the grand kids can run around in the other room. That, and she won't have to share the bathroom with them any longer.

Of course, there's nothing stopping someone from using the huge closet room as the bedroom and using the master bedroom as the living room.

I also like this idea as I think I can do all the work on the one vacant unit without disturbing her too much, and then hopefully the reframing of the closets and hallway will not be too much of a PITA and that can be done relatively quickly.

So, that's my best idea y'all have any others?

Update!!!

Went down to the city yesterday to speak to the zoning folks.

Good News On Two Fronts!!!

1. The major design review for the deck is just about to be approved!!! Yahoo!!! That means I officially have 6 parking spaces and the deck does not have to be torn down!!! YAY!!!!

2. I was told that the planning approval for the switching around of the units is an over the counter thing!! Yahoo!!!!!!!!!!! That means no $2500 major design review!!! And it can happen quicker.

So, now I need to get the planning packet together which has seperate conditions to the actual building permit packet which I also have to get together.

So, we celebrated with tasty margarita's (it was Cinco de Mayo) and nacho's.