The outpouring of support from readers of this newsletter humbles me. Dozens of whom requested that we keep writing… Ok, maybe not dozens. But at least a handful. Probably not a handful either - more like two (thanks, Mom!). I will soldier on regardless!
Recently we bought a house! It’s been super exciting. And very, very stressful. Given that we spent the last four years in Sweden, our loan documentation was a mess. It is infinitely harder to secure a loan in the US than it was the last time we did this. I actually was not sure the loan would fund right up until the day before closing. We were still turning in paperwork requested at the last minute. It doesn’t help that the California real estate market is as crazy as ever. We were outbid on several properties, sometimes by as much as 20%!
We ended up getting a great house, though. It’s a little unique, as the pictures below will show. It was built in 2003 and definitely had that “Under the Tuscan Sun” feel! Luckily, we managed to purchase with several months overlap with our rental house, so we could do some lightweight renovations before moving in. We channeled our inner Swedish designer (with help from our actual designers, Darling Dwelling Designs) to transform our house into a light and bright oasis for our family.
Here are a couple of pictures of the house in its original state:
The house is very solid. And it has some beautiful features. But the floors were burnt orange, and the plaster walls were yellow. Additionally, whoever originally designed it was in love with these - what I’m sure were trendy in 2000 - spotlights. They were everywhere, much to our chagrin:
The downstairs floors are concrete and heated! Which we love. The burnt orange, we did not love. Over several weeks, we scheduled electricians to replace every light fixture and outlet, concrete flooring experts to refinish our floors, and painters to do up the inside and outside of the house! Needless to say, it was a stressful couple of months… But the floors went from this:
To this:
We replaced the lights with something less glaring:
We painted the exterior a lovely green-black, and the interior a neutral off-white. Mrs. Cinnamon Buns was super excited with the exterior color she chose, and I must say, it offsets the greenery around the house spectacularly!
We added some built-in bookshelves:
And some of our favorite lights from Sweden!
We now call our eating area, our Swedish zone, because it looks like a little slice of our old apartment in Stockholm:
Our new house is a work in progress. But we love it so far. And I feel like we’ve done a good job of incorporating some of our favorite Swedish design elements.
And last, but not least, we have a lovely - but small - back yard, complete with a 120 ft tall redwood tree!
To be continued…
It's definitely not just your mom that reads these, Brian - keep up the good work. The new house looks fantastic - hoping to be in California at some point to see it in person.
Looks great! What a difference the floors make.