I love L.A....but not enough to stay

OK, I love L.A. I love the Lakers, In-n-Out Burger, Tommy's and Fatburger, PCH, Mario's fabulous Mexican pizzas, the stupidly-renamed Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Disneyland, UCLA, playing volleyball in Manhattan Beach after coming home from work, and the incomparable weather. I love the car culture (even with the insane traffic that it generates), my friends and family and so many other things about the damn place that I thought I'd never bail.

Then I moved to the Bay Area. However, my natural prejudice against No Cal meant that as wonderful a place as it was, I could never really love it the way I do So Cal. Still, it was California, and no way would I leave California. I wanted to stay so bad that I even thought about living in Sacramento.

But eventually I got married, relocated to Chicago and started a family. And now I couldn't think of raising a family anywhere else. Great town, great people, but they all seem to be asking, "Why did you leave?" Well, multiple reasons for departure, but this is the biggie:

stupidity

House prices in California are not just high, they are stupid high. The condo two doors down from the condo I grew up in Seagate just listed for $899,000-maybe 1800 square feet and not even on the deep water. 3-bedroom suburban bland homes for $750,000? I'm pretty sure not everybody I know makes $150,000 per year, so God help them when interest rates rise or that short interest-rate lock expires.

Here in Chicago, $899,000 buys you a mansion. $400,000 buys you a nice house with a good-size yard, easy access to the Metra to take you downtown. My friends back home are certain that I'm quite the fool having left California-but there's no way that I would willingly deal with a two-hour commute, never own a home in a desirable area, and never see my family except on weekends. Adios, cabrones.

Casa de Dallas

BTE (Before Tree Execution)

This is the listing that caught my eye when the First Mate and I were casting around the Chicago metropolitan area looking for a house. The house reminded me vaguely of California homes that I love-tile roof, Mediterranean feel-so I was sold almost immediately. Unfortunately, the previous homeowners left a couple of firs standing in front of the house and they overpowered it, even though one was either dead or nearly so. The firs dripped resin all over the front of the house, creating darkening effects not dissimilar to Dickensian England. They also permitted climbing ivy, which was only a small area in the front of the house but which covered the entire north side. Ivy is pretty, but it can damage tuckpointing and harbors birds (cool) and bugs (emphatically NOT cool, per the First Mate), so we had to pull the stuff off.

The interior of the house is in generally good shape but extremely poor taste (for examples, see above.) The exterior of the house is fine, but the landscaping is awful. It's hard for me to understand what motivated the previous owners to paint the railings white and to plant yew bushes flanking the steps to the house. Since we're "marooned" here for the next 20 years or so, we have plenty of time to fix the flaws.

Bathroom blahs

Here's a shot of the master bathroom. It's very small and does not have a tub, only a shower. While the bathroom itself is in decent shape, the tiling is pink. I have no quarrels with the color pink in general, but I certainly don't want it as the main color in my bathroom. So, my hope is that later this year I will be able to do a major bathroom upgrade by taking out the shower and linen closet adjoining it, installing a bathtub/shower so the First Mate can relax from time to time, and removing all that ridiculous pink tile. There has to be something out there that doesn't remind me of Pepto-Bismol.

The really sad part is that the bathroom on the ground floor, an otherwise fine place to do one's business, has white subway tiling that is bordered with pink tiles, and some knucklehead thought it would be a nice touch to match the pink tile with a hot pink sink console.

WTF?!?!?!

Post Tree Execution

This is the current exterior of the house. We had to have some roof work done recently. The leaves are off the trees and still scattered around the ground since I was too cheap/naive to retain a lawn service, and you can see the firs and ivy have been removed. We're not too sure about the front landscaping, but the white railing, white trim and yew bushes are all goners. The front of the house also has lunette areas above the windows which we hope to fill.

I grew up in a Huntington Beach townhouse-I had no friggin' idea that trees had so many leaves and that I would go through 60+ bags and still not finish the job.

Shaggy Neapolitan vomit

The interior of the house wher we bought it was in generally poor taste, hopefully the result of Ray Charles being a prior owner. Regrettably, this photo depicts the remnants of the carpet that once decorated the First Mate's workspace on the second floor. Not only was the carpet God-awful, the wallpaper was a sort of shiny floral print that looked as if it might have been salvaged from the ruin of a fine bordello. The net effect was indescribable.

Kitchen Follies

This shot is a partial view of our kitchen. Witness the appalling ivy-style wallpaper near the top of the picture. Ponder the cheap floor tiling with the constantly cracking grout work. Thrill to the chipped Formica counters and outdated cabinetry. Yes, our kitchen is a festival of poor footing and visual horror.

It's hard to believe that the kitchen was worse when we moved in, but it was. The appliances were all survivors of the '70 green-appliances-are-cool trend and there was no microwave.

We hope to renovate the kitchen this year. We're hoping to install a hardwood floor, add new countertops, cabinets and a sink, remove the wallpaper and repaint, do some plumbing repairs and add a garbage disposal.