This house is not quite our dream house (indeed, that would have to have a decent sized back yard) but it's close enough to be comfortable. It's got an interesting history, having been previously owned by a couple with an Iraqi surname. They lost it in a foreclosure after a number of years' worth of wheeling and dealing, flipping properties. The house looks like it was in the middle of being fixed up to sell, but the reality as conveyed by a guy down the street is that they actually did the work in 2004 and never bothered to take, for example, the Home Depot stickers off of the ballusters for the railing.
When consulting the city planning office, all the plans they filed had middle eastern names associated with everything. I suspect that they never employed a single American architect, and this lead to the water damage issues that ultimately produced huge, toxic levels of mold infestation. In the desert, water evaporates very quickly. I'm sure that they don't have to mess with as much waterproofing, etc as in a more temperate climate. It seems that no one involved in the remodelling project actually understood that houses in coastal climates will in fact develop riotous mold growth if one fails to be painstakingly careful when it comes to moisture!
Anyway, there are a few very nice things about this place. For one thing, it has five bedrooms. This means, of course... our room, Brian's room, guest room, storage, room, and armory. I've wanted an armory of my very own for quite some time, and I daresay that the only reason I can have one, is that I married an understanding woman. Eventually there will be steel bars on the armory window, and an auto-closing fire door with a keypad/key combo lock. Sure, someone could still sledgehammer through the drywall but it'll still be more secure than most peoples' gun storage.
Other rooms include a partitioned enclosure inside the garage (it's not quite a room because it doesn't extend to the ceiling) for my gunsmithing gear, the garage itself for the various shop tools I have and will acquire, and an interesting little "roost" room that comes up from the master bedroom closet.
