Hi Again!

It's been awhile, but we have been busy with the renovation and our primary business - school portraits. 

In the last post we said we would give you a little background on why we chose the condo we ended up buying.  To begin with, we searched for several months in Venice, Marina del Rey, and Santa Monica.  However, we had a check list for the "perfect property" and experienced difficulty in fulfilling that wish list in those areas within our price range.

Our Shopping Checklist:

1. Area.  We wanted something on the Westside of LA, preferably near the beach.  Our reasons for the location choice was (a) We live in and know the area (b) Generally, beach communities hold their values and increase more quickly then surrounding areas (c) we like the beach & Westside lifestyle, and it is easier to create a home for a demographic you understand.  We were happy to discover Playa Del Rey, a somewhat undiscovered little, beach community that has just the vibe we wanted.  The community itself is experiencing growth.  Prices are going up and trendy, new eateries are moving in bringing people from surrounding areas and making Playa del Rey a little less "undiscovered"    This upward movement is great for the value of our project as prices are increasing at the same time we are adding value and desirability to our unit. 

2. Price.  Unfortunately, price had a huge part in our decision.  If we had more funds available we probably could have gotten a project with more upside potential. Especially for  a first time flip, we wanted to limit our cost basis.  http://www.zillow.com/homes/Playa-Del-Ray-Los-Angeles-CA_rb/

3. Condition.  We were looking for a condo in original condition, but fairly clean.  Our goal with this project was a simple cosmetic flip.  We were hoping to be out of the project fairly quickly.  More about the "fairly quickly" part in an upcoming blog - we are behind on our posts, so we know that we did not finish quickly in any way!


The original kitchen, though it is a galley kitchen, is wider than most galley kitchens. It has a great, large window providing lots of natural light. At the other end is a non-load bearing wall allowing for the possibility of an open concept. Though the cabinets were in good condition they needed to be removed in order to reconfigure the layout, open and enlarge the kitchen - which we felt was critical. The walls and ceiling surfaces appeared to be in good condition. 

 

This is the original living room, as you can see the walls were in good repair.  Most importantly, the acoustic ceilings, that were popular during the mid-century era, had been scraped and the ceilings resurfaced.  For us, the ceiling condition was a big plus because "popcorn" ceilings often contain asbestos, which must be removed by someone trained in asbestos abatement.  Obviously, asbestos abatement is a costly and time consuming endeavor that we were happy not to have to deal with.

4.  Appealing Floor plan.  Since we were looking at condos our ability to make structural changes would be limited to non-load bearing walls. Originally, we intended to paint, replace flooring and update finishes.  However, as you will come to see, we have a hard time limiting our vision and found quite an extensive amount of the floor plan we could reconfigure.  This has certainly not helped with our budget or timeline!  

 

This is the floor plan that was posted on the original MLS listing http://www.themls.com/login.cfm   Many aspects of this floor plan were instantly appealing to us.  First, all of the rooms are generously sized and there are 2 bedrooms plus a den. We knew immediately that we would create a third bedroom out of the den.  Adding a third bedroom would instantly increase value.  As you can see,  the floor plan here has the den (middle "bedroom")listed as a "bedroom" but it is not actually a bedroom without a closet.  We saw plenty of options for adding a closet.  We will discuss some of those options and our ultimate choice in a later post.  Also, notice the large bathroom area in the bedroom on the left side of the floor plan.  You can see it has double sinks, a shower, and a large storage closet.  We were happy with the square footage of this space, but did not care for the layout.  We are not big fans of the "shower/toilet room" or the open concept sink/dressing area but we did see potential for a generous and luxurious master bath. The living room is large and the windows on the long wall provide ample natural light and a great open, airy feeling.

 

 

The dressing area of the master bedroom is, although awkwardly configured, spacious.  The size was appealing because many older condos have small, functional bathrooms.  Unlike a single family home, a condo doesn't allow for extensive renovation of bathrooms due to interconnected plumbing and limited access to pipes.  Actually, the limitations were even greater then we had anticipated.  This created some frustration and  disappointment because we originally wanted to convert the 1/2 bath into a 3/4 bath, but more about that in an upcoming post!  

 

Here are 2 more photos showing the potential of the kitchen.  As you can see in the second photo there is a set of sliders leading to the sunroom that could be removed, opening the kitchen to the adjacent area.  The top image shows a doorway separating the kitchen from the dining room.  Our vision was that by removing the slider and the door wall between the kitchen and dining room we could easily give a more open feel to the closed off galley kitchen.  Continue reading our blog because in an upcoming post we will discuss how, with these changes, plus a little more demo, we were able to create an extra large, open concept kitchen and increase the size of the already large living room!

The 2 photos above show the sunroom.  The sunroom has an inviting wall of windows and is accessible to all the public areas of the condo via floor to ceiling sliders. The sunroom was very bright and airy and provided a nice extra room and additional square footage.  We liked the vibe of this room but found a few things problematic (1) the den, which we hoped to convert to a 3rd bedroom, had a glass slider, something that was nice and gave an open airy feeling to the room as a den, but as a 3rd bedroom we did not like the see-through access to a shared space (2) the wall of sliders looking past the sunroom to the exterior windows made the living room an interior space with no exterior windows.  We will discuss our thoughts and the options we investigated regarding this room in a future post. 

 

 

Check back often (we will be better about updates - we promise!) to see how we are taking this already great, mid-century condo  and turning it into a modern, efficient home with a retro vibe.  In upcoming posts we will get into the specifics of our floor plan modifications, the challenges, compromises and happy accidents we encountered as we put or vision to paper and made plans to convert this awesome, but  somewhat awkward, extra large condo into an amazing space!