Californian closets

It turns out bedrooms are not required by state law to have a built-in closet. Which surprises me because realtors will say stuff like 'It's really four bedrooms but they've listed it as three because this one doesn't have a closet'. As if a closet is as essential as a door and a window.

Requiring a closet might not be the law but it is pretty common practice. All the houses we've lived in or snooped around have built-ins in every room. And most master bedrooms have walk-ins. To the extent that I now think that closets like this are normal.

I'm not showing off when I saw I know people with closets like this. I've been in closets like this. I think this is how clothes ought to live (now I'm a Californian).

Sadly our new house, despite its ample storage, does not feature a walk in closet. I know. It's pretty unbelievable. Instead our clothes are stored in a series of closets in and around the bathroom. I've learned to live with it by calling it a dressingroom-cum-bathroom but the more aspirational real estate I see, the harder this cross is to bear.

Our closet-cum-bathroom. I know.

I daydream about ripping the whole dressing-room-cum-bathroom out and replacing it with a walk-in and a wet room. But I also daydream about a pergola, new dining chairs and a new bannister. Meanwhile TLOML not only dreams of (but actually sorts out) termite-free fencing, and new window cranks.

So for now I've had to go for a cheaper facelift. It's hard to describe just how happy I felt on achieving this transformation.

BEFORE: The horror of mis-matched hangers

AFTER: Aaaah

I guess I don't need a fancy walk in closet when $30 worth of hangers makes me feel so good.

When celebrations collide

Time to clear the cards off the mantelpiece I think. It was my birthday two weeks ago, and they're starting to gather dust. As are, nestled in there, my Mother's Day cards.

Do you see how the Mother's Day card gets a little lost..?

I had a delightful birthday. TLOML took me out for legit sushi and cocktails and a celebratory brunch, and I got some lovely gifts and cards. I had a very nice Mother's Day too. There was an almost unbearably cute Mother's Day breakfast at school, including a little concert. Handmade cards from P, a bumperr sleep in and a lovely brunch and gift from TLOML.

So I suppose I have nothing to complain about. And yet, I do think the experience could be optimised.

The two celebrations are just too close together. Mother's Day has been set by the greetings' card lobby as the second Sunday in May here, which means it falls within a week or two of my birthday. This year it was just six days later. Inevitably, the two celebrations collide. TLOML told me a couple of days afterwards that one of the Mother's Day gifts was in fact a birthday present. And I can't say I blame him. Planning for my birthday consumes enough effort, so to have another celebration follow hard on the heels - well, he's all but run out of steam by then. And Mother's Day here - like most things - is quite a big deal. Brunch tables get booked up weeks in advance and florists make a killing in additional markup.

TLOML did very well to cover the essentials - a good brunch, a card and a gift - as well as making me feel treasured and important all day long. It's no mean feat. I know how he feels, because his birthday is less than two weeks before Christmas. And he is very hard to buy for, so thinking of two brilliant gifts in a short time frame is tough.

There's nothing we can do about that clash of celebrations. I'll just have to start thinking about his birthday earlier. But there is something we can do about the birthday/ Mother's Day mash up.

I have decided - no, decreed - that from 2017 on we (okay, he) will mark Mother's Day according to the British calendar, which is to say, Mothering Sunday in the Church calendar.  It moves about a bit but is usually some time in March. That means there's a decent amount of breathing space before my birthday, and there'll be no competition for brunch tables. Lady P might be confused, as she will have to stick with the school calendar - so I guess I'll get to celebrate it twice. I think that is known as having the best of both worlds. But TLOML will be absolutely exonerated from any Mother's Day duties in May, leaving him clear to focus entirely on my birthday. It's a transatlantic win-win!

The DIY household

If the local message boards are to be believed, this is not a town where people like to do things themselves. I have seen requests for information on 'someone who can come and clean my grill' and 'a company who will install baby gates'. I've also met no fewer than three different women who claim to be professional organisers (aka tidiers).

But TLOML bucks the trend. He likes to do his own dirty work. He cleans his own grill and has been known to install baby gates. (And he has me permanently on staff as an organizing force). So when we decided we needed to start rinsing sand off before entering the house, he installed a shower.

The first shower he installed was from a kit, which made it less impressive. We were hoping the white plastic look would be Skandi-chic, but in reality it just looked a bit ghetto.

So he went back to the hardware store (oh, just realised they dn't call them DIY shops here. Maybe DIY really isn't a thing here at all). He bought various pipes, shower heads, joiners, flashings and the like and constructed an actual, working shower.

Best of all it has a foot wash, which is just the right height for Lady P to rinse her grubby little hands in. I am very proud of him. And very happy about the big reduction in sand in our house.

The problem is now he's getting some big ideas. He wants to personally hack down the massive spikey palm leaves that hover 20 feet above our deck. You know, the ones which are touching the power lines. I'm counselling against. I'm saying that he's made his point, he's very capable, but we can pay a man to tackle that hazardous situation with specialist tools. And I know I can find one on the local message boards.

High class problems

Beach life isn't easy all of the time, you know. As we settle in, we have become aware of a couple of major drawbacks of our bright and sunny new home.

First of all, our living room is so bright that we're worried the sunlight will fade our sofas and our lovingly refinished floors. At about 10am we drop the shades on the south-facing french doors, and from noon we draw the curtains on the west-facing windows. So for most of the day our living space is shaded and faintly funereal.

The grown-up living room on a glorious sunny day

The family room: suns out; shades down

You almost wouldn't know the sky outside is bright bright blue

The other bummer is that our lovely royal palm trees are, it turns out, touching the power lines. At least, when the sea breeze catches them. Which it does most of time, creating a lovely rustling sound and the potential to set the trees and presumably our timber framed house alight.

Ah, the wind in the palm trees...

...and the imminent risk of fire

We were advised to take the trees out, but we love them far too much. Instead I guess we'll have them trimmed back, which might make them look a bit bald and/or lopsided till they outgrow the power lines (or Hermosa Beach finally puts them underground).

Doesn't your heart just break for us?

Happily housebound

It was a scorching hot weekend in the South Bay, and anyone with any sense was at the beach, watching volleyball tournaments, surfing, or enjoying the beach concerts.

Alas, not us. Excursions were strictly limited to Best Buy, IKEA and Triangle Hardware. We did manage a quick yomp down to the pier for a coffee and Lady P's requisite 15 minutes of sand play. But other than that we were all about the house.

On Saturday TLOML installed SONOS while I hung curtains. And on Sunday he wall-mounted the TV and strung up lights on the deck while I reorganized the cupboards in in the garage.

Cupboard categories include 'replenish kitchen sink', 'laundry',' specialist cleaning' 'lightbulbs' and, of course, 'BBQ and car stuff' (aka 'I don't know what this is').

One could argue that it wasn't strictly necessary for me to take everything out of those cupboards and put it back in in a slightly different order. But I needed something to do while TLOML took care of A/V and Lady P napped. And I'd already baked cookies.

One could also argue that Hermosa Beach does not need any more overhead power lines, or indeed, overhead cables of any kind. But we wanted to enhance the ambience on our deck. So we went ahead and mounted strings of lights, and now we love it out there even more. It reminds us of being in a relaxed, friendly, possibly slightly cockamamie bar, in a busy beach town somewhere hot. Surely the ideal vibe.

Despite being housebound we weren't complete hermits. We hosted our first proper dinner in the house, for our dear Manhattan Beach friends. Our old neighbours (the friendship survives!) swung by, and we had some sunset drinks and snacks on the deck with other friends. And at the end of it all, although we looked enviously at other people's beach pics on Facebook, we sat on the deck, under our pretty lights, and toasted with a gin and tonic to the completion of our house move.

Yes, that's really it. All new home improvement projects are officially done. Anything that is left falls strictly under the 'everyday maintenance' category, or stuff we'll do it when we get round to it. I suppose we'll have to wait for the next not-hot, not-beachy weekend to tackle those. That could be a while. Meanwhile, we can relax, and enjoy the house (and the beach).

What a difference a lick of paint makes

We’ve been busy moving house this past week. It was our shortest move ever – just ¾ mile down the road from the much loved Sugar Cube into our shiny, new house. Shiny and new because we had a little cosmetic work done before we moved in.

We just refinished the floors, and had the whole place repainted. so it really was only cosmetic, but what a difference it made to the way the house looks and feels. Most of all, we made it our own.

We flipped the dark kitchen and dining room into something altogether lighter, brighter, and vaguely Skandi looking. With the bonus of American appliances, natch. Oh, and my upcycled table of course. 

Someone else's dining room

Someone else's kitchen

Our kitchen/ diner

We turned the 1980s law library into a cheery workspace befitting a SoCal beach lover and his Brit bookworm.

Someone else's home office

Ours

And in Lady P’s room we created a sunny homage to the Sugar Cube, complete with a scaled down front door.

 

Lady P's 'little house'

The Sugar Cube, seen through palms

We painted pretty much every inch of the rest of the house white, which makes it feel clean and fresh and new. And ours.

We do miss our rambling back garden but are consoled by sunset drinks on the deck. Lady P has done some naked sliding into the paddling pool on the astro turf, and planted some chard seeds, so I feel that she isn’t too badly off either.

One week in and we are almost unpacked. We are still waiting for our new king mattress to arrive so we can move into the mater, and we have the small matter of 40 pieces of art to hang, but other than that I’d say we’re home. And this time, it’s for the long term. It’s a very very nice feeling.

The town house and the country house

Although we are moving less than a mile away, it does rather feel like we are moving from the country to the city.

Part of that is, of course, the location. The Sugar Cube sits on a cul-de-sac which terminates at the back of a school playground and a wood chip path which leads over the hill to the beach. Kids play out on our street all the time, skateboarding, bare foot, and just assuming the occasional car will give way. Which, of course, they do.

The property itself is pretty rustic too. The Sugar Cube is about 1500 square foot of house on a 9000 square foot lot. We have a large, rambling, somewhat chaotic garden. There are lemon trees, a grape vines, and we grow peas and strawberries and chard, as well as lots of herbs. Lady P has spent many happy hours making mud soup, chomping on freshly picked peas, and getting dirt under her fingernails. We hear woodpeckers and raccoons, and we smell the occasional skunk.

'I'm cooking, Mummy!'

Corn, peppers, peas and a lot of rubble

By contrast the new house (still working on a name) is on a relatively busy through-street in a part of Hermosa where there is a lot less space between houses. It's a 2300 square foot home on a 2600 square foot lot. Meaning that there isn't a lot of room for rambling, rustic gardening. Instead, we have a small astro-turfed patch which will be a good place for Lady P to ride her Cosi Coup in, but will be rather short on mud soup making opportunities.

Hanging out in the new yard

This makes me a little sad. But it seems Lady P is not going to be entirely bereft in her new urban dwelling.

After all, our new walk to downtown Hermosa is a half mile stroll along a nice wide stretch of woodchip. Last time we did it, it took about thirty minutes because Lady P was so entranced with the pine cones, rocks, trees to 'climb' and sticks along the way. I guess it felt like a wild adventure to her. Which is good enough for me.

And the other day I saw a raccoon on the house two doors up from our new house. It was trying to climb onto the overhead power cables (it's a Hermosa thing...) and I was oddly comforted. I guess country critters thrive in the urban density of 8th and Ardmore just as happily as they do in leafy Hermosa Valley.

The road to a friend's house is never long (especially when they live next door)

Friendships don't manifest overnight. It takes time.

The best friends, surely, are the ones who've known us the longest - and are still around to tell the tale. The friends who were there when you were experimenting with personalities, booze, style statements and so on. The friends you've had dinner with in more than one decade, and at dozens of different tables. The friends who've seen you through some of life's milestones: first job, first home, breakups, weddings and christenings. These are the friends you don't need to explain yourself to. The ones with whom you can dive straight into the middle of a conversation, drop by at a moment's notice, and unburden yourself of all the worries you're still withholding from newer, less well established friends.

Proximity can speed the friendship process up. That's how come we end up so close to our desk neighbours at work, even if we have nothing in common with them. Because spending forty hours a week next to someone forces a sort of intimacy. Maybe that's why those college friendships are so enduring: not just the rites of passage you go through together, but the fact you live in each other's pockets for three years or so. Some of those friendships endure. Others, it turns out, were purely based on proximity and fade when you move on.

TLOML and I rapidly became good friends with our next door neighbours. It's the kind of friendship where it's okay to suggest a whisky at 9pm on a Wednesday night and schlep over in yoga pants. Where last minute dinners are jointly, casually catered. And where we unburden ourselves of minor irritations and major stresses as if we've known each other for years. Yet we've only known each other for 18 months.

We've fast-forwarded the friendship process and I think its because - as well as being like minded - we live right next door. We bump into each other all the time and getting together is as easy as can be. We don't even need to put shoes on in order to hang out with each other.

So the big question is: will this new, valuable friendship survive when we live all of 3/4 mile away? Watch this space.

Surprise upcycling

I've never been much of a one for upcycling. I just don't have the patience, the physical capabilities required to do a tidy job, or the attention to detail. But needs must. And right now, we need new furniture.

For months I've been mithering about our dining table, and what to do when we move to the new house. Our current dining table is a much-loved G-Plan, which TLOML and I bought together when we moved to London. It was one of our first joint, permanent furniture purchases. And buying it involved driving to Hackney in a rented van, navigating our way through a cave of junk furniture treasures, and haggling with a woman who appeared to actually live in that cave. So it has sentimental value.

Sadly, that much loved table doesn't really work for us anymore. First of all, to protect it from play-doh, paint, and felt tip pens, not to mention toddler eating habits, it is covered all day long in an oilcloth tablecloth. At night, after Lady P has gone to bed, we take the table cloth off so we can eat like grownups. But it is swiftly replaced in time for breakfast.  

A rare glimpse of the usually-veiled G-Plan

Secondly, it's too small for the new place. I know, it's a high class problem. For three years it has been kept in its four-top configuration, expanding only when we're hosting more than a couple of people. Even fully extended, it only seats six at a squeeze, and will look rather lost in the long dining space of our new home.

Reluctantly, then, we resolved to sell the G-Plan and make do with one of the tables we have in the garden. Just till we can afford a proper, big, wooden table. In hours spent online and scouring furniture showrooms I have found the perfect table. In fact I've found several. But they are all north of $1k and that's just not in our budget right now.

Our ahem 'shabby chic' garden table

Mourning our poverty (house poor! it is a thing) I started doing some light sanding, ready to repaint the table and suck it up for a year or two. Then inspiration struck. It is, after all, a large wooden table - kinda like the type that we want to buy when we get our proper dining table. Why repaint, when we can upcycle!

TLOML finished the sanding, and I stained it a dark almost-black. It's still a little rustic for my tastes, but considering we found it for free in our back garden I think we can be rightly proud.

TLOML doing some upcycling - who knew?!

Ta-dah!

Now we can start saving for the the $6k beauty I truly covet.

The wait is - almost - over

Fully six months since we viewed our new house and made an offer, and three months after we closed the sale, we are finally in.

Well, not quite. Our tenants have moved out and we have taken full possession of it. In theory we can go over there and run around the place any time we like, whooping with glee. But the flooring guys are in there sanding right now, making the running around and whooping a little tricky. And next week the painter will be in, touching up paintwork and crucially painting Lady P's bedroom door a jaunty colour.

For now, we are still, then, waiting. But at last the end is in sight. And there was a short window on Sunday afternoon, after the tenants left and before the decorating started during which we were able to run around and whoop with glee. In fact we rushed about measuring, and taping paint chips up, and saying 'can you believe it's finally ours?!'. And Lady P ran in and out of the small under-the-stairs cupboard in her bedroom absolutely beside herself that it was her very own cupboard. Then we celebrated with our friends, and champagne, before heading back to the Sugar Cube.

Lady P's happy dance

Just three weeks now till we can move in for real. Meanwhile there are sofas and beds to buy, and kitchen drawer pulls to select, and washing machine deliveries and cable switch-overs to co-ordinate.

We've gone through the moving process many times, but this is the first time we've been trying to buy bigger pieces of furniture, as opposed to smaller ones. And the first time we've looked for furniture with enduring appeal, rather than pieces that will make do till we move again.

Even the boring aspects of this move are thrilling, and the wait is almost more than I can stand.

Hurry up and grow

It's about this time of year that, if I were in England, I'd be planting peas and tomato seeds and crossing my fingers for a growing season warm and wet enough for stuff to grow, but not so warm and wet that the slugs eat it all. Because that did happen most years.

Anyway, here in LA those planting days are long behind us. We planted early partly just because we can. There was an unseasonable shower a week or so ago, but other than that it's been summer here since March.

We also had to plant early because - sobs and celebrations collide here - we will be leaving the Sugar Cube in August. Since we sowed, so should we reap. And hopefully soon.

Last year we planted early, and then nature swept in with plagues and pestilence. So we planted a second, late set of crops with mixed success. No, that watermelon never did appear in time for Thanksgiving.

Hopefully this year we'll get the chance to enjoy more of the fruits of our labors. The peas are already looking good, though I will need to break my new habit of picking off a pod and eating them with Lady P if we ever want enough to serve for dinner. The chard too has bolstered a few soups and salads already. And our sunflowers, planted in the toxic bed where we committed beetle genocide last summer, are almost as tall as Lady P already.

This weekend we added corn, coriander and zinnias, and talked encouragingly to our tomatoes. We pulled up yards and yards of apple mint roots, making a little room for the new stuff to grow. I think the next people to live here will thank us for that: it was taking over the whole bed in a creepily effective way.

 Fingers crossed thanks to our efforts we can enjoy a bountiful harvest before we move. And if the next Sugar Cube residents benefit too, so much the better.

One thing's for sure: we will miss this yard, and afternoons spent getting our hands dirty, clearing weeds, planting seeds and in Lady P's case, moving small amounts of sandy earth around with mysterious, but serious, purpose.

We bought a house today

We really did. We actually did it! After months of looking, and weeks of painful paperwork, we just signed our lives away to an enormous mortgage. Here's to us! Here's to homeownership! Here's to the support of TLOML's generous mother, who made it possible. And here's to buying somewhere we can live in for a long long time.

We won't move till the summer when the tenants move out. Till then I will be mainly researching window treatments and cunningly low cost ways to refinish hardwood floors. Once we've done that, I will have some pictures I am proud to share.

In the meantime, for the curious, here is a shot of the  house.

Its a classic of its kind: the streets around here are full of these houses with the garage upfront and a deck on top. They do lack a little charm from the outside, but they usually result in a great floorplan, as the living space is all upstairs with plenty of light - and for us it means we have an ocean view from our living and dining space. As well as the ocean view we have two palm trees, a kitchen to get excited about (one of those cool pantry cupboards with the pull out larder shelves, and a massive range with warming lamps and allsorts), and plenty of room for guests and all Lady P's plastic rubbish.

And more to the point - and this is the main point - it is ours! All ours! And we can stay there as along as we want. Big happy sighs all round for finally putting down some roots, and West of PCH too.

About that house

The problem with looking at real estate in the South Bay is that after a little while, you start to think a $3.75m 5 bed/4.5 bath Cape Cod style home is normal...

 ...when in fact, this is what a starter home looks like in Hermosa Beach.

 And while I might have enjoyed looking at listings for homes that are 'like a European Castle'...

..or which 'leave nothing to the imagination' (what does that even mean?), reality bites. For our budget, and to be West of Pacific Coast  Highway, we were looking at ads for homes that specified features like 'overhead lighting'. No, really: they were that short of features.

In the end we got really lucky. Our house has a tenant in, and the owner was eager to sell before the end of the tenancy - not a problem for us, since we're renting. So we think we got a pretty good deal: it's West of PCH, walkable to the beach, plenty of living space, and just a peek of an ocean view from the deck. Oh, and overhead lighting! We won't move in till the summer, at which point I will post endlessly about the house. Till then, we're enjoying our last few months in the Sugar Cube, which will be hard to leave.

Termites

I mentioned in my 'we're buying a house' post the standards that apply to termites. They are a thing here. As in, a recognised feature of living in a house. Home owners have two choices: tent the house once a decade and have it fumigated, or have an annual inspection and spot treatment. So the sight of homes covered in tents is not unusual. Here's one on Eighth Street, near our potential new house - which was just recently treated for termites, as part of the purchase process.

I'm not sure why termites are so common here. Maybe they (like me) like the weather. I don't think New England, with its freezing cold winters, suffers them. Or maybe it's not the weather but the wood. The houses I see here under construction seem to be made primarily out of wood, not the steel frames and breeze blocks I'm used to seeing in the UK.

I'm not sure why people build houses out of wood here, either. Maybe it's to do with earthquakes. Or perhaps it's just one of those inexplicable differences which is so thoroughly woven into the fabric of the way the world works here that it takes a while to notice. And once you've noticed, you can't stop noticing. And that niggles away. Like a termite.

I wonder if there's much more like that, which after five years of transatlantic life I have yet to spot. And I wonder how long I'll live here before I stop noticing those differences.

Pity the poor immigrant home purchaser

At the end of January we had an offer accepted on a house. We were super excited about it and I wrote a blog post at the time about how great it was to buy in America, where there is so much certainty about the process. But I didn't publish the post (though I have done so since) because - despite the apparent certainty - I had a fear that something might still go wrong.

I was right. We have been in underwriting limbo for six weeks... for a process that in theory takes a week or two. The problem is that I am an immigrant, with a slim US credit history. And it turns out if I'd only taken out a Banana Republic card a year ago I probably could've borrowed a million dollars with very few questions asked. So we are a slightly more complex case than the norm.

But the delays by far outweigh the complexity and we are trapped in a Kafka-esque twilight zone of repeated requests for the same pieces of unrelated information, with little explanation of what is required or intended. It is all starting to remind us both, in a foreboding sort of way, of the visa process. Yet again, it sucks to be an immigrant. The bank treats correspondence from the UK's Revenue & Customs like the scribblings of a madman. And makes the most bizarre requests: like, in addition to having seen a copy of my Green Card, requesting a letter from me stating that I had sent them a copy of my Green Card. How on earth a letter from me about a document holds any weight - let alone more weight than the actual document itself - is puzzling.

The latest request is for an explanation from BigCorp about why my paycheque was $284 more in February than January. Oh, and a monthly statement from my pension fund. To which BigCorp, in typical BigCorp fashion, reply that they aim to respond within 20 days.

Every time we provide new information - or, indeed, the same information again - the bank reset the clock, requiring another 24-48 hours to digest what we have sent. Which, when it's the third time we've sent, for example, our 2013 tax return, is more than a little frustrating.

Meanwhile with every day that goes by our seller is getting increasingly impatient. While gazumping is not a thing here, she does have a perfect right to tell us we're out of time.

So it turns out I was wrong. This process is not sure, and simple, and swift. It is bellyachingly, G&T-thirstingly, tense-makingly slow and painful. Rant over.

Having said all that, TLOML and I did just enjoy a blissful weekend eating and drinking with friends and family in the Sugar Cube's lovely yard, and walking to the beach, and just generally loving our neighbourhood. So if this new house is not meant to be, and we have to stay put while I run up a few months of credit card spending, we will live very happily with that outcome.

Tear downs and dream homes

I read with interest this NY Times story about the trend in LA to tear down historic homes and replace them with larger, contemporary houses.

'Historic' here, of course, could mean an 1950s bungalow. While it's easy, as a Brit, to sniff about the  historic value of a sixty year old house, it's true that there are some beautiful neighbourhoods, old by LA standards, which are characterized by a conformity of housing, all built around the same time, and some really charming and quintessentially Californian styles. Like the Storybook homes in Culver City and in Hollywood, the Spanish colonial homes on the flat bits of Beverly Hills and the mid-century boxes that perch on outcrops of the Hollywood Hills.

Apparently the volume of new homes being built on the site of older ones is on the up, and these newer home bear no resemblance to their neighbors. It's a trend that's ruffling feathers in Beverly Hills.

For much of LA the historical preservation ship sailed some time ago. This passage is from Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust, describing Depression Era Hollywood.

The same description could be used of the Strand in Hermosa Beach - although I don't think I'd describe the diverse architectural styles which rub shoulders here as 'truly monstrous'. I've posted about the bonkers patchwork of dream homes here before and sure, it's not very beautiful, but I do like the freedom of choice it represents.

Although I may not wish to create my own personal Swiss Chalet I can understand the desire to build something new and bespoke - and be damned if it doesn't match the neighbour's new and bespoke house. My dream house would be a gleaming white box, but I'd take even a 1990s 'palazzo' over a charming old beach cottage with 1920s amenities. You do see the odd run of older homes in the area and I'm glad they're still around. But I wouldn't want to live in one.

Sweet, but probably doomed

While in the UK I wouldn't have thought of remodelling extensively - that's the stuff of Grand Designs and a move to the country - here it seems less out of reach. It's not an unusual thing to do, and some of the homes we've looked at would require or at least lend themselves to a rebuild. The house we're currently eyeing up is what's known as turnkey. If we can stomach the cost, we would maybe make some cosmetic upgrades before we move in, like redoing the floor and repainting some rooms, but that's about it.

Still, the dream of finding a sweet little beach bungalow, ripping it down and building a gleaming white box in its place remains alive. That'll be the next house we buy.

In America, there is no gazumping

In a recent post I mentioned our hope of getting a foot on the housing ladder here. In fact we have just positioned one toe on the bottom rung: we've had an offer accepted on a house.

I have been reluctant to post about it in case I jinxed the whole thing. After all, we Brits all know of someone who found the perfect home only to be gazumped (i.e. the seller accept a higher offer). Or to discover half the garage is built on someone else's land and the next door neighbour has the deeds to prove it. Or that the back garden is included in some high speed rail expansion plan.

In the UK any of these spanners can be thrown in the works, after you've spent a lot of money on lawyers and surveys and so on, and before you have a legally binding contract. Until you've exchanged contracts - often a couple of months after your offer was accepted - you can't really start celebrating. Let alone create home decor mood boards.

Too soon?

In the US, by contrast, once an offer is accepted, the buyer and seller are locked into a contract. The seller can consider back up offers, and there are a bunch of contingencies to work through, but they can't just shaft you by backing out of the sale and taking a higher offer.

And another thing. About those contingencies. Among other things, this is an opportunity for us to point out deficiencies in the property and have the seller rectify them. Granted, this happens in the UK too. But in a rising market you don't want to negotiate too hard, in case the seller walks away. You might ask for them to fix the damp, but if they won't, and you love the house, you probably wouldn't push it. By contrast here we are asking for window screens to be replaced, the house to be professionally cleaned, the TV bracket removed and the wall made good, and other requests which I think would seem faintly outrageous in the London housing market. The buyer can either comply, or give us a credit for the cost of the work, or say no - but they can't walk away from the sale.

When I say 'we are asking for window screens to be replaced' etc, what's really happening here is that our realtor is running around dealing with contractors, getting quotes, visiting City Hall to check the deeds and so on. In the UK once they've shown you a dozen inappropriate properties (and that only because you've called them every week to remind them you exist) and you've finally settled on one, the estate agent just sits back and waits for the sale to close so they can collect their cheque. Here, the realtor's cheque is a lot bigger (6% of the sale price, split between the listing and the buying agent), but they earn definitely their money.

One last feature of the home buying process which still has me bedazzled: the standards. I mean, that there are standards. Standard contracts for pretty much everything. Standards governing how termites are dealt with. Standard time periods within which inspections must occur, offers be considered, finances secured, and so on. Hence no conveyancing lawyer, I guess. It's all very clear and predictable.

It's incredible. It's like the home buying process, but with all the crazy unknowns and risks removed. So in fact, without jinxing anything, I can actually say 'we are buying a house', and know that it is true. Right, I'm off to work on my mood boards.

On the move again. But this time, we won't go far.

We've been living in the Sugar Cube for almost a year now - longer than we've lived anywhere together. And we like it so much we'd like to live here forever.

But the call of home ownership is strong. And we do love Hermosa Beach. I may never get over the fact that it's not actually Saltburn, or Kentish Town, but despite those drawbacks it is a wonderful place to live. Time to put down some roots, we think.

So we're house hunting again.

For once, refreshingly, we are looking for a home close to where we currently live. And when I say close, I mean really close. Like, less than a mile.

More than even half a mile east would involve being too far from the beach. More than a mile south would take us too far from Hermosa proper. More than a mile north would involve being in Manhattan Beach where the lots are bigger, the cars are flashier, and our best chance of a home there is a 1000 square foot tumbledown beach cottage with a 1950s kitchen. Aka a 'tear down'.

Which brings me to the other criteria: 3 bedrooms, a little outside space, and a reasonably liveable condition. And something else that's harder to express, but we'll know it when we see it: a street which looks like it might have good trick or treating, and a generally neighbourhoody vibe.

And so, the boundaries of our search are clearly drawn. It's a slightly larger area than the one I outlined for our London flathunt back in 2012. But not by much. Our criteria are somewhat more specific. But not by much.

The pink patch is our bubble: Hermosa, Manhattan Beach and El Porto

This is the roughly single square mile in which we can realistically live

The advantage of searching in a small area, where we already live, is that it's very easy to drive, run or walk by any prospective homes. And we know most of the streets pretty well.

The disadvantage of our nice, tight, close, boundaries? At the current count there is a total of 1 family house for sale* in this area. Just the one.

Good job we love the Sugar Cube. We may be here for some time yet.

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*within our budget. Which rules out that $16m mansion on The Strand, sadly.