Hawaii
What can I say, I love Hawaii. One of the most beautiful spots in the world. And, we stayed in a set of Condo's in Wailea on Maui. Truly beautiful. My granddaughter just loved the surf while my grandson spent hours in the pool. It was marvelous.
We did have one teensy mess up on the trip. My son and family arrived at SFO and I had cleared security and was waiting for them at their incoming gate. As we grabbed a quick breakfast snack, I asked what kind of car they had rented. Casey and Chris both looked at me with that "What?" expression on their face. Seems like we all assumed the other was renting the car. NOT!
Fear not, gentle reader. With all my lifetime travels, I have an app on my iPhone. Before the coffee was consumed, I had a reservation confirmed for a sedan that could handle the five of us. And, is their practice, when we got to the rental car lot, they had upgraded me to a sport ute about the size of the state of Texas. A very comfortable ride for our travels around Maui.
We swam, toured, swam, walked the beach, snorkled, played in the surf and all the wonderful stuff you do with your grandkids on vacation. It was a treat!
There was a miss, however. I had booked us on a sunset cruise on the 4th of July to watch the fireworks of Lahaina town from the water. The concept is fantastic, the food was good (but not great), the weather was wonderful. I guess, however, we could title this event with "In which we learn that Casey does get seasick on a boat." Ouch!
As a result, Chris and I did Molokini and Casey and the kids took a pass. They had a rough morning at the pool and beach while us guys did the snorkel trip.
All in all it was a marvelous trip!
Click here for more pictures.
America's Cup and the 17th Floor
Upon my return from Hawaii, the semifinals of the Louis Vuitton Challenger Series was in progress. Unfortunately, there were not that many competitors but I did watch Artemis (Sweden) compete with Luna Rossa (Italy) from my studio on the 17th floor. New Zealand and Team USA were out regularly doing practice runs too.
As for the view of the race course from 17, take a look at my pictures from this blog entry. Click here.
Also in the sports world was major league baseball. I had attended the LA-SF game at AT&T park earlier and here is a picture of the Red Sox vs A's in Oakland.
 |
| Boston Red Sox vs the Oakland A's at Oakland. |
Florida and the Cruiser
My friend Laura had decided to finally liquidate the last of her parents estate. This included a 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser. The only thing she could tell me was that it had low mileage. Well, I took a chance, flew to Fort Lauderdale and discovered this Olds had been in storage since 2002 and had 32,000 miles on it. It was a top of the line Cruiser SL including the "woodie" side panels.
AAA took it to the shop on a flatbed truck. The shop owner was doubtful about the status as modern gasoline breaks down fairly quickly and then the resulting acidic solution attacks the working bits of the injectors and fuel system. Well, apparently this car had old gas (or the product StaBil) in it as it fired right up once he put the jumper cables on it! $900 later including a set of tires and it was ready to drive to Minnesota.
When I picked the car up, the shop owner had a great conversation with me.
"I replaced the air cleaner on that car 325 miles ago so I didn't put a new one on it."
Made sense to me but then he added, "That was 12 years ago."
Ah!
"All the hoses and clamps were redone 200 miles ago."
So now I am waiting for the punch line.
"That was 8 years ago. They seem fine and you shouldn't have any problem driving this to Minnesota." Amazingly, he was right! He also said they drove the car around for a day to see if the tires would lose their flat spot for having sat in one place for 8 years or so. They did not so he put new ones on the car.
Laura had one more thing that I needed to do before I could leave. We searched for hours and finally found it in a pawn shop. A yellow surfboard to clamp on the top of the car for its trip to Minnesota! And, the surfboard is still clamped there.
I made the trip from Florida to Minnesota in good time. My cousin, Mary Jo, had arranged a dinner in St Paul with my son and his family, her family, and they graciously included Stephanie. Well, Stephanie had not met Chris and Casey so I thought it best that I be there for their first meeting. After dinner, the kids played for an hour on and around the Cruiser. It was cool if your age was still in single digits!
Needless to say, its fun to pull into a parking lot and watch the reaction to people who see a woodie with Florida plates and a surfboard on the roof!
Click here for more pictures.
Remodel in St Paul
We spent some time negotiating the price of the remodel. We basically deleted some fancy items that we just didn't expect to cost that much. With all the deletes, we got the estimate down to our budget number. It was about a 20% reduction from the original quote. Not bad, not bad at all.
Then the demolition started quickly. And, we were lucky that the walls we had removed were not bearing walls so there was no added cost to the remodel to build in weight bearing structures to replace the walls. It was great to see all the progress that was made right away as a result of removing sheetrock, carpeting, flooring, appliances, the old kitchen sink, etc., etc.
Of course, the first gotcha was the electrician. He took one look at what had been hidden behind the walls of an early 70's built condo building and pronounced we needed to rerun the electrical, all of it...and it was not free. Nor is it done in zero time either. So our first change order and first delay.
But still we were optimistic. After all, a week or two on electrical and we'd still be finished before Stephanie retired in mid-September.
 |
| This was the initial demolition in July before the electrician had a chance to look at the wiring. |
Click for more July demolition pictures here.
New Los Gatos Home
There were two complexes in Los Gatos that we had hoped to buy into with Stephanie moving to California. Unfortunately, prices skyrocketed between my putting the Golf Links home on the market (May 2012) and the closing in June of 2013. It didn't quite take us out of all the properties, but it was close.
The other problem in July is that properties hit the market and were gobbled up in less than a few days. In some cases, in a few hours. With Stephanie still living in Minnesota, it made decision making a bit 'dicey.'
One single story, three bedroom unit came on the market in one of the two preferred complexes! Yeah! It was perfect for layout, location, greenery, etc. In fact, it was probably only a few hundred feet from my Golf Links home as it was on the back side of the block and down a dozen doors or so. But, it had problems. I had my contractor look at it, and he estimated a rather substantial number just for the remedial work. In fact, the remedial work was more expensive than what I had just agreed to spend in St Paul for the remodel. So we passed. (It eventually sold for almost $50,000 over asking price in spite of the remedial problems. Too much money in Silicon Valley, eh?)
The next unit came up in our other choice complex. This was perfect. It had a front and back courtyard and patio so Stephanie can work her green thumb magic to her heart's content. It is on one level which us aging boomers need to be aware of for knee issues. Three bedroom, two car garage in what is termed a cluster home configuration. What that means is that the living space does not share common walls, only the garages. We also share the driveway with five other neighbors. Of course, we do share courtyard and patio fences. Our front patio opens on to the green belt of the complex so we can easily take Robbie out for his walks.
One of the reasons the place is perfect is that the kitchen was totally out of date. My realtor, Joel Newman, asked me if I really wanted to buy a place with an out of date kitchen like this one. My response? "Joel, this is perfect! I have no hesitancy or concerns about immediately demolishing the kitchen. Stephanie and I can remodel it to our hearts' desire!"
Now, not to say there was pressure, but I offered to fly Stephanie to view the house the first day it was to be shown. Her response, quite lovely in one way but absolutely dangerous in another, was "I trust you, if you like it, it will be fine."
Gulp.
So with that endorsement, we moved fast in a fast moving market!
This is Silicon Valley real estate.
- The listing went on MLS on Friday night with the statement that the house could not be shown until the open house on Sunday. Fortunately, I had been looking at open houses for a year and knew the townhouse property as three units had sold during the prior 12 months.
- I arrived at the open house as it opened on Sunday.
- Joel arrived a few minutes later.
- We left for Joel's office to go write an offer.
- Joel returned to the open house 30 minutes before it was to end with our signed offer.
- Late Monday afternoon, the owner and his realtor looked at the submitted offers. NOTE: In 24 hours the place had collected multiple offers.
- Early Monday evening, Joel called to confirm our offer was accepted. The place was ours.
We almost but not quite got into a bidding war--there was another buyer who was demanding a bidding contest because they really wanted the property. Fortunately for me, the seller decided that my offer was good enough and stopped at that point. Whew! The seller was relocating to the East coast so we did a quick close so he could buy his new East coast property and then I did a rent back so he could take his time moving out for his cross country trek.
Pictures of the new Los Gatos home as we bought it.
And that, Dear Reader, is what I call a "Quiet Month."
Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment