Renovating a Joshua Tree Home
Living in the city of Los Angeles was particularly intense for my wife. She had just moved from Australia a few months ago where she was more accustomed to having more land and far fewer people. I once stumbled upon a world map that illustrated the relative size of a country’s population to a city. This illustration showed Australia’s population fitting into Spain. Since my wife loved the outback and felt homesick, we visited a handful of National Parks. The first National Park we visited was the knee-high streams of Zion, then we slept under the stars of Yosemite, then we visited the panoramic views of Joshua Tree. Just two hours away from Los Angeles, Joshua Tree felt like an easy escape from the city life. During our first trip, we went to Pappy and Harriet's in Pioneertown, visited the Cholla cactus garden, saw countless jackrabbits running between the Joshua Tree forests. After a short discussion, we decided to buy a vacation home and visit once a month, subsidized as an Airbnb rental.
The wide panoramic views and peaceful pace reminded my wife of the Australian outback. We also never worked on a house before and thought it’d be a fun project.
After looking at 5 different properties, we decided on something in the semi-rural area as opposed to Joshua Tree city or Yucca. Since the point was to “get away”. The city of Joshua Tree generally has 3 types of zoning: city, semi-rural, and rural. City living in Joshua Tree has all the amenities of a city: sewer, water, electric. This usually came with less square feet and a bit more light pollution. Living in a rural area has electric and water but doesn’t have a sewer system that can be substituted with a septic system. Living in rural is completely off-grid, requiring hauling your water, solar power, and septic. The hauling of water proved to be too much hassle for this couple wanting a vacation home so we decided that semi-rural would be a good middle-ground for us.
The beauty of buying a vacation home in this era is Airbnb. I used to think only the wealthy could have an additional vacation home but with Airbnb, we were able to subsidize an extra home.
We landed on a cozy 960 square feet bungalow sitting on 4 acres of land. This bungalow was built in the 1970s and needed a lot of work. Listed for $112K, we brought the price down to $107K due to some flooring issues. What also attracted us to this place was the extra parcel next door. The total land comprised of 4 acres but subdivided into two parcels with two APNs and two different water meters. Furthermore, the extra parcel creates an opportunity for a future build, Tortoise Tower.
Also, the Joshua Tree home is located on the main road which helps us avoid floods and provides visible access at night. Space can be loud due to passing cars but being on a larger road brings a sense of safety.
Though space felt closed, we saw the potential with wall breaking renovation. My wife wanted white on everything to make space look more open and clean. Furthermore, white looks clean and you can’t hide dirt on white.
We knocked down the walls that housed the washer and dryer, the strange angled island with the kitchen table, and repositioned the stove. To save on propane cost, we switched everything that was running on propane to electric: water heater, stove, and air conditioner/heater unit.
Getting Estimates
The previous owners stapled plastic and made their own double pane windows. The plastic did not keep the heat out or dampen the noise from outside either. We knew we had to upgrade to double-pane windows with argon gas between the panes to keep the heat in and leaving the noise and cold out. We immediately had Home Depot provide quotes which ranged from $5K for 9 windows. Home Depot can only change windows, they can’t structurally change the frame which was costly for our two small restroom windows.
For the restroom, we had Kohler come in for a shower install estimate, $15K, just for the base model, just for the shower. That was an easy “no.”
After all these random quotes and coordination work, we decided to meet with a general contractor who would be able to manage all the moving parts. We walked through everything we wanted to change and we received a rough quote of $70K, way out of our ballpark.
After hearing all of these obstacles we had been going through, my father suggested we go with “Mr. Wu”, a gentleman who worked on my dad’s kitchen 10 years ago, Mr. Wu. His quoted $28K, the only catch was, he didn’t speak English.
The Renovation Process
What Mr. Wu did: Mr. Wus $29K package included completely wiping out the kitchen and knocking down two walls to create a more open concept, installing a new kitchen. Remodeling two bathrooms which included gutting the entire bathtub and installing a shower. And installing 2 split air conditioning units.
As always, renovations took longer than planned. Mr. Wu quoted 2 months but worked on the property for almost 4 months. Couple reasons for the delay: the area that had the washer/dryer had a leak thus causing it to take longer than usual. Also, his team had other projects so, during some moments, he had to work alone.
To keep costs down, he borrowed our beds to sleep on-site and hauled the demolition debris back home, Monterey Park, CA, 2 hours away. He had his own shop where he sold tile and kitchen supplies and apparently a dumpster.
He came in for a couple of days a week but worked all night, like 7 am to 9 pm to get the job down. It was a 2-hour drive. We would drive up every weekend to see the progress and provide payment per each review. We would also haul up material that came in the mail, like a natural wood door, electric water heater, industrial designed light fixtures. We couldn’t use amazon prime to deliver merchandise because no one was there to receive the goods.
For the kitchen, we bought our own induction stovetop, copper sink, and oil bronze fixtures. Additionally, we bought a washer and dryer but Mr. Wu installed it for us as part of the package.
We chose copper to provoke an old-world feel waiting for it to oxidize. I’m not sure if we would do this again. My wife doesn’t like the vintage look so we spend a fortune on copper cream to keep it polished. With each water drop, it oxidizes to green, like the statue of liberty!
Convert all propane appliances to electric: electric washer and dryer and an electric water cooler. We did not foresee this so we had to pay Mr. Wu an additional $1K to purchase and install this.
Where Mr. Wu fell short was the cleanup process. To save money, he didn’t use a proper dumpster, he hauled as much back to Monterey Park as he could each trip he took.
Post Contractor Work
It took us 2 months after the contractor done to finish the Joshua Tree home. Mr. Wu did a decent job on the rehabilitation of the place given the price we paid, notably the kitchen, floors, and bathroom. However, the place needed a lot of touches like paint, landscaping, and cleanup. Unfortunately, the trim wasn’t done too well, we had to come back and put edging, fill gaps between the shower and restroom flooring. Also, his team left cigarette buds everywhere.
We saved money by painting the walls and ceilings ourselves. We rented a machine for $150 from Home Depot but since the walls were a smooth paneled surface, it didn’t take our paint primer with the first spray. We had to put 2–3x coats of primer. The paint oozing so we also had to use a roller for the dripping paint. We didn’t get all of it so we spent a lot of time sanding. Painting the ceiling was difficult because when you spray up, all the paint comes down. Needless to say, I inhaled a lot of white paint that day. Please get proper goggles and face masks. I had a bandana and ray bans (had).
It took about a month or 4 weekends to sand down a lot of excess paint, insert silicon filler into gaps. We wanted to launch quickly so we just listed our place as a 1 bedroom 1 bath.
In June 2018, we were done. The next step was to furnish the place and do touch-ups. Our biggest issue was the washer-dryer; it was out of control, turns out it wasn’t level so we bought a bunch of unnecessary things like a rubber matt to cushion the bottom.
Landscaping in the Desert
Succulents don’t belong in the desert. Rabbits and coyotes have feasted away at our old succulent garden. You learn to respect what can survive out here because it is harsh. This was surprising because I generally thought Agaves were pretty tough but they were still eaten up in the summer. What I learned later was that the coyotes and rabbits don’t have enough water source in the summer, the have to extract the juices from the cactuses. They will sometimes eat cactuses with spikes. Think about how thirsty you have to be to have a mouth full of spikes.
The cactuses that stay strong are the golden cactus barrel, devil’s tongue, and violet prickly pear, and Ocotillo.
All in all, this has been a challenging project for us but we have been rewarded by having a second home in a spectacular desert. I have learned so much about the desert, and have so much more respect for the plants that live here.
