Well, we bought a house

Here is what we liked:

A: Neighborhood.

The house is a small California bungalow on Alameda, an island city of 75,000 south of the Bay Bridge and West of Oakland. The house is in the middle of the island, and borders a large area of historic Victorians built by San Franciscans for summer houses (“The Gold Coast”).

Our house is the smallest, crappiest house in a very big circle, feeding into one of the best elementary schools.

B: The yard

It’s a big, big yard.

What I don’t like:

A: The kitchen

(more on this).

B: ONE BATHROOM.

C: I don’t know what they were thinking. The people that lived here for 60 years were relatively modest in their updates, but they walled in the windows over the bungalow mantle, and over the bed in the larger bedroom, swapped the leaded glass doors in the bookcase for the mantle with those, um, doors.

D: instead of putting a heater and ducts in the house, they just swapped the floor monster for a wall heater (which they chopped up the dining room wall to install.

E: ivy. in California. WTH.

With all the Asian stuff, and the wallpaper mural, and ivy, it seems like they might have been more comfortable with a 70s ranch house on the East Coast. Or. Something.