And here are some more photos to give you a better flavor of the place.
We did get our historic designation (1955) and will have a nice tax savings as a result. It is made of burnt adobe brick, which is highly prized here and not made (much?) any more because it was hand made. You can see the marks where they pulled the bricks out of their frames. It's very rustic looking. We have a whole book about the architect and the sales brochures etc. that came out at the time the complex was made. At the time it was the furthest one out of town and very bare. Now it's lush and full of life, and the houses last virtually forever here if maintained because the desert is pretty easy on them. I remember thinking when I first drove around out here, "Gheez, it's like the 50's and 60's out. Stuff apparently lasts a long time here." You also see a lot of vintage and older-model cars here. Wish I'd kept my Intrigue forever.
It's a good thing you can't smell the house - Benji has made a wreck of the carpet We knew that was a risk, but it's much worse than I could have imagined. I've been catching him about to lift his leg on everything from a man's pants legs to the new curtains - oh, and including the love seat. I've been watching him like a hawk as a result and planning his neutering...which is breaking Rod's heart.
The paint is as it was when we moved in, except for the yellow room, the lavender walls, and the pale yellow walls in the kitchen. The kitchen had been baby-poop gold which we could not abide, and the yellow room had been pottery-barn green. And there was too much green everywhere, so we changed that, and made a piano nook of the lavender area.
We love the high natural wood beam ceilings and wish all of them had been left unpainted. Rod wishes all the brick had been unpainted, but I'm not so sure - it would be hard to keep clean I think. Anyway, I think we're pretty lucky. We learned recently that our house is in the oldest and best-made part of the Indian Ridge neighborhoods. Only this first phase has the wood-beam ceilings. The others have center beams, only, and cheaper aluminum windows. We have the old steal crank windows, which Rod loves.
I also heard from our Association guy that the industry has come out with, or will soon, triple paned windows that fit in the space of the old single-panes. So we're thinking we can get better energy-efficiency and some SPF blockage that way someday.
I also really like all of the plantation blinds. They're a godsend in the summer and stay shut tight through those months, but they're pretty always and very private.
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