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 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.

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....