Buying A House In South LA, Part 3, The Renovation

Now that we've engaged the contractor, it's time to start work on the South LA house.  My husband used to practice architecture, so he knows quite a bit about structures, code compliance, building timeline, etc. and was able to talk to the contractor about these issues.  However, he has a full time job as a Hollywood storyboard artist, so he does not have the time to handle the daily nitty gritty tasks of dealing with the contractor, purchasing last minute items, inspecting the progress of work, or paying the contractor incremental payments. These tasks fell on me, and since I hadn't handled these kinds of details before, the idea of taking on these responsibilities was a bit daunting. Out of caution as well as a desire to learn about these aspects of home remodeling, I went to the job site on a daily basis to check on the work that was being done.

I talked to the contractor and his sub contractors, went to Home Depot often to select stucco, paint colors, mulch, etc. and gave a yay or nay on additional problems and work that came up.  We settled on light grey walls and white trims for the interior, and a blue and white treatment for the outside. I was aiming for a tasteful cadet blue for the exterior, but the color turned out to be a bit brighter than I would have liked, but it was still nice. We originally selected brick color paint for the chimney and patio but it came out so garishly red that even Carmen the contractor disapproved.  We settled with a neutral grey and painted over the unfortunate red.  The lesson here is that I am not the best with colors.  The paint chips I select from Home Depot don't always look right together when painted in large swaths on a house.

As for the garage, rather than tearing it down and rebuilding it from the ground up requiring the tedious process of getting city approval, the contractor added some beams to shore up the structure, then stuccoed the exterior facade to cover up the dilapidated wood underneath.  After the new paint job and patch work, I realized that I really liked the remodeled house.  It wouldn't be a bad place to live in for a small family or a young couple.  However, there were constant last minute items such as realizing the shower head was not working, the toilet was a bit wobbly, more window panes were broken that had to be fixed before we can say everything was done.


One thing no one anticipated was the persimmon tree beginning to ripen its fruits around the same time. The gigantic orange persimmons were a beautiful sight to behold, but hundreds of over-ripe persimmons falling and exploding on the ground attracted millions of persistent marauding flies!  I bought a fruit picker like the one to the left from Ace Hardware and climbed the tree repeatedly to pick the fruits.  I must have bagged at least 15 large trash bags of fruits to give away to friends and family or to eat myself. Unfortunately, tons of fruits that splat on the ground had to be trashed.  The fruit picker was a good thing to get because the tree was so large and after you get the low hanging fruits with a ladder, you still needed a fruit picker to get to the fruits in the distant branches.  It took me at least four or five trips to finally get all the fruits off the tree so they don't attract more flies.

We briefly considered having our daughter live there since she goes to college at USC and it would save us about $8000 of housing money per year. (Her apartment shared with four other girls was about $800 per month for ten months).  However, we eventually gave up on the idea for the following reasons:

1. It was still too far from USC for daily commuting.

2. We were concerned about her safety if she lived in the house alone.  A dorm or apartment with roommates seemed safer.

3. If she lived in the South LA house, we were afraid that she'd convince her boyfriend to move in with her, and since we are somewhat old fashioned, we didn't think it proper for a girl of nineteen to move in with a guy when she is so young.

So, the decision was made.  We decided to rent the house out. We decided to hired a real estate management company to handle the lease since we are too amateurish to know how to screen renters, run credit check, etc.  We also decided that rather than be on call to fix anything that may go wrong in the middle of the night, we will pay the management company to deal with the hassle.

In a future blog, I will write about the rental process we went through.

In the mean time, one thing I discovered is that the plump and soft Hachiya type of persimmon (which is the one that I have) is tasty, but cloyingly sweet. Aside from making jam with it, I don't know any good recipes that can utilize all this fruit.  I made cookies with them, but it wasn't great. If anyone out here have suggestions, please let me know!  Oh, I just found a persimmon recipe book on Amazon.  I will give it a try next time I get persimmons.