Polishing a turd: 1317 Sunnyslope Avenue, Belmont

There’s a brand new home in my neighborhood: bright blue paint, cheery yellow front door, generous picture window for gazing from the well-appointed living room to a tree-lined street. With four bedrooms spread across 1,910 square feet, No. 1317 Sunnyslope Avenue in Belmont seems the perfect starter home for a young family – a young family able to foot the $1.4 million price tag.

One month ago, No. 1317 appeared condemned. I know because I toured the property when it was listed for $795,000: The moldy wood floors sagged. The warped window sashes failed to meet the sills. The ramshackle addition towering over the main structure threatened to crumble. When the house was constructed back in 1938, the property likely included land now occupied by newer, neighboring houses. Present day, the home is stuffed onto a tiny, 4,410 square foot lot, the only “backyard” a buckled concrete driveway.

I carried the home’s real estate flyer to my home and work and showed it to my disbelieving husband and coworkers. I texted a picture to a friend in Denver and posted the image on Facebook.

The flyer’s text read like a warning:

“Prospective buyers are advised to check with the City of Belmont regarding any plans to remodel or redevelop the property, and satisfy themselves as to the property’s condition and future potential for remodel or redevelopment.”

In the two years I’ve lived in Silicon Valley, I’ve come to appreciate its realtors as a particularly delusional lot. They pepper their property publications with flowery descriptions, selecting adjectives like “beautiful” and “charming” willy-nilly to characterize 600-square-foot shacks abutting Caltrain railroad crossings. But Anthony Christen of Coldwell Banker, so cock-sure of a sale in this mania of a real estate market, simply told it like it was: “this large home has been vacant off and on for the past 2 to 4 years.” BEWARE.

I took to referring to No. 1317 as “the toxic waste dump house,” a building in such disarray and with so many red flag disclosures that it had to be harboring oil tank contamination – or at least a few decomposing bodies under the fetid floorboards. When it sold for $1,065,500 -- $270,500 over asking price – after just eight days on the market, I just laughed.

I was curious how the property might look once the house had been bulldozed, so I drove by No. 1317 a few days after it sold.  To my surprise, the structure still stood, and the exterior had been painted a bright blue. Workers buzzed inside and outside the home. A massive dumpster, as long as the house was wide and brimming with construction waste, sat near the sidewalk. Could that receptacle possibly be large enough to fit the entire house inside? Again, I laughed.

Yesterday, I received an email alert notifying me of a new Belmont home for sale: No. 1317 Sunnyslope Avenue, priced at $1.4 million. Could it possibly be the same home? Within the image gallery, a near-macro close-up of the address over the front door seemed to serve as verification: Yes! It is the same home! The remainder of the gallery revealed a stunning transformation: A decorator had hung curtains, graced the fireplace with a funky starburst mirror and invitingly draped a frilly blanket over the slipcover sofa’s armrest. The kitchen featured a brand-new refrigerator, Restoration Hardware-esque swivel stools and a potted orchid plant. The bedrooms were streamlined and clean and, well, inviting. The basement, once home to my imaginary decomposing bodies, now contained a Ping-Pong table. And someone had the good sense to splurge on a rattan lounge set to spruce up the driveway/backyard.

Here’s the new property description, courtesy of Keller Williams’ Marylene Notarianni (Warning: frivolous capitalization and exclamation points to follow):

“BEST LOCATION IN BELMONT! With highly accredited Belmont Schools, and everything you need within 4 blocks! Walk to Caltrain, restaurants, shops, and Twin Pines Park. Completely remodeled with stylish features, designer colors and gorgeously redone original hardwood floors.”

But you don’t need to take Marylene’s word for it. There’s an open house at 12 p.m. Sunday (Nov. 15) and likely a bidding war on Monday. 

I wish the new owners the very best of luck.

World's saddest "literary" claim to fame

My biggest dream is to walk into a bookstore and see my novel, with my name (pretentious middle initial and all) printed across the spine, nestled snugly between other hardbacks on a shelf. I’m not greedy; I don’t require one of those cardboard stands displaying dozens of copies of my bestseller or even placement upon that prominent “featured” shelf at the end of a bookcase; a single copy of my masterpiece within a non-“adult” bookstore will suffice. I’ll even autograph it – for free.

Becoming a published novelist, however, requires something I don’t have: a published novel. Heck, I don’t even have an unpublished novel. I do, however, have an incredibly goofy photograph of myself tunneling through a blue whale’s heart, and it is with this image that I can finally claim a microscopic segment of bookstore real estate.

Let me explain: My husband, Matt, took the photograph in early 2013 during our visit to Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum and art gallery. The children’s wing contains a fiberglass model of a blue whale’s heart. Designed to scale, the model is roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle -- the vintage kind with the trunk in the front. Visitors are allowed – nay, encouraged – to climb inside the slippery aorta, and so I did – and demanded Matt take a photograph. The photo made its way onto our travel blog, earned semi-viral status for all the wrong reasons (click on the "Oh god I can't unsee it" link) eventually caught the attention of the Guinness Book of World Records.

 Months went by. I forgot about the whole affair – until this past Sunday. On Monday, I drove to Barnes and Noble.

“Can you tell me where you keep the Guinness Book of World Records?” I asked a 20-something female clerk.

The clerk escorted me from one end of the store to the other, a stroll just long enough to generate a pregnant pause I felt compelled to fill.

“I want to see it because I think I might be in it,” I gushed. I suddenly realized this statement implied I had earned a spot in the book by vanquishing some record, i.e., performing the most number of chin-ups from the “human flag” position or crafting the globe’s largest toast mosaic (actual Guinness-recognized honors). So I added a clarification:

“Um, my husband took a picture of me climbing through a whale’s heart, and the photo editor said she might use it.”

“Oh really?”

And then, the moment of truth: We stood in awed silence before the glorious tome, a garish chartreuse-colored hardback gracing the top shelf of the “Trivia” bookcase. I lunged for the book and began flipping through the pages. The clerk, perhaps reasoning that we’d already come so far together, remained at my elbow and watched. But after a polite handful of seconds went by and I failed to locate the image, she retreated toward the information desk.

“I am in it!” I exclaimed, holding up the book to display page 30 and the baby fist-sized image of me and the plastic heart tucked near the book’s gutter (publishing lingo for “the ditch in the middle of the book”). There was my wristwatch and the white, long-sleeved shirt I wore and washed and wore and washed throughout that 6-month trip. And there was my silly expression, a look of sheer wonderment.

“Oh,” the clerk said. “Wow.” She was undoubtedly impressed. And then gone.

I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a photo of the photo and a photo of Matt’s photo credit. Then I gently placed the book back on the shelf. It was a start.