Starting to enjoy the environs

Now that the house is "up and running," we thought we'd put it to the test and bring some friends - just to break the place in.

The Parkside Cafe has the monopoly on breakfasts - they are the only restaurant (there are three in town) that serves that most important of meals. The Parkside also has full lunch and dinner menus as well as a convenient snack bar that serves both the expected (burgers, hot dogs, shakes, etc.) and the unexpected - real fruit smoothies (without yogurt even).


The beach had a magnificent play of clouds and light.

Finishing off the place

While my wife and I rearranged the furniture, cleaned the windows, mopped the floors, and in general busted our butts for three days, my son and his babysitter

skimboarded

while our dog (a Glen of Imaal Terrier) became a water rat.

Painting will be done tomorrow!

Looks like we're moving along at a good clip. Perhaps we'll rent the place by June 24th or so. We're getting the word out on craigslist.com and via my son's school. Of course we're also using the local companies Oceanic Realty and Highway One Properties to rent and manage the place.

Larry paints the walls, doors, etc.

Larry Wall Sneddon is sanding cabinets, painting walls, and spiffing up the house with great enthusiasm and an eye towards perfection. He is the proprietor of the Stinson Beach Health Club (Treadmill, Free Weights, Aerobics Equipment -- 415-868-2739) on Highway 1.

Sean does the floor

A friend of mine, Jim Steinmetz, of the Reusable Lumber Company, introduced me to his cousin from Utah. His name is Sean Cudney and he's a multi-talented guitar player, wood sculptor and carpenter, and general purpose handyman. He went to town putting in our Ikea flooring and in a few days we had this.

Sean showed me the scar from a major head-on collision that he had. Amazingly he was "flat-lined" - dead - for 32 seconds. He was gone from this earth, and then somehow he returned. We're all quite pleased about that.

We bought it - now we've got to fix it up

We closed on May 25, 2005. Once the furniture was removed we were left with this look upstairs. Not bad, but plenty of room for improvement (for example, the carpet had to go.)

One member of the family, however was immediately ready to jump for joy:

Our First Visit

We had been investigating coastal real estate from Carmel to Inverness, and were also considering Calistoga. The distance is about 185 miles from Carmel to Calistoga.

I had contacted the realtor Terry Donohue from Bolinas Real Estate about a low-key "resort" in Point Reyes that had 15 acres and could accommodate 17 people, but it quickly became obvious that I was getting in over my head.

So I told our very sweet and personable realtor that our dream was to find a place by the beach. The problem was that many other people share the same dream and there isn't much beach property available. We decided that Stinson was the place to look and within two weeks a house came up and we grabbed it.

Here is a photo album of 24 Calle del Sierra the first day we saw it.

Description

This journal will try to capture the feel of (part-time) living in Stinson Beach. Last week we closed on a house at 24 Calle del Sierra and for the next few weeks we'll be renovating it - just in time for the Summer rental season. When we're not renting the house we hope to be visiting it with family and friends.

I plan to document the many faces of the people that live and visit Stinson on a regular basis.