The New House of DWC

Well…..this selling-of-our-beloved-house-and-moving-in-with-Gail-temporarily-while-house-hunting has been a very, very wild ride. But for all intents and purposes, it could have been much, much longer of a ride in this batshit market, so we are definitely counting our blessings. Also we are really counting those blessings because WE LOVE THIS FREAKING HOUSE. We truly feel like we were meant to find it and we are absolutely beside ourselves over it.

The front of the house. How bout that dirt. The flippers put that in and called it “modern landscaping”.

A little background on the house: it is not quite a fixer-upper in the sense that our last (abandoned for 5 years before we bought it) house was, but it is still definitely a fixer-upper. It’s a beautiful 1940’s colonial with really good bones that, unfortunately, flippers got ahold of right before us. While I am sure there are some flippers out there doing great, solid work, these flippers are exactly the ones that give flippers a bad rap. Franky, it almost feels like they were TRYING to do a shitty job. I’ll go more in depth on that in a later post. But the gist is that they closed on this place the first week of January, and re-listed it 8 weeks later after ripping out pesky things like original built-ins and decorative trim, painting everything white (primer. They painted everything white primer and called it a day), and trying to give it a “trendy (dated) modern white farmhouse” vibe by throwing shiplap paneling on a few walls and a few other nonsensical “trendy” things (hello floor to ceiling faux marble bathroom) without actually renovating any of the out-of-date systems or doing ANYTHING worthwhile (case in point: a week after we moved in, we had to replace the ENTIRE sewer system which was no small feat or expense). In a nutshell—they only did things that showed for photos (and didn’t even do those well). So what that means for us is that, unfortunately, we have to rip out everything they did. We have to unflip the flip.

Also—for the record—don’t get me wrong….there’s nothing wrong with “modern white farmhouse” (hey, that’s pretty much what our last house was), and if the previous owners (the ones who lived here for 30 years before the flippers) had made these changes, I would respect that they made those changes because that’s what they loved and wanted their house to look like. I do, however, have an issue with flippers coming in, ripping out the charm of a property, and trying to change it into something it’s not in order to make it “trendy”. Also, the house sat on the market for a looooong time in a VERY hot market because of what they did. Finally, when the price dropped low enough, we jumped on it (we had been circling the whole time).

So why this house? Why did we buy a house that had just been “done” only to have to come in and undo it? Because it checked alllllllllllllll the boxes for us, not the least of which is that it is on a half acre of property which, by Los Angeles standards, is unheard of (at least in our price range). It is the property of our and our animals’ dreams! Plenty of space for enormous chicken coops, gardens, A POOL!!!! (at some point), more gardens, and galloping dogs. And the house itself has all the space we need and more.

The back of the house. Gotta love that lampost.

Soooooooo much room for activities.

Yes, that right there is a REAL lawn. We are going to do our best to keep it. But the only reason that it looks this green and luscious in this photo is that the flippers were illegally watering the living daylights out of it. Every time we came to tour the house it had a water consumption warning notice on the front door.

Furthermore, when Jonathon and I first started toying with the idea of putting our old house on the market, there was a pretty significant discussion about possibly building something (because it felt like there was no way we were going to find a house/property that met ALL of our “eccentric” requirements). During that discussion, Jonathon asked me, “If you could build any style of house, what would it be?” Without missing a beat, I responded, “I would build Claude Monet’s house.” A quirky, colorful, garden-filled french country manor. But we’d have to build it because in Southern California, that type of house just doesn’t exi— …annnnnnnd then we stumbled upon this house. Do you see it? Do you see the potential Monet-ness of it? Even the front yard is massive (the front yard alone is the size of the entire property of our old house), and perfect for an impressionist entry garden. I literally can’t wait.

The front yard and driveway. Landscaped with “modern landscaping”. AKA a hellscape of dirt and mediocrity.

Okay so: stats. It’s about 2700 square feet, which is almost exactly twice the square footage of our previous house. It wasn’t that we were actually looking to get that much more square footage in a house, but ever since 2020, Jonathon has been working almost exclusively from home and needed a dedicated office space. In addition to the studio space that I require. And in addition to having at least one dedicated guest room because we are like a revolving door of guests (which is how we like it except when Jonathon has had to turn our only guest room into a fully functioning edit bay). So this means we needed at least 4 bedrooms and/or a various assortment of extra rooms that could be turned into offices. This house has that and more. Additionally, our last house had an open concept great room which was our only living space. We desperately wanted a house with a living room AND a family room, which helps us juggle guests better. Check, check. The actual stats are that it is a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, but it has two extra bedroom-type rooms upstairs, as well as the separate living and family rooms, PLUS a dedicated dining room (which will be my office until we build my studio out in the garden).

The family room.

Looking into the living room from the entry hallway.

The living room. Don’t be jealous of my dropcloth window coverings.

The flippers changed the original wide galley kitchen into a weird L-shaped open concept kitchen by removing the butlers pantry/laundry room and making the laundry into a closet. The fun part is that they didn’t make said closet big enough to actually accommodate a washer dryer (even a small stacked unit). It’s such a joke. And I am a HUGE laundry room person. I like having a dedicated room. So we have plans to either put the kitchen/laundry back the way it was, or add on a small mudroom/laundry off one side of the house.

The family room opening into the awkward L-shaped open kitchen. The door on the left side is the “laundry room”, which isn’t actually a room, but a closet that doesn’t fit a washer/dryer properly.

The newly flipped kitchen. Looks nice until you start using it (more on that in a later post).

Awkward angles in the L-shaped kitchen.

The bathrooms were another thing that the flippers decided they needed to put their grubby little hands on. Again, I’ll get more into that in another post, but in a nutshell, they decided to remodel two of the three, only one of which is actually functional because of what they did. Sigh.

“Remodeled” upstairs bathroom which is actually unusable because all the grout isn’t sealed or isn’t actually grout or something. It disintegrates when water touches it. Needless to say, we will fix it. But ugh!

Fully “remodeled” downstairs bath with floor-to-ceiling faux marble and while the grout is properly sealed in this one, they didn’t bother washing off the excess as you can see on the shower floor.

The flippers claimed they remodeled this bathroom (the primary bathroom) but according to previous MLS images, they did not. They painted the walls Primer White, put in a “farmhouse” sconce and called it a day.

The wood floors are beautiful. They were put in in the 90’s by the previous owners, so they are that super orangey mahogany color that is not my favorite—but you can tell they were very high end for the time and they were in SUCH good condition (aside from lots of rug imprints-you can tell they did the floors and then rugs sat for decades on them). The previous owners took such good care of them. The problem with them (aside from that I don’t love the color), is that the flippers didn’t really tape them off right when they painted the entire interior Primer White and so many of the floors are coated in white overspray. We are looking at either having to refinish them, or replace them. Which is a giant bummer because they didn’t need any of that before the flippers ran amok. Sigh again.

The enormous primary bedroom. The original owners really loved round rugs.

The sunroom off the primary bedroom.

A secondary bedroom.

The stairwell.

One of the few places the flipper left some of the original 1940s details. That stair detail and that phone niche are to die for. I’m obsessed.

Overall, this house is soooooo perfect for us—with a little bit of tweaking, it will be amazing. The reality is that the shitty flip job was exactly what enabled us to get it. If it had been renovated properly, we never ever would have been able to afford it. The flippers’ missteps were our gain. 1000%. Furthermore, you can still feel the love that the previous owners had for it. It’s evident in the remaining landscaping (the entire property is surrounded by super tall hedges and trees—we can’t see a single neighbor, and there are very very old roses and bougainvillea that were clearly once very well-kept), and evident in some of the decor choices that were skipped by the flippers. And definitely evident in the elaborately-bricked patio and jacuzzi area (I don’t even want to know what it would cost to do this patio today). Those people lived here for a long time because they loved it. Which is exactly what we intend to do.

The brick patio.

A great shot of the backyard, patio, and jacuzzi.

The back of the house and brick terrace.

So consider these our official “before” photos. I’ll have a post soon that goes into detail about what the flippers did, and also a video tour of the property with us halfway moved in.

Stay tuned as we renovate this house solely for the comfort and well-being of our animals. We’re going to trick it out with some pretty neat pet-friendly features. It’s their house, we just pay the bills. 😂