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.

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)