We are in plan check!!

After nearly two long weeks of going back and forth with the plans to get everything right, I finally dropped them off to the Palm Springs planning department to obtain construction permits ... so we are officially in plan check! The process takes up to ten days (tap tap tap), but that will give me time to meet with more contractors to get bids for the larger components of the project.

Planning the pool and spa

While getting another round of bids to refurbish and move the pool, I've decided to draw the outline to help visualize positioning and size of the final product. Because of where we are adding on to the house, we are forced to move the pool a bit to abide by Palm Springs city codes and be within allowable distance from the house.
So this is the diagram:

Moving the pool 6ft West

Here is the outline of the new pool, showing the added spa on the west side of the lot. Note that the pool equipment will be moved behind the grapefruit tree, out of sight:

This is the West side of the lot, showing the new pool outline with the <large> spa.

Standing on the east side of the yard, in the new master bedroom (bottom left line on the image below shows the line of the new master), we can see where the pool line will be once it is moved 6ft west, leaving a comfortable 10ft between the master bedroom and the edge of the pool:

Linda's new pool once moved over 6ft to the West

Next we need to figure out whether we want to do regular plaster or mini pebble on the pool bottom and whether we do salt water versus traditional chlorinated water... stay tuned.

... tap tap tap

Other than waking up the neighbors at 7 am with the jackhammers so we could complete the new gas line, yesterday was pretty uneventful.

7am destruction of the street to add the new gas lines - great way to make friends with the neighbors.

Otherwise, the plans are still being fine-tuned ...  We're almost there and ready to submit to the building permits office .... almost.  One of the items which is stalling the process is dealing with the logistics of the heating & cooling systems.  Figuring out how to run the ducts efficiently without having to go with a hideous rooftop system has been quite challenging.  Especially considering that we're somewhat limited by the floor plan and architecture, due to the fact that there are some very low ceilings in the original part of the house. Our engineer/technical guru Fred has been more than patient and putting in quite a few extra hours to sort it all out.

To Swamp Cool ... or not

Over dinner with friends last night the topic of swamp coolers (or evaporative coolers) came up. We are hearing different stories here in Palm Springs regarding whether or not it is an efficient way to save energy... and stay cool in the summer months when temperatures can reach 120 degrees.

One main advantage of a swamp cooler vs. air conditioning that I am drawn towards is the fact that you can leave windows open in the summer. Because you are using less energy and circulating a high rate of moisture, you can create a comfortable balance inside the house without being locked in. OR is that not correct?

Image by Nevit (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

On the down side, one of the issues of adding a swamp cooler to the central air system is the addition of yet another big box somewhere on or around the house.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if we build a well insulated, efficient home with new AC systems, the cost to keep cool should be manageable. The possibility of adding solar panels as source of electricity in the years to come might even play well with only focusing on AC units... is that not also a responsible approach?
We have time before making this decision, but this is a topic that is bound to come back.

Patio lounge chairs

Linda is far from being ready for furnishings, but we nonetheless acquired 4 new patio lounge chairs from Asylum for her. Rest assured, they will be put to good use at our current location until then.

bathing suit on, cocktail in hand... ahhh

Sweat Equity, 1st installment

On Tuesday, I delivered the first installment of sweat equity. Yep, dug a ditch for the relocation of the new gas meter -- we're moving it from the inside of the yard to the front of the house. This also allows us to create an unobstructed courtyard between bedrooms 1& 2.

The Ditch!

We were very lucky to have requested the move from the gas company when we did, as our area is due for pipe upgrades and so the company took care of most of the cost for the move. $656 was our part. Not bad. 

Alteration of setback petition was approved!!

... Well, sort of. After tons of back and forth with the Palm Springs Planning Department (wonderful group BTW), we finally were given a maximum allowance for the rear, but nothing for the side. I'll take it!
So now, if you refer to our previous map with available space for building, we can go up to 12 ft from the rear and 10 ft on the side!  Yeah!!!  That means that we can have a room that is 3ft wider ... times about 27ft in length = a nice 81 ft of extra overall square footage.

Linda, meet Jim...

Sometimes life works in weird ways. Our good friends Darius and Alberto came down to Palm Springs to visit their good friends Jim and Charlie who were down here for a month to look at the real estate market. Darius and Alberto had mentioned to us many times in the past how wonderful Jim and Charlie were, and how we had to meet them. Well, the opportunity came up and we finally met here in PS on January 8th!
Our first stop with the whole group was to go visit Linda. Turns out, Jim is an accomplished architect and Darius a design guru, which made this visit to the property quite insightful!  After walking around for close to an hour, explaining my vision, I could see the two of them brimming with ideas. And what ideas they were!
Jim offered to redraw our plans, implementing many of the ideas the two of them came up with on the spot. Things like moving the dining area to the living space, and moving the living space to be the full length of the windows to the yard. The extra room in the breezeway suddenly had a 10' opening into the living room (with a barn door that would allow for an option to close it) to make this master living space spanning 48' with almost all windows facing the yard.
My kitchen layout received many thumbs down, but this turned out to be for the best. The second bath, which I hadn't quite figured out what to do with, was going to get partly removed to allow for a 15' kitchen island. Talk about opening the space up!

(click on image to see larger version)
To the right of the new entrance is the dining area, which flows into the open kitchen. Separating the open kitchen with the rest of the great room is a 15' - 16' kitchen island.
The whole front of the great room extends out to the extra room in the breezeway via a large 10' wide barn door.

Goodbye beautiful tree!

We knew we were going to expand and so why waste time and get attached... so here we go:

Let's hope Mother Nature forgives me

It took a day to remove -- the root was the biggest challenge.
Next up is the hideous shed which seemed to have been built as a bomb shelter!

Shed on the left is built into the property wall. Image on the right shows it GONE!

So now we're at this:

New current property map (as of January 15th, 2011), without the (illegal) shed and large palm tree. 

The plans: a new master suite, an updated kitchen and a renewed breezeway

We know we want to expand Linda out to add a master, but we're now waiting to hear back from city planning to know how much we can expand. Also, we know we have to completely redo the kitchen and small bath, as well as redo the breezeway (see image). There is a lot of work, but a lot of potential. These are the plans we've come up with as of January 4th.

Expansion of the Master would be 20' the rear (South) and 9'9" to the left (East) of the property.
The yellow dotted line is the current exterior wall of the house.
We would with this expansion make the second bedroom larger.

The kitchen above left would fit right into the existing old kitchen pocket, except of an opening at the bottom left, creating an open island onto the 'GREAT ROM" living space. The existing bath with shower on the right of the kitchen would remain as is to eliminate cost.
The Breezeway, on the right of bath and Dining room, has been turned into an extra room and a laundry room. It is set-back about four feet as the electric panel is on the side of the original house (see red box).

We've come up with the above designs with in mind trying to keep construction costs down. One big change we've planned for is to move the electric panel on the side of the garage, burying all wires underground, and allowing to push back window of room in breezeway to line up with the rest of the living/dining windows (see blue arrow above).
By the way, breezeways are very common in mid-century architecture found here in Palm Springs the breezeway was usually between the house and the carport/garage. You can see many photos here, where many have been converted to driveways or filled in as it has on our property to become an extra room in the house.

To add or not to add....

Once we started thinking about what to do with the remodel, or the revival, we really took into considerations two things:
1. Budgets - how far can we go with our available budget, and how can we get the most bang for the buck without compromising the quality of the build and the integrity of the era of the house.
2. Land - how much can we expand, and how will that affect the overall property experience ... and long term value.


So with some expert help, we started learning about laws. Ugh... yes, we first had to figure out what size, height, shape and style we could build. These were the results of our findings: 
The lot coverage in our neighborhood only allows for a maximum of 30% coverage. Meaning that current house + garage + addition could not be more than 3000 Sq Ft (our lot is 10,054 Sq Ft). Currently the house is 1440 Sq Ft and the garage about 588 Sq Ft for a total of 2028 Sq Ft.  Meaning that we can add close to 800 Sq Ft.
In terms of the height, we found out that it is near impossible to build up in Palm Springs.  Which is fine because we're keeping our mid-century long and low... the way it was meant to be. 
One thing we did find out was about setbacks and how we needed to stay away by 25 ft from the street in the front of the property, 10 ft from the property line on the side and 15 ft from the rear property line. 

Linda (as of January 14th 2011, with current setback dimensions

The obvious solution is to add to the rear left of the property, extending as far back and to the side to accommodate for more room. We didn't want to add behind the garage, even though that is where we have the most room, as we believe that living in Palms Springs really means you have to enjoy the outdoors. We're thinking that the space from the pool to the grapefruit tree will offer a great opportunity to create a nice outdoor space using some creative landscaping. But we're far away from this.... check back in a year or so.
So, we did some drawings to see what we could do, and this is what we thought might fit best with the lot and current property.. of course that would entail getting rid of a large palm tree, a (illegally built) brick shed and move the pool. Move the pool?!?!

Mid January 2011 ideas for expanding Linda

Well, we did like this idea. The one issue we had was that we were limited on both the left and rear side with the setback limits (10ft / 15ft). But maybe there was a workaround?
So after a bit of research and visiting the Palm Springs Planning Department, I found out that we could do a request for setback alterations, granted we had some valuable reasons (or hardship) for needing more space. So we filled out the application... let's see what happens!

So, we moved....

After more than 30 days of back and forth with the banks to negotiate on an 'appropriate' purchase price, we ceded and were proud home owners. Well not proud yet. By September, seeing that Jen's business is highly mobile, mine is... well, let's say mine is too, we cracked and decided to move. We said our 'temporary' goodbyes, packed up and left our favorite city in the world, San Francisco....

...to settle in the middle of the desert ... for a year or so.

The move happened before the end of 2010... and we love it! The next 12-18 months will be dedicated to looking for work and giving Linda a makeover. We will make her fabulous once again.

The not so fabulous reality of Linda...

With the good comes the bad and by that I mean baaadddd. Our first impression when we visited Linda with the real-estate agent was the following. Walking through the front door gave us this gorgeous view:

Linda circa 2010 (July more precisely) - from the entrance

By turning our heads to the right, we were able to see the ... 'kitchen':

The kitchen is between the first wall and the second. Nice stainless steel and granite!

But then it got better, between the two bedrooms (see map of property in case you're lost) there was a full bath, in perfect condition... for 1950.

Brand New bathroom with swankin' wall paper at the entrance. We'll see about saving that fabulous pattern.

Hopes were still high by that point... until we stepped out into the 'yard':

Linda's back-side. (nothing a few million $$$ can't fix!)

Of course, after this first walk-through of the property, i was sold! I had a vision. I could see the amazing potential! I knew right away that this was the right property. I think I had a heat stroke.
Jen was horrified and probably passed out somewhere hoping I was joking about this potential purchase. (guess again)

Linda the Fabulous

Well, we did it. We purchased an old, down to the studs, mid-century house in Palm Springs. I'm not sure how the decision came about, whether it was an educated and researched purchased or a love at first sight. But it's done and there is no going back!
Linda sits on a quaint little street in a great Palm Springs neighborhood. She faces North but has a fabulous backyard facing South. Her frontal lines are clean and simple.

Linda in a full frontal position (yes, she has palm trees!)

View from the top, it is obvious that the property has been left unattended for a couple of years. The pool is empty and cracked, the landscaping looks more like a desert/dump than anything. The only living thing on the property, other than the palm trees, is a grapefruit tree which still produces amazing fruit.

Linda view from above (hanging off a palm tree!)

The floor plan of the house is simple. You walk into the main room (dining/living) and have the two bedrooms on the left. What is labeled as bedroom #3 below is actually where the breezeway (examples here) once was. That section of the house was built illegally and will have to be completely redone.  The house is only 1440sf on a 10,000sf lot. 

Linda - the layout of the property

Well, that's Linda.

Now, how do we begin? Where do we begin? We live 480 miles away... what to do....