At ten we bundled over to Bea Bea's, a great breakfast place in Burbank. We met friends from Evan's company who have been out here for a couple weeks already and had a grand time. Lots of great advice and gossip to boot.
We checked out the apartment complex where they are staying for a bit, and were pleased that they actually have 3-bedrooms that we can almost afford! The apartments are a bit grim (I thought that my white-walls-tan-carpet-electric-stove days were over, sigh) but Evan can walk to work and the schools are great.
Avalon at Media Center
We hit one of their gigantic Targets to stock up on sunglasses and water bottles, and then got picked of by our first Realtor. Sadly, Studio City and its fantastic school is probably out of our reach. No houses for under 600k, which is waaaay about our ceiling. We got a great tour of Burbank and stopped at
Magnolia Park Charmer
Oh this house was sweet. Tons of original details, the original 1937 stove and working sconces, and a cool back porch including the original outdoor fireplace. Unfortunately, it only had two bedrooms. The pitch in the attic made it possible to add a room upstairs, but I'm too tired to take on another old house right now. But the back yard was surrounded by 90-year-old rosebushes, fig, orange, tangerine, lemon and avocado trees. I think we will return to this neighborhood.
Next up:
Let's Cover It All in Marble Manor
This would have been a perfectly lovely Spanish bungelow, except the previous owners obviously had a Uncle Manny that wanted to be a marble guy. Every floor and countertop and fireplace was covered by marble squares, and very poorly. Uncle Manny then decided to take over the backyard with his masonry hobby, because the backyard was covered with bricks and mortar in no discernible pattern. There were paths and platforms leading nowhere. Top that off with a two-car garage filled with a recently ripped-out illegal bathroom and a really strange metal gate to the back alley with cartoon character silos? WEIRD.
Next up was a four-bedroom in the Burbank Hills.
Hey, what's that extra mailbox for?
More marble flooring, but properly installed, at least. A decent enough kitchen. The whole place had ridiculous paint colors (bright blue in the room, lime green in the closet) and lots of awful faux finishes. It has a jacuzzi tub but literally installed in the floor, so you had to clamber down into it. It was like a mikvah tub in the middle of ugly marble. And lo and behold! The backyard had been turned into a full-on one-bedroom apartment, which was better finished than the actual house. It had obviously been rented out but it was illegal, and although we loved the thought of having a one-bedroom apartment for all our east-coast family and friends, the realtor couldn't give us a real answer about it. Well, you can go ask for the permits downtown, and then renegotiate. But then the town might come and tell you to bring it to code, or to tear it down.
Uh, no thanks. They can stay at the Marriott down the street.
More tomorrow. We are hitting the sack.
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