Tyler and Tracey Bunting were on their way to the Grape Street dog park when they saw the \u201cfor sale\u201d sign in front of the house. \u201cI\u2019ve lived in the neighborhood since \u201999,\u201d Tracey said, \u201cand I\u2019ve walked by that house a million times. And it\u2019s always stood out to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Now it was for sale. \u201cI said, \u2018We should call on that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But with the overheated real estate market, she had her doubts. \u201cI thought, \u2018It\u2019s probably already in escrow, it\u2019s such a great house,\u2019\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n But as it turns out, it wasn\u2019t in escrow. The Buntings put in an offer. That was last fall. They closed in early November.<\/p>\n The couple found each other in similarly serendipitous circumstances \u2014 or so it seemed \u2014 at a conference for insurance professionals at Disneyland. He was from Utah, she from South Park. He was living in a brand new mansion (by Southern California standards) sitting on a third of an acre. She was in a tiny bungalow on 30th Street. She handled construction defect litigation. He handled commercial liability claims. So it might seem surprising that they met in the Magic Kingdom, hit it off immediately and, before you know it, got married. What are the odds of that?<\/p>\n As it turned out, pretty good. When Tracey and Tyler met, they thought it was a totally random encounter. As it turned out, a friend had engineered the whole thing. \u201cThis gal I know, she knew we were each going to be there,\u201d Tyler said, \u201cand she basically made sure we were in the same room at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n At first they maintained a commuter relationship, then they got married and moved into Tracey\u2019s Craftsman bungalow. With both working from home, after four years, and with two dogs, Tracey\u2019s house began to feel a little tight. Their new place is considerably roomier. It\u2019s a single story Spanish Eclectic bungalow positioned high above the street on a corner lot in South Park. It is \u201csuper bright and airy and open,\u201d Tyler said. \u201cThere isn\u2019t a space in this house that you can stand in that doesn\u2019t have natural light coming in. Every room in the house \u2014 even the bathroom \u2014 is filled with light. I was trying to get an estimate from a window cleaner. He asked, \u2018How many windows?\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019m going to have to walk around and count.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The house is in a world of its own, up above the street.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s different from the other houses in the neighborhood,\u201d Tracey said. \u201cThere\u2019s a bunch of trees outside. It\u2019s a nice feeling, like you\u2019re not too close to the people who walk by. Because of the trees, and because it\u2019s high off the street, we don\u2019t have window coverings. I love seeing people walking by. It\u2019s very friendly, but it feels like you\u2019re not in San Diego. We love sitting out on the deck eating dinner. We love sitting out on the deck with a glass of wine.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite its charms, the house had been neglected in recent years. A longtime owner had died in the house, and then was a rental for three years, before going on the market. The previous owner was something of a colorful neighborhood fixture, with a tortoise that wandered the woodsy grounds. But once Tyler and Tracey moved in, they realized those trees were getting water from a previously unknown source.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew some of the plumbing was bad,\u201d Tyler said. \u201cOur contractor opened every faucet and went under the house to look. It was like Niagara Falls under there.\u201d And it wasn\u2019t just the supply lines that were leaking. The sewer lines were dripping into the crawl space as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know how the renters lived here,\u201d Tracey said. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t have used the water.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe they didn\u2019t open every faucet at once,\u201d Tyler said.<\/p>\n If the black water invasion wasn\u2019t enough, when winter came they discovered the roof leaked too. They had water above and water below. It was a disaster of nearly biblical proportions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe no sooner bought the place than we had to dump more money into it just to make it livable,\u201d said Tyler, who is from Utah, remember, where $350,000 gets you a house twice as big on a lot four times as big. \u201cWith custom landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n One fateful day this spring, the Buntings heard a knock on the door and found two representatives of the Old House Fair on their front porch.<\/p>\n \u201cThose two ladies just came up and knocked on our door and asked if we were interested in putting our house on the tour,\u201d he said. It didn\u2019t take much back and forth before Tyler and Tracey decided, sure, why not? \u201cEspecially when they said there would be a write-up in the brochure, and we\u2019d get to learn about our house\u2019s history.\u201d Artist Brandon Hubbard will also paint portraits of each house, which the tour organizers frame and give to the homeowners.<\/p>\n For decades, old house tours have been a staple of the neighborhood preservation scene. Preservation groups have used them as an education tool and an income stream, as well as an outreach to acquire new members. But the income stream has turned to a trickle, and preservation and homeowner groups are getting spread thin with lawsuits from developers and other projects, such as efforts to preserve murals, landscaping, freeways and fountains. Save Our Heritage Organisation, which for many years hosted an annual house tour, also has a number of historic properties to maintain \u2014 including in Hillcrest, Old Town and Santa Ysabel.<\/p>\n For now, the Old House Fair organizers are sticking with their mission of educating homeowners about how to restore, preserve and carefully modernize old houses, even if the event itself is undergoing a lot of change, with new management and a beer garden. The tour this year remains local, the houses attainable \u2014 at least in San Diego housing market terms. For homeowners and home buyers, the tour provides real world examples of how old houses can be restored and maintained, as opposed to browsing internet real estate listings photos, which show how to appeal to the broadest possible audience of homebuyers, or how to ruin a valuable historic house like a flipper on TV.<\/p>\n As in years past, the Old House Fair will feature booths with experts ready to answer questions and help homeowners restore their houses. Tracey and Tyler don\u2019t plan to shop for a restoration contractor anytime soon, however.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re done,\u201d Tyler said. \u201cWith the expense of the plumbing and the roof, I can\u2019t think of anything we want to do.\u201d But what about prepping for the home tour? Any last minute staging, editing, window washing?<\/p>\n \u201cOh, yes,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cWe\u2019ve got some windows to wash. All 5,000 of them.\u201d<\/p>\n The Old House Fair and Home Tour is scheduled for Saturday, June 17, from 10 a.m.\u20134 p.m., at the corner of 30th and Beech streets in South Park. Advance tour tickets are $25. Day-of tickets are $30. The fair events are free. For more information, go to oldhousefairsd.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014P\u00f3ngase en contacto con Michael Good en visitas domiciliariassdun@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong> Por Michael Bueno | Visitas a domicilio<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1306,"featured_media":251238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"A magical match","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11550,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/web-MAIN-FRONT-COVER-IMAGE.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/web-LOGO.jpg\"){kind=logo}
And how many did he come up with? \u201cThere\u2019s a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n‘What style is it?’<\/a> y ‘The Home Tour Lineup for 2017’<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"