Around here, historical designation comes with some very rigid guidelines especially about what you can do with the exterior of the house. In most cases a historical designation is given to…older historical homes. That wasn’t my impression of this home.
What I’m saying is…is there authentic historical stuff in that house…or just stuff that looks authentic. There is a huge difference.
The photos of the exterior do not look historical to me at all…unless the folks back in whatever history they are talking about pioneered the party house build
My personal opinion is there is no chance for historical designation. Built in the 60s and the only thing is the adobe brick. Nobody famous lived there. Nobody famous designed the house.
The historical designation for property taxes is defined inside California. Not the same as a National Historical Designation. And yes, you cannot change a thing on the exterior.
Our current home is in a historic district, on the historic registry. We have to go through the historic society to change anything visible from the street, including landscaping. It’s a HUGE pia! We turned down a bunch of kitchen and master bath plans from the designer so we wouldn’t have to move any windows. It would have added at least 6 months to our timeline. We don’t have a tax break but I can’t imagine any scenario where that would be worth it.
In all the houses I used to buy, I did not want to be put under any historical designation. In San Diego, when you apply for a permit, it first has to pass through Historical Review (if over 45 yrs). You sit and wait for some ugly box to get past that review for 15 days.
I was involved with one house flip during the real estate depression in 2009 that got triggered as historical. I don’t think the City had anything better to do so they decided a 1950 house was ‘historical’ because it was slightly mid century modern. You had to sit in meetings at the City with staff who would go ‘I think you should do these types of windows’, which were ridiculously expensive. Finally, I said 'Please show me the exact requirements, I cannot go with ‘you think’. They just wanted to sit around and come up with stupid stuff like requiring you to have a lemon tree in front yard. And, of course, they only meet once a month or something.
With one of our first CC flips, the house was located in the La Mesa historical district. Technically I was supposed to submit plans to the local Historical Society for review about once a month. The neighbor next door was on the Committee. He advised just to claim I was rebuilding existing front porch and then I didn’t have to get approval. So, the existing front porch got rebuilt completely even though it was technically about 3 ft wider than the original horrible door overhang.
Just an update on what is going on out at the Adobe house.
Last week we met with an architectural historian who walked the property. She is an expert on adobe brick construction. First issue is that you are not supposed to ‘seal’ or paint adobe brick. So, big boo boo in master bedroom, although the other 3 small bedrooms are painted so that wasn’t my fault! She found only one area on the exterior where there were sprinkler issues deteriorating the adobe brick.
Evidently, adobe ‘breathes’ between the outside and inside of the house and creates perfect humidity inside the house. Did not know that. I knew it helped with keeping temperatures even, but had no idea it adjusted the humidity inside the home.
This week I am focusing on finalizing estimates from companies to retrofit the entire house with Mini Split AC/heater systems. We have to pull a lot of 240 electric lines outside for the disconnect boxes on a total of 7 systems mounted around the house. Some of the outside condensers will manage two interior systems inside the bedrooms. I told her that I just could not spare my electrician to come over for a week and pull all the electrical. Luckily there are 240 volt wall heaters in most of the rooms and we are going to pull those out and have the 240 line available to run outside. Do not have to run electrical all the way from the panel (which is oddly located in a closet in the center of the house - not mounted outside??). Total cost for the following is $24,000
2 ton Living Room
2 ton Family Room
2 ton shared Dining Room / Bedroom
1.7 ton Bedroom/Office
1.7 ton Master Bedroom / Master Bath
Next week we are proceeding with more painting. Owner decided that the beam in the master bedroom needed to be painted black because it was originally painted black, then someone came in and did a wood faux paint over the black. But, when we took down the track lighting, there are large black lines down the bottom of the beam (obviously, the wood faux painting happened after track lights installed). So painting it back to black since it is not a natural finish anyway
Painting 2 bedroom ceilings out to white with natural beams
Painting Dining Room ceiling to a Wow soft charcoal grey satin with natural beams.
Got me interested in adobe so went on a serendipitous google search. Sounds iffy to me as to advantages depending on the initial construction etc. I wouldn’t worry about the paint…
The expert does not believe the house will qualify for historical designation (to lower property taxes). She noticed a subtle difference in the exterior Adobe bricks that showed that there was a set of additions on the original house. The original house was kind of a rectangle Adobe with original wood casement style windows. Evidently the entire entryway with that cupola tower was added, laundry room addition, living room addition and master bath. All added circa 80s we think. That disqualifies the original integrity.
A lot of stuff has been going on at the El Cajon Adobe, but nothing sexy. We are still painting, painting, painting. There is a controversy between the College Son and Mom over whether to paint the living room, family room and kitchen wood ceilings. In the family room and kitchen, the main beams have been painted with some kind of faux wood paint. Those beams will get painted black. But son does not want to paint the actual pine board ceilings because it will be too hard to bring them back to natural wood in the future. I don’t like them but it is not my house so I stay out of the discussion.
We installed 8 mini split systems throughout the house tied to 5 condensers outside. What a huge job!! In order to get electrical outside for the condensers we had to tear out all the old wall heaters to use the wiring. Of course, this left gaping holes in the walls that had to be patched up and now we have to paint those walls. But the most interesting thing is that the HVAC guy discovered the house is not solid adobe after all. He had to drill thorough 16" of wall to get the lines outside for the condensers. Turns out that the house is a 4" poured concrete wall in the middle with thick adobe mortared on the inside and thicker adobe mortared on the outside. The adobe is not structural. Craziest thing, have no idea why they have poured concrete walls instead of 2x4 or 2x6 walls?? Maybe it was part of trying to keep thermal properties for cooling in summer. Then the new addition part of the house is regular 2x4 framing with adobe inside and outside.
We have been working hard on the kitchen design for the El Cajon adobe house because she wanted that to be next project. But no!!! the laundry room drain system backed up. This happened while I was there monitoring the Mini Split Install. I noticed water backing up out of the floor drain in the laundry room. They called in a plumber and $3,500 later the laundry room floor had to be opened up and they discovered cast iron drain line under slab had crushed at the floor drain area. Now it turns out the cast iron is shot from hall bath to laundry drains.
So, our new project is tearing out all the saltillo flooring in laundry room and small toilet/shower room in laundry. She wants to paint laundry cabinets white, new countertop, pull out the whole sink cabinet area to get to hall bath plumbing and new shower, new toilet. And paint all the doors and windows, tear off wallpaper and paint walls. So, we are diverting over to laundry room and I had to call my tile guy and beg him to do the job because my crew has no band width at this point. Probably a $10,000 job after all the plumbing repairs.
I loaded some photos of El Cajon stuff into photo group
I agree. Minisplits are functional but oh so ugly! In one house we got outbid on, the builder installed them so that the air would be coming from cool looking round registers in the ceiling. Very slick and functional.
Lol! @thumper1 is spot on the money. How about a middle road? Reface them! We did! Refaced the hideously painted maple cabinetry with cherry veneers and new cherry doors.
It’s a lot of cabinets in there!! There are cabinets everywhere, more than most people have in their kitchens. It would be at least 12k to get inexpensive cabinets
I’ve seen the ceiling registers for the mini splits but the El Cajon house has two strikes; no crawlspace or basement and absolutely no attic or anyplace to run anything… Electric wires are running across the top of the walls covered by some hideous redwood boards that are another color of wood from everything else
Yes, I do not have to feel guilty about painting the Adobe walls in master bedroom in the wrong paint. I spent a month trying to source breathable paint for that house. Could only find it on the East Coast. I cannot imagine ‘shipping paint’, especially trying to get the color right. Turns out it is high VOC and is illegal in California. Finally found a somewhat breathable paint at Sherwin Williams called Harmony
