Well, it took a few weeks, but after seeing about two dozen houses for sale (and having had an offer on one be rejected), we found a house we like and put in an offer which got accepted. Well, that's not exactly true; our counter-offer got accepted. There was a competing offer alongside ours, but the owners liked us and so they said if matched the other offer they'd sell the house to us. We had met the owners on Saturday, when we stopped by with our realtor. They took us on a tour of the place, showing us this and that, and they were very proud of their home. I guess we made it clear that we wanted to live in that particular house because of what it was, not simply because it was a good deal (the house had been on the market before, and had the price reduced by $50,000 this time around, making it far and away the cheapest house in the neighborhood). The owners are pretty cool people.

We went back to get another view last Sunday during the open house. Tracy took some photos while there. I made some notes on them so they make sense.

It's a funky place, for sure. It's definitely not an avergage tract home, and has an interesting sort of history as well. Apparently, it was designed and built by a company called Anshen and Allen (who are still around, by the way). They built 20 of these space-age, modern homes in 1956 in Sunnyvale, CA as a sort of test of the open floor plan design they came up with. I could almost hear the Martin Denny soundtrack coming out of the place when I first walked in.

Anshen & Allen were later hired by Joseph Eichler to design homes for his company. It's from A & A that Eichler got his famous atrium design, though the house we bought doesn't have the central atrium Echlers are famous for (nor does it have an Eichler's infamous radiant heating: galvanized steel water pipes cast right into the concrete floor, which are famous for leaking).

Though I've never heard the name before moving to the Bay Area, Eichlers are pretty well-known up here, and special enough that they have their own website devoted to them. There are even realtors who specialize in selling Eichlers. I read that there are something like 11,000 of them in the Bay Area, with 10% of them in Sunnyvale. I'm glad our home isn't an Eichler.

Our realtor made a little bit of a face when showed him the listing of the house we'd found. He said "Well, this is probably an Eichler..." and I think he was waiting for our reaction. When we had none, he asked us if we'd heard of them. After saying no, he explained what they were: a modern, open floor plan home, designed to be built cheaply. Aside from the leak-prone hydronic heating (you never want to hear the phrase "then you have to jackhammer the floor" from your realtor), Eichlers also feature inside and out wood paneling and a lack of adequate insulation in the roof. The atria and multitude of windows, when combined with the R8-ish value of the ceiling's half inch of fibreglass insulation, made for a very hot/cold/drafty house. Further, the lack of drywall inside made for a less than fire-resistent house. Dave the realtor said that Ecihlers were known as "eight minute wonders". He explained that this was the approximate time is took an Eichler to burn to the ground should it catch fire.

The house we bought has raised hardwood floors, drywall, and a decent roof. I'm glad about the floors, especially. I want to replace the electric cooktop with a gas one. That means running a gas line from the fireplace to where the stove is. While not impossible in a concrete slab home, it's way easier with a raised floor. Running ethernet and speaker wires is easier, too. I think our floorplan is a better deisgn than the layouts of the Eichlers I've seen online. I think we'll have more useable space in this one.

There's a lot of work to be done on the new house, but there was with the last one, so nothing new there. Tracy came up with the idea of putting up panels in the vaulted ceiling. We can't decide what color the beams should be painted, but the baby blue and green have got to go. Covering them both up with wood is a good idea. I foresee a sore shoulder in my future.

Anyway, we move in October first. Can't wait to get out of this apartment we're in.