Original Floor Plan Leading To Addition
This is a drawing of the original floor plan of the house. This drawing came from Esther McCoy's book "The Second Generation," page 130. This is the exact layout of our house. To the left of the diagram, you see a door leading out to a side yard with a clothes line and you see the garage. With the addition, we moved the kitchen door to the side yard out and the new rooms run along the side out past the clothesline toward the back of the property. The door into the garage is the same, but now you enter the garage from inside the house.

Okay, let's start outside again - facing the front door with the 50's fountain to the left.

As one enters the house you can see to the back door of original house that leads out to the patio.

Still standing in the front doorway, ones sees to the left the kitchen.

You go through the kitchen to reach the new addition. The opening, next to the refrigerator was where the original side door was that led outside and to the outside door of the garage. You can also see the original upper window in this opening and a tiny bit of the new back door which is glass.

Walking through the kitchen we go into the new addition. This shot was taken from the back "side" door which you saw in the previous picture of the new cement pad. Pouring this cement pad was the last of the construction and tomorrow the inspector is coming and hopefully he will sign off on the completion of the construction.

A shot of the addition from the same place as previous picture, only turning a bit and looking at this room. You can see the back of fireplace and down the hall to the master bedroom. This room could be a dining room, a family room (hang a flat screen tv on the fireplace wall), an office, a kid's playroom. It could even be a bedroom if you drop another wall, but we could not call it a bedroom because under California code - a bedroom cannot lead into a garage. Glass door on the right leading to the main patio.

Two shots of master bedroom with closet (doors original from another Ain home in the tract).


In this next shot if you turn toward the large window, you have a view of the backyard.

Across from the closet is the pocket door that leads into the new master bathroom.


Back out in the addition hallway, outside the door of master bedroom is another glass door leading to main patio.

I'm hoping this is all clear as to how the old house and new fit together. Please email if you have questions. We've been having open houses and showing the home by appointment. I've found the open houses really fun. You get to meet a lot of nice people and it's fun to share what we know about the architect Gregory Ain and this tract of homes.
Also the other day, I received a call from a writer named, Erin Mahoney. She wanted to tell me about her new book, "Walking L.A." by Wilderness Press. They had used a picture of our house on the back cover and also inside the book in chapter 5. She also wrote about our house - "...at 3508 is the original model house created by Ain, identified by the pink diagonal stilts supporting the roof extension above the front walkway." So of course, when I heard about this newly released book, I ran right out and got it. Here are a few shots of the book and of course, our house


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Just a quick story here - last year, Steve repainted the house gray with darker gray trim. None of the neighbors noticed or commented. Then one weekend, my mother was visiting from Oregon and I asked her to help me paint the poles hot pink (when I first bought the house the poles were brown and peeling, I painted them pink, then lavendar and finally hot pink.) It took us less than an hour to paint the poles while it had taken Steve over a week to paint the house. Well, once the poles were done, everyone in the neighborhood would walk by and say how much they loved the pink poles or that they were such a fun color. Steve just shook his head at all the comments. We all had a good laugh, but it does show what a bright color can do and how it's all in the details. Stay tuned for the next blog which will be all about open houses, lookey-loos, realtors and the emotional highs and lows of selling a house you love!