Part I Installment 4
NOT A STRAIGHT WALL IN THE PLACE
I confess I’m the sort of person who thinks I’m a little smarter than the next guy. You’ll soon find out how wrong I am, but it does help explain why things turned out as they have. Other couples viewing 707 Cragmont were making quiet asides to each other along the lines of: “Wow, they want $795,000 for this dump? They should run a bulldozer through it!” I, on the other hand, was convinced that being an architect gave me the secret power to see potential no one else could see. Over the years, I’d worked on a number of projects requiring foundation replacements—sometimes due to settlement of the original foundation, other times to allow for a second floor addition—and I wasn’t at all afraid of such major-league structural problems. As I walked among those prospective buyers, however, I was increasingly glad that they were afraid.
Upstairs we found the usual three bedrooms and a bath. The two back bedrooms had little to recommend them except a pleasant view of the garden. The large front bedroom, on the other hand, had a lovely vista of San Francisco Bay—lacking, alas, the coveted Golden Gate Bridge view, but with a clear runner-up view of Angel Island. There was also a walk-in closet large enough to accommodate an eventual master bathroom. The more I saw of this lopsided old joint, the more I liked. The architect cogwheels began spinning—in fact, I had already started strategizing on how to dissuade other buyers. When I walked into the upstairs bathroom—uh-huh, yet another pair of wracked windows—I made a point of exclaiming a bit too loudly, “Wow, there’s not a straight wall in this place, is there?”
In truth, I considered that old bathroom a miracle of Roaring Twenties survival: it still boasted its stridently-colored lavender, white and black ceramic tile wainscot, as well as its original enameled cast-iron pedestal sink, vintage American Standard toilet, and cast iron corner tub. I was transported back to the circa-1930 family home of my childhood pal Rich Canonica, whose bathroom was spectacularly done up in pink, purple, and black tile and graced by a matching pink chinaware pedestal sink.
For obvious reasons, these gleefully gaudy bathrooms seldom survived the onslaughts of modernization, particularly during the ascetic 1960s. Yet here it was, essentially all of a piece, right down to the beveled-glass mirror on the wooden medicine cabinet. Only the lighting fixture had been replaced by a piece of Montgomery Ward-era dreck. Even before I’d seen the gigantic basement, this virtually dead-original bathroom sealed the deal. It was my favorite room in the house—though to show how personal tastes can differ, it’s the same room that Monica Wong, my Hong Kong-born broker, briefly poked her head into before concluding, “Well, there’s nothing in here worth saving.”
If that over-the-top bathroom sealed the deal, the huge daylight basement put me into full-on architect mode. Extending under nearly the entire house, it consisted of four large rooms, one of which served as a one-car garage. Dominating the largest room at the back was an enormous old “octopus” gravity furnace—another original feature—whose snaking tentacles of asbestos-laden ductwork managed to obstruct the adjoining three rooms as well. A few other items occupied haphazard positions in this dark underworld—a dryer over here, a washing machine over there, an ancient cement laundry sink in yet another spot. The space was poorly utilized and the headroom was a tad too low to meet the building code, but if one were going to replace the foundation anyway…
On top of all this, my wife loved the garden.
By the end of this brief walk-through, I’d already mentally sketched out how I’d approach the project. For me, paradoxically, its real “advantage” was the need for all that structural work. In most houses, addressing structural shortcomings might really only yield some peace of mind—at the expense of a huge construction bill. At 707 Cragmont, however, a foundation replacement could accomplish multiple goals: it could remedy the sloping floors and walls, allow the huge basement to be converted into true living space, and also allow for some new additions outside the original footprint. This was exactly the sort of juicy project I’d been looking for—one that would take advantage of what I knew about architecture, as well as what I knew about hands-on construction. More about that later.
None of this would matter, however, unless we were able to buy the place. Accordingly, we asked my broker friend Monica—the decided non-fan of 1920s bathrooms—to submit an offer of $800,000. As was usual in that era’s red-hot seller’s market, the figure was above the asking price of $795,000, though just by a whisker. Per her suggestion, we also included a so-called “love letter” to the seller, in which we did our best to wax poetic about how much we admired and therefore deserved the place (ILLUS: Love Letter). As astonishing as it may seem today, love letters were a common strategy during the real estate bubble of the early Aughts; they were thought to give buyers a slight edge by humanizing their intentions. We pulled out all the stops, telling the sellers how much we looked forward to raising our 7-month-old son in their home, blah, blah, blah.
It worked, but not in the way we expected. The seller’s broker came back with a counteroffer—raising the asking price to $825,000!
Next time: Hell hath no fury like a buyer scorned.
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| The Crookedest House as advertised in the March 2006 issue of San Francisco Bay Area Homes, the self-described "Premier Real Estate Magazine". |
In truth, I considered that old bathroom a miracle of Roaring Twenties survival: it still boasted its stridently-colored lavender, white and black ceramic tile wainscot, as well as its original enameled cast-iron pedestal sink, vintage American Standard toilet, and cast iron corner tub. I was transported back to the circa-1930 family home of my childhood pal Rich Canonica, whose bathroom was spectacularly done up in pink, purple, and black tile and graced by a matching pink chinaware pedestal sink.
For obvious reasons, these gleefully gaudy bathrooms seldom survived the onslaughts of modernization, particularly during the ascetic 1960s. Yet here it was, essentially all of a piece, right down to the beveled-glass mirror on the wooden medicine cabinet. Only the lighting fixture had been replaced by a piece of Montgomery Ward-era dreck. Even before I’d seen the gigantic basement, this virtually dead-original bathroom sealed the deal. It was my favorite room in the house—though to show how personal tastes can differ, it’s the same room that Monica Wong, my Hong Kong-born broker, briefly poked her head into before concluding, “Well, there’s nothing in here worth saving.”
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| Two views of the labyrinthine basement, which rambled under most of the house— and really lit my architect brain on fire. |
On top of all this, my wife loved the garden.
By the end of this brief walk-through, I’d already mentally sketched out how I’d approach the project. For me, paradoxically, its real “advantage” was the need for all that structural work. In most houses, addressing structural shortcomings might really only yield some peace of mind—at the expense of a huge construction bill. At 707 Cragmont, however, a foundation replacement could accomplish multiple goals: it could remedy the sloping floors and walls, allow the huge basement to be converted into true living space, and also allow for some new additions outside the original footprint. This was exactly the sort of juicy project I’d been looking for—one that would take advantage of what I knew about architecture, as well as what I knew about hands-on construction. More about that later.
None of this would matter, however, unless we were able to buy the place. Accordingly, we asked my broker friend Monica—the decided non-fan of 1920s bathrooms—to submit an offer of $800,000. As was usual in that era’s red-hot seller’s market, the figure was above the asking price of $795,000, though just by a whisker. Per her suggestion, we also included a so-called “love letter” to the seller, in which we did our best to wax poetic about how much we admired and therefore deserved the place (ILLUS: Love Letter). As astonishing as it may seem today, love letters were a common strategy during the real estate bubble of the early Aughts; they were thought to give buyers a slight edge by humanizing their intentions. We pulled out all the stops, telling the sellers how much we looked forward to raising our 7-month-old son in their home, blah, blah, blah.
It worked, but not in the way we expected. The seller’s broker came back with a counteroffer—raising the asking price to $825,000!
Next time: Hell hath no fury like a buyer scorned.
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