We moved out today. It’s finally time to tear the house down. But there will be no wrecking ball for Casa Del Sol. Actually you wouldn’t need a wrecking ball. You could probably just drive a golf cart very slowly into the house and it’d collapse. But that’s not the way it’s done here. Our house won’t be smashed up and dumped in a landfill. Instead, in accordance with California’s environmental laws, it will be carefully taken apart piece by piece, sorted and recycled.   I’m relieved about this. I was hoping to have some parts of the house salvaged, but it’s surprisingly hard to find a housing charity who will take this stuff without considerable investment and effort on our part. I want to do the right thing but not if it’s going to add a couple of weeks and a few thousand to our project plan. Appliances need to be fairly new and materials need to have been removed and cleaned. I asked our builder for recommendations because ‘I don’t want it all to end up in landfill’ to whi...

Seven days left in Casa Del Sol. Although as Ash points out we still don’t actually have our plans approved, all indicators are that it will happen very soon. And we can start the pre-demolition work in the meantime. So we are going to move out, take what we want to salvage, and let the builders move in. Then the asbestos is removed. A a fence, and a power pole and portaloo need to go up. A neighborhood meeting has to be scheduled. This will take three or four weeks, so we'll get the ball rolling while waiting for final approvals.   It's strange to be moving out of a house that will never be lived in again. No need to clean,  patch up paintwork or clear out unwanted old plant pots. It all just gets left.  Meanwhile Penelope is enjoying these last few days in the house very much: anything goes as far as art – or even just scrawling – on the walls, and not just in her bedroom either.  We’re ignoring the late summer termite invasion. I’m putting stuff down the waste dis...

Just as we were about to sign the lease on our rental, believing ourselves to be in the final stages of plans and loan approval, we hit a road-bump. The appraised value of the finished home came in way lower than we expected, because the appraiser quite literally could not compute the value of the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) space. This is the mother-in-law suite, roughly 700 sq ft of living space, accessible only from an external door in keeping with Hermosa City code. The State of California wants as many ADUs as possible to be built. The Coastal Commission likes ADUs in areas where there’s a need for more housing, like Hermosa. And Hermosa Beach City is fully in favor too. But the slow pokes in the world of real estate appraisers acts as if they are a crazy fiction of an idea. The appraiser’s notes said ‘ADU is not usual so appraised at zero square foot’. i.e. ‘I’ve never seen one of these before so I’m going to act as if it does not exist.’ We appealed and got a higher valuation ...