After 5 years of talking about it, Laura and I finally pulled the trigger on moving to Long Beach. It was a bittersweet decision. While we were very excited about moving to a nicer area of Long Beach relative to our “up and coming” area of San Pedro, it was very hard to let go of our craftsman style house on Mesa St. Not only because I had a rock bottom interest rate but because we basically sank our 30s into improving that house. I often found myself mentally listing all the things we had done to that house since moving in.

Installed turf/irrigation in the backyard, built a floating deck, installed vinyl fencing/gates, installed flagstone in the backyard, built multiple planter boxes, rewired and plumbed the whole house, added a new electric panel to the garage, renovated the kitchen, added a bathroom, installed an AC mini-split system, replaced the front porch decking (thanks Dad)… just to name a few. There is some solace in that the buyer of our Mesa house seems like a good guy intent on preserving it’s charms while he is it’s caretaker.

Check out the highlights below and click any photo to see the full Google album.