It's no secret that the boyfriend and I hate being renters. Once you've owned several homes, being forced to rent feels like being kicked several steps down the evolutionary ladder. But now that there's the slightest glimmer of hope that our prospects are improving, we did what any delusional person would do... we started looking at homes to buy.
One of the passions the boyfriend and I share is anything featuring mid-century modern design, particularly residential architecture. Our house in LA was a lesser Lloyd Wright, all walls of glass and cantilevered decks. It was also a money pit, a fact that is slowly getting lost to to the shifting sands of time. Which is why we can so blithely go looking for new fixer-upper challenges.
On Tuesday I received an e-mail from the boyfriend with a magical subject line... "An Eichler!"
Joseph Eichler was a homebuilder who specialized in building tracts of elegant mid-century modern homes during the 50's and early 60's. He built them all over the place, but the vast majority of them are in Northern California. There are, however, three tracts not far from here in the city of Orange. And one of those homes was for sale. We decided to go check it out once the boyfriend came home from work.
The boyfriend has a distain for maps, no sense of direction and a short fuse, usually not a good combination. He did, however, have a vague sense of where the houses were which proved to be not enough, and after driving around for an hour on an Eichler snipe hunt with no success, we were about to throw up our hands and head home. Luckily, my new best friend Siri, on my iPhone, was able to provide us with just enough additional information to lead us to Nirvana.
And Nirvana it was, a tract of over 100 Eichler homes, most lovingly restored to mid-century glory. It's more than a little ironic that homes that were initially designed to be an inexpensive alternative to the masses now take hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovations to get them back to how they looked when they sold for $12,000. We quickly found the house listed for sale and it was a beauty. I'm assuming it was being sold by the estate of the original owners because the house was in absolutely pristine, mint condition. We peered through the original aluminum casement windows at the glass enclosed atrium, the linoleum floors, the state-of-the-art, turquoise kitchen appliances, the original globe lights hanging in the eaves... it was heaven.
And at nearly $600,000, it was way out of our league.
We heaved a sigh of resignation and went home.
And then yesterday came another email... "More Eichlers!!!!"
The boyfriend had discovered another cache of "lesser known" Eichlers and it happened to be smack dab in my hometown (how did I not know of this?). And one of those was for sale for only $285K!
Last night, off we went to check it out.
Well, there's a reason they're "lesser known".
First of all, the tract is in what was known even in my youth as "The Bad Part of Town". As we slowly cruised the neighborhood, clots of shifty looking characters milled about and it suddenly occurred to me that this isn't the type of neighborhood you slowly cruise around. Because it really was "The 'Hood". Which is why I didn't know about... we were always afraid to venture into this part of town. All of the houses, even the less molested ones, sported burglar bars and heavy security gates. In our brief tour we passed four squad cars in various stages of arresting people.
If only they had been the Design Police, because then everyone in the neighborhood would be under arrest. What these people had done to their poor little Eichlers was beyond belief. Who knew you could do so much damage with so little stucco and fake brick. Home Depot should be charged as an accessory... to murder.
Crimes against humanity, I say.
There were only a handful that were still salvageable, and then there, in the wilderness, was one house that had obviously been meticulously restored by some intrepid pioneers, probably some gays hoping to be the tip of the spear in a neighborhood gentrification. Well, good luck with that. This neighborhood has been a cesspool for over 40 years and no amount of sage green paint and tasteful landscaping was going to change that. I don't really see the point of buying a home in a neighborhood you might one day feel safe in. In twenty years. Maybe.
So the dream is deferred. As I sit here working in our little fake Spanish rental, I'll throw on some Sinatra and pretend. One day...
