Hermosa Beach is a dense little 1.4 square miles, and is a little bit short on parking. There are lots of older beach cottages with no garage or driveway. There are also lots of narrower streets and alleys without any sidewalk, meaning each house just runs right up to the road (or 'street' as Americans call it - who knew?). In an attempt to rectify this, when people renovate or rebuild the city requires them to put in parking spaces on their property, and a sidewalk. Loma Drive is almost without sidewalks, and therefore street parking, for most of its length. If we were just tarting the place up but adding less than 50% to the living space, we could leave it as is. That extensive patchwork of spaces for us to park in would remain, 'grandfathered in'.  But we are going to build a brand new house and that means bringing the whole lot up to code. Not only will we need to add a section of sidewalk but we will need to provide off-street parking for 3 cars. And if we hav...

Can you choose an architect because they remind you of your friend Alan? Can you select an architect because they’re moving into your old gym and that gives you a good vibe? Can you select an architect because you liked his desk? Or his dog on Insta? Or because he described a plaster finish as ‘economical but poetic’?  Can you rule out an architect because his office has ugly carpets and no natural light? I think so, on the basis that you don't go to a hairdresser with bad hair. Still, it all seems rather arbitrary. Of course the best way to decide is to look at the work. But when we do, we post rationalize the ones we like, saying, ‘well I don’t like all that shingle but then again if we worked with him we’d just say ‘no shingle’ and I think they’d be fine with that’. I was very keen on the hot young ambitious firm. I hoped would have a price tag that reflected their inexperience and enthusiasm – but sadly not. Their cost was twice what we’d imagined we’d spend. My husba...

We are deep into inspections here. Our house was inspected last week and found to be in need of termite treatment (find me a house in LA that isn’t). Also a dozen ‘safety issues’ aka   minor building code infractions. The silliest one being that our front steps lack a handrail. Overall, a pretty clean inspection and stuff we’ll either fix, or ignore, or give the buyers a credit to fix. At Casa Del Sol the picture is less rosy. The inspection noted 36 safety issues including items like ‘Dozens of exposed electrical wiring connections and open electrical boxes as well as exposed stand wiring that present shock & fire hazards’. The inspector wasn’t really into our seller’s DIY approach to roofing either: ‘a shower enclosure glass door/panel were noted being used as an over-head awning at the guest house entry stoop that is not suited for this application, presents a shatter hazard and requires removal.’ Apparently ‘the guest house window is too small to meet the ‘natural l...

Encounters between sellers and buyers are discouraged. Much better to leave all the conversations and negotiations to the agents.  But when you walk past a property a dozen times a week (obsessed!) you’re bound to bump into the owner. And so it was that, a few days after we had our offer accepted, my husband started shooting the breeze with the owner. He described our plans, including our intent to have his mother move in with us in the long run. The owner – who two weeks earlier didn’t even want to entertain our not-all-cash offer – was so pleased about all of this he decided to give us his golf cart. That's right, we're getting a golf cart along with the house. Our realtor tells us this is not common.  My husband is pleased as punch, but is now banned from any further interactions. This one ended well, but who knows what would happen next time.