One day, my husband talked me into looking at a house in a small town about halfway between San Francisco and Palo Alto. I wasn’t interested at all in the town, which had a reputation for, well, snootiness. But there happened to be a home there in our price range (well, almost in our price range). It had already been on the market for three weeks, which is a long time to be on the market in the Bay Area. We saw the house the weekend before Thanksgiving. It was bleak and rainy, and when we arrived we realized that the driveway was so steep, we’d have to park at the top. I didn’t even get out of the car. I was certain I had no interest in this house, which was over budget and kind of scary. My husband took a look. He liked it, but said it had some issues. He made me promise to come back and look if the price was reduced.
Long story short, the price was reduced that week, and we went to see the house on Thanksgiving weekend. I walked down the steep driveway and into the house. It was completely empty, without a stitch of furniture. It was freezing. The floor of the entryway was a hideous red perma-brick. The lighting fixtures were straight out of 1972. But all of that was beside the point. Because there, in front of my eyes, was an amazing view. From the road, the house looked like a dull one-story rancher, but once inside, you were faced with a wall of windows looking out onto beautiful green canyon. In the distance was a sliver of the bay.
Wandering the main floor, I saw that every room had huge windows overlooking the canyon. The two upstairs bathrooms were in horrible shape, complete with pink and green tile and carpeting. But we’d seen a lot of horrific bathrooms in our house hunting over the years; and in our price range, we weren’t going to find a house without issues. The kitchen had been recently remodeled and was a big improvement over the tiny kitchen in our city house. The trees flanking the driveway above the house looked like a lush forest compared to the single tree planted in front of our house in the avenues, where every tree required a permit from the city.
Then we went downstairs. The family room downstairs, which shared the footprint of the living room above it, also had walls of windows. Just off the family room was the revelation: the home office. It had a wall of built-in shelves, was generously sized, and yes, there were windows. I make my living as a writer, and have had a variety of home offices over the years. In the city, we’d converted a tiny “bedroom” (although I can’t imagine fitting a bed in there) into my home office, and it had served me well. In our first house in Daly City, we’d converted an unfinished basement into a cozy, very functioning home office. In our first apartment in the Castro, my office had been a closet.
Here was the home office of my dreams: private, spacious, with a whole wall for books and beautiful natural light.
We took a trek down to the back yard. And I do mean trek. The steps down to the yard were in terrible shape, the fence falling apart. The yard was taken up by a big kidney-sized pool. Big minus. My first concern was safety. And although the drought wasn’t upon us yet, I still worried about water usage; the realtor assured us you could cut back on evaporation almost entirely just by keeping the pool covered year round. The siding was falling away from the pool, leaving huge chunks of concrete exposed. The pool was so big it left no room for anything in the yard except a small table. Still, as we stood there, our little son marveling at the canyon stretching down below, I imagined our family spending summer days down here in our private oasis. I could see us here.
Next: The Decision