das Haus

For those of you that read this (family), I've posted some photos of our house below. I had planned on doing so a while ago - but I didn't realize how long it would take to get moved in. Even now there are still boxes of cookbooks in the garage (of course, not yours, Patti).

5505 Carlson - As far as we know the house was foreclosed on a couple years ago. A flipper picked it up in 2009. Among other things, he repainted the exterior, laid the flagstone porch and installed the new windows in the front of the house.


(It didn't always look this nice. Our neighbors, house by house, have been coming over and talking about how much they love it that we've moved in. At first, I thought that was because no one likes living next to an empty house. Or that Erin and I are particularly charming. No such luck-- apparently the previous owner ran either a half-way house or rented out the house solely to ex-cons and sketchy types. Dangerous people, coming in and out at all hours, cops being called... you can see why they cut me slack for my lawn going uncut for a few days.)

I painted the front door eggplant (I could tell my mother was slightly horrified).


(It looks very sharp, and it reminds of growing up in rural Maine with a bright red door. Literally, people would drive from miles around to see this house in the middle of nowhere with a bright red door. In California, no one notices. Thank God for civilization.)

Living room - after living in a dark, cave of an apartment for two years, it makes all the difference in the world having this much natural light.



Kitchen - while this house was built in the early fifties, it's uncharacteristically open. Almost all of the other houses we looked at from this period had a much more closed off kitchen and eating area. This was one of the major selling points with us.

The previous owner installed the tile floor and the counter tops. He also refinished all the hardwood floors.


First and smallest of three rooms.


(Please note me hard at work, probably watching a YouTube film on the failure of Capitalism. Or kitties. It's a toss-up.)

Like a lot of the other houses we saw from this period, it has a separate shower stall and soaking tub.


The two bedrooms in the back are almost the same size and both face the backyard.


Yard - in the back, right corner of the yard are three fruit trees Mom and Dad helped us plant.

(Please note the grill. It's where magic happens.)


As you can see, we're working on systematically killing the lawn. No matter what we do it keeps dying - watering, not watering, fertilizer, leaving the lawn long, not leaving the lawn long, and so forth. It's not that we're attached to the lawn. In fact, I think we're thinking of pulling it out in the end anyway and going for something way less water intensive. It's the fruitlessness of our (and by "our" I mean "Gideon's") labor.


(My current favorite feature of the lawn is the hammock, which I'm never in. The lawn is my personal Vietnam. No matter what I do, it just makes things worse. The lawn guy says it might be me over-watering a lawn. To which I thought, "You can over-water a lawn?" I think it's time to bring in a landscaper and seek out some kind of peace with dignity...)

(Also, note the former dog/rabbit run. If Erin won't let me keep chickens there, I plan to lock misbehaving children in the cage. If that doesn't get traction... maybe a still. I might kill a lawn, but I can probably make some fierce white lightening.)