The Plan

So, we’ve got our project; all we need is a plan. Tiptoeing even further into the frightening world of the mature and responsible, we interviewed a handful of architects – three Johns and a James. They ranged from young and enthusiastic to severely modern and extreme (“tear it down to studs, lift the entire building and see where it cracks”) and even a small-world story, friend of the family who fell somewhere in between. We chose a guy both practical and edgy, excited and inspired: John Lum. (His people skills were a plus.)

The plan is to give a shot of botox to this wrinkled Edwardian, merge our two top units into one, and recreate the backyard space which right now includes a dilapidated metal garage, rotting wood staircase, antique washing machine, and garbage-can storage that looks like the dump itself. Dreams of a home for our cars (ahhhhh), a mod staircase, a spot of green and our very own roof garden are just that right now: dreams. But we’re refining the art of realizing them.

God says, "Park anywhere!"

Our first Sunday morning in the city, the night after a semi-tame St. Pat’s day, we were awakened by a boisterous bevy of finely-threaded churchgoers who had assembled right below our living room window. Ebenezer’s Baptist church sits a few doors down on Divisadero, you see, and Sunday morning service, apparently, is one helluva hallelujah happening. The corner of Page & Diviz was soon filled with gospel-gabbing participants who seemed to be amassing from all over the city, decked in their best and soulfully singing through the intersection en route to mass. One voice in particular bellowed for most of the morning – stationed outside our bedroom, the “valet”, a true believer for sure, was double-parking the congregant’s cars up and down Page Street.

Room with a View

Swapped the house on the beautiful Bay for the building on the busy block. But we’ll always have Humboldt.

Cast Away

The toughest part of the process, aside from the shmoes and sharks in the real estate underground, has been vacating units. In order to create our new home (the entire top floor) and yoga school (one of the commercial units), we had to ask some very kind folks to move, or more frankly -- move out. Not a pleasant job for the karmically-minded….but who’s to say whose karma is whose. San Francisco loves its tenants (remember Michael Keaton in Pacific Heights?), and has its landlords pay a rather high fee to see them go. So we are paying, and with pockets full, they are going. I was dreaming up their angry acts of reprisal, and arrived on the scene cowering -- a sheet-white, wimpy new landlord. Aside from the gruff construction dude in the garage (think Billy Bob in Slingblade), who has since chummed up to John in a builder-to-builder kind of way, all parties have thankfully been amenable and understanding. Good thing too -- we declined the terrorism insurance.

One Day at a Time

Call him Schneider, although her prefers Mr. Roper. My handyman, my hero, my soon-to-be husband, a self-proclaimed MacGiver is already at it. The front door closing mechanism cracked the first day we opened it (it was a good sign, i'm thinking), a downstairs shower was overflowing and leaking and another tenant's front door was tagged (not very creatively I'm afraid) the other night while a homeless chap slept in the doorway. Armed with plunger, pliers and high-performance duct tape, my repair guy is taking care of biz. So what if the Chrissy downstairs is really Christof. A Valerie (Bertinelli?) lives next door.

The Grease Guys

Our parking garage -- a shoddy metal hunk of junk -- is currently housed by one commercial tenant, an east bay construction dude, and the Gas Guys, who run a veggie grease filling station, complete with french-fry oil pump and bio-diesel conversion tactics. The cast of characters that filler up from vegrev in their worn VW vans, old Mercedes boats and occasional brand new bug makes for a sure-fire San Fran scene. Yes, our corner is green, but it's also greasy.

nopa nope

For those in the know, we are considered Lower Haight or -- eek! -- even Western Addition. But I prefer NOPA (north of panhandle) -- although this isn't entirely accurate -- a freshly mushroomed acronym hailed by the hip foodies up the street, who are upping the hood's status with the 1-year-old NOPA restaurant. YUM!

The Move

Puttering cross the Golden Gate in our new black bug (diesel, thank you), filled to the brim with bathroom leftovers, stacks of papers and the contents of our noisy, decaying fridge (homeade quince jam and some greens from our sad-but-still lively Marin garden) we waved buh-bye to Tiburon with tears in our eyes. See ya funky old tear-down with jaw-dropping vista, our one-acre sanctuary studded with budding magnolias, beefy lillies and a family of deer, forever feasting on our forest. Bye solitude and space and hello city, with all its vivacious energy, horns, traffic and choices.

The four weight-lifting pros from Ahmed's Moving Express in San Rafael putt-putted behind us as we pulled onto Page Street -- one of those gloriously sunny Norcal days that makes you just LOVE living on the left coast.

too weird for tv

We were persuaded by Spindler to audition for an HGTV pilot, Sleep On It, where we would “test-drive” one of our potential purchases (even though we only had one), sleep over, conduct a yoga class and discuss the ins and outs of the place in front of cameramen and producers. We thought our yoga parlor tricks (a back-breaking, thong-exposed supta kurmasana and a jean-clad urdvha kukatasaa) along with stories of rat-hunting in our India kitchen cinched our place on the reality show, but thankfully they never called.

The Background

After months of disappointment in the DIY search, doing the Craigslist crawl and sapped into cyber real estate scams, we hired Zephyr’s number one real estate pro, Bonnie Spindler. No matter that she is the sis of a gal I used to work with at Fairchild Publications many moons ago (although connections in these cases can’t hurt); her fast-talking, real-estate know-how, bulldog confidence and unabashed persuasion was a major link to our involvement in The Page Project.

The sellers, who will remain anonymous for obvious reasons, are in the midst of a scorching divorce, which showed up in the form of stacks of unpaid bills and general lack of or spiteful communication. She ran off to a Habitat for Humanity project, totally MIA, when we offered our bid, and again went missing (to therapy, apparently) when it was time to sign. It was a sleepless 45 days, to say the least, but with the support of Pamela Adams of Adams Insurance (insurance), Lyssa Paul of Sirkin Paul Associates (co-ownership agreement), Lona Flament (all things financial) and Clifford Fried and Frank Miller of Wiegel & Fried (real estate law), we closed on March 2nd and I became something akin to Old Mother Hubbard, with so many tenants she didn't know what to do.

Make no mistake, the purchase part was no party; more like a comedy of errors. The deal was contingent on the abstraction of commercial tenant #1, Michael’s Pit Stop. We conducted a kitchen table talk with the owner who has an iron-clad, long-term lease. If we would pay all his expenses, including his 2 kids’ college tuition for 2 years, he would move. Uh – I don’t think so. We decided to keep the porn-and-package store in place (and it has truly grown on me ☺) and moved onto plan B and C and D, all concoctions my partner dreamed up in the middle of the night. Persistent and creative, he brainstormed our way into the building into which we are moving in 2 days.

Noblee Properties, LLC is the company we formed (a combo of our middle names) to make the purchase, and Legal Zoom, an online legal document service, did the deed. Boring though it is, thought it best to keep a record of all the deets.