The Wolffpak house hunting adventure 2001-2002

Ok, so we're crazy. Now that we've established the most important point ... here we go. I know ... I know... we said we wouldn't move from this house on Sunnyslope

January 22nd, 2002

We got a phone call from our agent in San Jose. The Bellarmine house fell out of contract with the people that outbid us a few weeks back!!!! Unbelievable. We put together an offer and it got ACCEPTED on the 24th. The only major stipulation is that we must get INTO contract with a buyer on our house in no more than 15 days. Ugh. So, we dropped the price on our house and we're gonna see what happens. Crossing all fingers and toes. Here are all the links for the Bellarmine house. These are also found in the paragraphs that follow but are consolidated here for easy-finding. Original pics, Updated more detailed pics, and the movie.

January 20th, 2002

Well, the search continued this weekend and we expanded our search into the more pricey areas of the valley hoping to find a real dive for a bargin. Well, we found it. In Los Gatos (one of the most exclusive areas if not THE most exclusive) we found a listing which reads "Fixer-upper or Tear-down" $399,999 (really - no joke here folks). We drove by and here's a picture of the place. Honest to God people...Click on it to get a bigger picture.

January 1st, 2002

Another trip down to the Bellarmine house produced quite a series of pictures. 40 pictures with annotation of where the heck you are in the maze of the house. All pictures are 640x480 when enlarged except the pictures from the rear outside of the house at the end of the series. They were left in their high quality form for good viewing - 1280x960. BTW, we made an offer on this house today. We'll see where it goes. It'll be presented tomorrow and a response is expected by Thursday night.

Note, the only missing picture is of the official dining room. This is the room where the computers are setup. The owner was in the house today and was in that room. I didn't feel comfortable taking his picture so it is missing. The dining room has 3 doors - one from the main hall, one from the front living room, and one from the kitchen.

** Also, a hand-drawn floorplan is found here too.
Downstairs floorplan
Upstairs floorplan

A movie was taken. Give it a shot. It does start with all grey for about 10 seconds or so - don't be alarmed. :-) Be warned though that this is a 21MegaByte file. This is a 51 minute download with a 56k connection. It will be about 2 hrs at 28kbps.

December 28th, 2001

A cute but slightly too small craftsman home in the College park area on Asbury. The wood in this home is wonderful, but only 3 bedrooms makes it difficult. It even has a wood shop area partitioned separately from the 2 car garage. If it had another bedroom it would be a possibility. The price is a bit high given everything too...

**** The second place we went to is a partially renovated house across the street from Bellarmine High School which is one of the largest Catholic all-boys schools in the valley - what are we thinking with 3 girls living across from Bellarmine. Well, the house is huge, structurally sound, on a huge (for California) lot of 12,000+ sq-ft as opposed to our current 3400 sq-ft lot - ouch. It is 3200+ sq-ft inside! It has 4 bedrooms upstairs and at least 2 downstairs depending on how you reconfigure the place. It also has an unfinished partial basement, upgraded wiring, Cat5 ethernet, and multiple coaxial cables ran throughout - my DREAM! So, it is a huge undertaking but it would be a monster payoff as an investment and as a project of love. The house is pretty much a blank slate right now.

The third place we went to is in Japan town on 14th Street. It is a cute but overly-asian-influenced house. It would need lots of changes upstairs as it is laid out very strange. Note that the final picture of the floor-cellar-access is in the kitchen. We thought this might be Bob & Nancy's quarters. You two asked for a view and so there ya have it. HA! :-)