The story of our houses

It may be nice to give a little overview of our "Home Story"- that is, how we came to be the owners of two bungalows that are almost 100 years old. Like many first time home buyers, it has been a long journey to get here. We have been working at getting to where we need to be, financially and personally, and this past year has really made a difference for us. God really blessed us when I got a "real" job last summer, not the "jobby" (job-hobby) that Little Oranges had become. It is a great company, but wasn't helping us make any headway towards a down payment or any type of savings....so the job really helped us to get our feet on the ground. Plus, Manish has been feeling good and the latest scan (in mid-June) was clear, so we just feel so blessed.

On to the real estate hunt.....Well, we looked online for the past two years, but it wasn't until April of this year that we finally got a good handle on the financing and what we could afford. Loans have become a little hard to get these days, but we were fortunate to not have too many problems...just lots of little pieces of info that they needed. We started looking around with our realtor in May and looked at a good deal of homes (maybe like 15 or 20?). We actually made an offer on a different house first. It was mid-century modern, which is our thing, in Altadena. Nice a big (2,700 sq. ft.) and a great lot (10,000 s.f.). Alas, it didn't work out in the negotiation phase, but we knew that God had something better for us, so we kept looking.

(This is the first house that we made an offer on...)

On to the next homes...we saw lots of them...Here are a couple more:

(Great looking estate sale in upper Pasadena, great area.....potential?)

(um... not too good looking, oh- and the floors bounced)

(yeah, that's the kitchen floor..no appliances...not great. On to the next...)

(Nicer old 50's fixer in the lower San Rafael Hills area....we peaked in...)

(Awesome old eat-in kitchen, original everything...)

(Great yard, not huge, but nice....Alas, the house was already in escrow, as we found out..)

(Super cute spanish revival house in lower Monrovia....)

(Very charming, but kind of the best house on the street, right on an alley

and a slightly over-confident listing agent kept us looking....)

Then we saw this California bungalow in Sierra Madre. It was the first of several houses we were seeing that day, but it lingered in our minds....We loved the character of the house, the light, the way that we felt when we walked through the place. It was old...yes, but it was charming.

(Above are the Living and Dining Rooms)

(The kitchen and the breakfast nook)

(The front bedroom, a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, and the back bedroom)

(Three-quarter bathroom off Living Room)

(The original back laundry porch, just screened in basically)

(View towards the front house from under the avocado tree)

(view towards the back house...It is much cuter in person...I will add

more photos of it soon!)

(Back house Living Room)

(Back House kitchen...small but workable with a great vintageWedgewood stove)

(Back House Bedroom, and there is also a

bathroom adjacent to the bedroom...)

We knew from the beginning that it would take some work. From the start, based on the physical inspections, we estimated that we would need to do a good deal of work including at least: new plumbing throughout, all new electrical upgrades (there was even some original 1912 wiring around), upgrading all the plumbing fixtures, renovating the kitchen, adding a proper laundry space, adding some additional framing supports, running new power upgrades to the back house....whew! And that is just what we imagined at the start. Even with Manish as an architect and my working for a building company, we weren't sure if we could take on this challenge. But we knew it would be worth it. The house was great, the back house would be a perfect office for Manish and a great place for guests to stay when they visit. Also, the neighborhood is great...there are like 20 kids from 2 to16 on the street and we are walking distance to the main street area (like 1 1/2 blocks...). We knew that it would be worth it and so we went for it!!!! And that brings us to the current state of renovation that we are in....We will continue to keep updating with more stories and photos....So much to do and so much to share!