Lengthy details about the house

Before Erik and I even began looking at apartments in the Bay Area, I made a list. He wanted to move more than I did, and I feared I’d end up in some dreadful low-ceilinged no-natural-light 70s monstrosity in some drab suburb, so this list was my insurance against that. I divided it into needs and wants, and made criteria for both the neighborhood and for the unit itself.

The original list
Needs:
1. pets allowed*
2. thick walls (after all my neighbor gripes in Berkeley, and the total lack of them here, I will never go back to a thin-walled building!!)
3. reasonably safe from earthquakes or floods
4. quiet, small street
5. safe building/neighborhood
6. I can set up my desk by a window with good natural light

Wants (for the neighborhood), organized in descending order of importance:
1. places to walk nearby, either on the street or on trails
2. farmers’ market nearby, preferably more than one
3. Asian food store nearby, preferably more than one, ideally Chinese or Thai, Korean, and Japanese
4. library nearby, preferably more than one
5. yoga nearby, preferably a selection of studios that includes Anusara classes
6. natural-foods store nearby
7. proximity to public transit
8. library literacy program somewhat close by
9. art/craft store somewhat close by
10. decent bookstore(s) somewhat close by
11. falls within the area served by a major university (this pretty much had to mean Berkeley or Stanford)
12. rock climbing gym somewhat close by (we went once in Portland and have wanted to take it up again ever since, but the closest climbing gym to us now is in West LA… which means it might as well be in San Jose for how often we make it across town)

Wants (for the unit), organized in descending order of importance:
1. good air circulation/cross-breezes
2. lots of natural light
3. decent kitchen with enough counter space**
4. good price
5. ample parking, both for us and for guests
6. office space for both of us
7. safe for us to leave windows open at night (so, in an apartment building, probably not on the ground floor)
8. outdoor space for air, growing things, and composting
9. recycling (our building right now doesn’t recycle paper, so every so often we haul a trunkful of paper about a mile to the recycling center)
10. air conditioning, if needed
11. space for guests, like an extra bedroom or a big dining area for parties
12. dishwasher
13. hardwood floors
14. laundry in the unit
15. a convenient space for the litterbox
16. a house, instead of an apartment
17. bathtub big enough for two

How the house measures up
Needs:
1. Yes, pets are allowed, and the deposit is not too bad either.
2. Not sure about wall thickness, but in a house, it doesn’t matter as much.
3. An emphatic no to earthquake safety. We’re right on top of the Hayward Fault, so we pretty much blew this one, even though the house has been seismically retrofitted to make it safer. It’s more like the fulfillment of so many wants sort of cancelled this one out, but you can be certain we’re going to be extremely earthquake-paranoid from now on. As for floods, we are within the inundation zone for several major dams (that means if they break — as could happen in a huge quake — our area is likely to be flooded), but as we’re on a hill I’m not sure this applies to us.
4. Yes, it’s an extremely quiet, small street, and…
5. …yes, it’s a safe building/neighborhood — even more than we’d dared to hope because the street is a little cul-de-sac on a hill. The landlords told us the mayor of San Pablo lives around the corner.
6. Yes, I can set up my desk by a window with good natural light.
Needs total: 5 out of 6, with the one unfulfilled being a major one

Wants (for the neighborhood), organized in descending order of importance:
1. Yes, there are places to walk nearby. On the streets, not so much (the hill neighborhood doesn’t have sidewalks, though it also doesn’t get much traffic), but Alvarado and Wildcat Canyon parks are very close by, and from there we can walk all the way to Tilden in Berkeley if we so choose!
2. Yes, there are farmers’ markets nearby, though they’re all in neighboring cities like El Cerrito.
3. Yes, there is a Ranch 99 in El Cerrito. Not sure about Korean or Japanese markets, but we can go back to the South Bay for those if we need to.
4. Yes, there are at least two libraries nearby: one in San Pablo and one in El Sobrante. The El Sobrante one is so close it might as well be in San Pablo.
5. Yes, there is abundant yoga nearby in Berkeley (15 minutes away), as well as dance and Pilates. Berkeley is probably the best city in the Bay Area for yoga and dance, except for maybe San Francisco. There is an exclusively Anusara studio in Berkeley, and in addition, there are so many other kinds of yoga practiced in the area that there were even some I knew nothing about (Sivananda! “Japanese yoga”?!).
6. Yes, but the nearest natural-foods store is in Berkeley, which may be annoying depending how often we go there.
7. There is public transit nearby, but it does seem that it may not be walkable from the house, which might mean we won’t bother to use it. I had hoped that in the East Bay we’d be able to substitute public transit for driving, but it doesn’t look like that will be feasible.
8. Yes, the San Pablo library has a literacy program. I can start tutoring as soon as we get settled!
9. Yes, there are art/craft stores in Berkeley (including Blick, which I like), and there may even be some closer to us.
10. Yes, Berkeley has more bookstores per capita than any other city in the nation (if that’s still true). Our proximity to Berkeley is very comforting in terms of bookstores alone, as I’ve never seen anything to rival Berkeley’s independent bookstore scene, and have missed it.
11. Yes, we fall within the area served by Berkeley, hooray!
12. Yes, Berkeley has at least one rock climbing gym, and there may be others closer to us.
Neighborhood wants total: 12 out of 12. We can’t speak for the city of San Pablo, but within a 15-minute drive we can get everything we need. That’s closer than a lot of stuff in LA is to us, thanks to traffic.

Wants (for the unit), organized in descending order of importance:
1. Yes, there’s spectacular air circulation and cross-breezes. The house isn’t large, and there are doors and/or windows on all four sides, including two sets of French doors that open out onto a large deck with 180° view of the Bay.
2. Yes, there is a lot of natural light, for the same reason that the air circulation is so good.
3. Yes, there’s a more than decent kitchen. There still isn’t a ton of counter space, but there is plenty, and there’s more storage than we’ll know what to do with. Unfortunately the gas range is rather small, so I doubt we can use more than two burners at once, and if we’re using a big saucepan or the wok, that might take up all available space.
4. No, the price is rather high, but unlike some of the other places we’ve seen, the rent is actually worth it on this one. It’s still within our range, but it is the very upper limit of it, and that’s going to mean some careful rebudgeting for everything else.
5. Yes, there is ample parking, both for us and for guests. There’s a two-car garage for us, and the driveway, and there’s plenty of parking on the street.
6. Yes, there are three bedrooms, so there’s enough office space for both of us — we can even each have our own office, if we like!
7. Yes, it’s safe for us to leave windows open at night. Being on a hill makes it safer because some of our windows aren’t reachable from the ground outside!
8. Yes, there is so much outdoor space, it’s insane. The deck has two stories, there are boxes that can serve as either koi ponds or planters, and there’s an enormous unfinished basement space that can serve to store outdoor-y things like bikes or a sprout-growing operation. 😉 It’s so much more than we’d hoped for. I have been wanting to compost for ages and I am so looking forward to doing it.
9. Yes, there is recycling, thank goodness.
10. No, there’s no air conditioning, but I don’t know whether we’ll need it. The house is double-insulated and I expect the proximity to the bay makes it cooler, though we’ll find out come July.
11. Yes, there is lots of space for guests. There are the two extra bedrooms/offices, a second bathroom, and an ample dining room. I am very excited about this… my only hope is we’ll have enough friends in the area, or enough out-of-town guests, to make this worth while!
12. Yes, yay, dishwasher!
13. No hardwood floors, alas.
14. Yes, there is a washer/dryer hookup, but we’ll have to buy our own machines.
15. No, I can’t think of a convenient space for the litterbox, which is kind of annoying.
16. Yes, it’s a house instead of an apartment!
17. No, there’s not a bathtub big enough for two, but this was always a long shot.
Unit wants: 12 out of 17. Negatives include the cost, which is important (and exacerbated by having to buy a washer and dryer), and big bathtub and hardwood floors, which are not as important.

All in all, the house is more perfect than we dared to hope for. It fulfills all our major wants and a great many of our more trivial ones, but it has the significant drawbacks of being expensive and in the biggest earthquake zone in Northern California. We will cut our budget for non-necessities, stock up on earthquake supplies and a large solid table, and keep abreast of quake safety tips and predictions… and aside from that, what can we do really? The entire East Bay is nearly as dangerous, and neither the Peninsula nor South Bay nor Southern California are immune (and, as Caroline reassuringly pointed out, Sacramento is the second most vulnerable city in the country in terms of levees breaking, so we’re not safe further inland either!). We shall hope and pray for the best, and in the meantime enjoy as much as we can. 🙂

Move-in is set for the 15th, though we’ll likely do the bulk of our moving sometime between then and the end of the month. I will post pictures as soon as we can get some!

*We saw one place on Craigslist that would allow only one cat, and wanted a $1000 deposit for it. Ridiculous.
**Some of the matchboxes that pass for kitchens in these places are just so depressing. But I guess most people don’t cook as much as we do.