Home Sweet (Rental) Home

Recently, in a somewhat whirl-wind, spur-of-the-moment, life changing moment (no: I'm not pregnant) Boyd and I and my parents bought a house in the Santa Cruz mountains! We closed the deal on December 31st and tomorrow (just one month later) I am meeting with the future tenant to sign the rental lease. It's sort of amazing that it happened so quickly, and suddenly...I am a landlady!

Aren't you excited to see what the house looks like? Well, first, here is a map of the location:

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Dad has been working diligently, searching for the perfect deal on a house during the downturn in the market - and the pay-off was finding this place. From downtown Santa Cruz it's a 20 minute drive through the redwoods and along the Lompico Creek. The house is out of the hubbub of Santa Cruz and the surroundings are

peaceful and charming. It was bank-owned and they wanted to get it off their books before 2010, which was why the closing process happened so quickly.

We totally lucked out because although we had to do some fix-up work, in general the house is in excellent condition! I took before and after pics but the difference isn't all that stunning. Anyway, here is Boyd and my uncle Jeff putting in a basement floor. The house is only 540 square feet and so the nice basement they put in is perfect for extra storage, art studio, or whatever.

Boyd and Dad also fixed the septic system, while Mom and I did all the inside work - including painting, curtains, cleaning and reinstalling the shower door. We even put in a light switch for the outside porch light! I was pretty impressed with myself for doing that!

One of the highlights of the house is the deck. We estimate that the deck doubles the square footage of the house. It's huge and wraps all the way around the house, looking out into the redwood trees. Isn't that a gorgeous view? There's something special about a tree growing through the deck.

To show off the house a bit more you can click to start the Vuvox slideshow collage with pictures from the finished house.

After a few weeks of working nonstop on the house we were finally ready to post it to Craig's list to advertise for a renter. It turns out we didn't need to worry about renting it! We had tons of people interested and over the weekend Boyd and I hosted an open house to meet potential applicants. It sure was interesting to see the huge range of folks coming to check out the house. We had everyone from pot-smoking hippies, parents trying to get their daughter moved out of their house, college students, artists, and Army vets. What an adventure!

People kept saying how cute they thought it was - I tend to agree! What do you think?