Ray and I bought a loft up in San Francisco! Ok, well, we actually bought a loft in October. The late post on the subject is that six months later we are finally moving in!

This morning I left home in Fremont and will be going home to San Francisco. What? Not Alabama as my post title implies? Well, our little slice of the city is on Alabama St. in the Mission district so I thought I’d share the punniness with everyone. It would be getting old already if it weren’t for the fact that we are just so darned pleased to finally be home owners.

The loft is 2000sqft. with two levels, two bedrooms and two bathrooms (pictures to come once the whole process is done. There is also a laundry room (Whee!), and a big loft area. The rest of the space is an open floorplan with the kitchen, dining, and living room combined and leading out onto a big patio. There is a lot of wall space for our art, and TONS of storage. The rooms have pretty good closets, but there is a full closet under the stairs, an enormous walk-in in the loft area, the laundry room has a lot of storage space, and there is also a storage space in the garage. It is a pack rat’s dream come true. :)

If you are looking for a place up in the city, I would highly recommend our Realtor, Kathryn Williams. Kathryn is very knowledgeable about San Francisco real estate and what is on the market. She gave us lots of information, but didn’t try to sell us on every little detail with flowery adjectives. We told her what we were looking for and she pointed us to great places that really did meet all of the guidelines we set.

So if you are wondering why it took so long for me to give up my 3 hour commute each day, it was because we thought. “This is our first place, let’s make it look the way we want.” Looking the way we want meant paint, carpet, and enough lighting to make our artwork start to smoke. Design consensus 1 month, lighting shipment delay 2 months, Painting (DIY) 1 month, me traveling way to much 1 month, carpet delays 1 month. Since that totals 5, let’s just add one month for Gay Standard Time (GST) conversion.

Things I learned:

  • Ray makes a really great general contractor (thanks sweetie!)
  • An interior design consultant is better than future couples counseling
  • I now have a really great electrician contact
  • Fear of heights can be partially overcome to avoid paying insane painter costs in SF
  • ActionScript Developers should earn more by moonlighting as painters ($.60-$1/sqft of paint!!!!)
  • If in doubt, budget $3,000 for any single budget line item.