Debra Lynn Dadd

Our House

I live in Clearwater, Florida--note the Florida color scheme on this page :-)--with my husband Larry Redalia.

Clearwater is located on the west side of central Florida, right on the Gulf of Mexico. It is primarily a bedroom and beach resort community--no industry or farming--just houses, tropical breezes, and palm trees. In the winter the "snowbirds" come from up north to their winter homes and the population about doubles. In the spring we get the college crowd on spring break. In the summer tourists from all over the world come to the beach.

Why we chose Clearwater

We chose Clearwater because we had been here on vacation and we felt happy here. Being right on the Gulf of Mexico, the general outdoor air quality is very good. We also wanted to live in a place where there was less economic stress than the San Francisco Bay Area. We wanted to have a life, rather than spend all our time earning money to pay the mortgage. "Following our happiness" worked. We've lived here three years now and every day say it was the best decision we ever made. Sure, I miss the some of the cultural aspects of the San Francisco area, but we have other benefits here that, for us, far outweigh our lack of shops and restaurants.

Habitat

After living in a forest in California for twelve years, we were a little reluctant to move to what is basically a suburban subdivision, but amazingly enough, we actually have more wildlife here on our little quarter acre lot than we did in our one-acre patch of forest in California. Clearwater is located right on the border between the northern Florida temperate habitat and the southern Florida tropical habitat, so we have such strange natural occurances as native oak trees growing next to native palm trees.

Our house happens to be in a small grove of half a dozen ancient native oak trees with tangerine, orange, grapefruit and lemon trees planted under their protective canopy. So we have a little shaded woodland habitat in our backyard. Three resident squirrels keep us entertained as we watch them run up and down the limbs of the trees and leap from branch to branch high in the canopy. Mockingbirds, blue jays, and doves live in our yard, with visits from red-breasted robins, woodpeckers, cardinals, and even such exotic birds as green parrots, snowy egrets and ibises. The snowy egrets here just walk up and down the sidewalk as if they are people! We have beautiful butterflies and leaping lizards and geckos.

We live a few miles inland from the Gulf, but at the highest point of land--a whole 57 feet above sea level. If there were not houses and trees in the way, we would have a great view down to the water. So we get westerly breezes off the water most of the year.

Neighborhood

This subdivision was established in 1928 and my house was built in 1940. At the time it was laid out with wide streets and large lots and open space. Though the houses are similar in style, each was custom built with its own floorplan, and some of the lots were built up at a later date, so there is a real diversity of housing of different styles and sizes. Pretty good for suburbia!

Because the lots are larger, there is more than the usual amount of space between the houses. We are on a corner, and there is a backyard, so we have a close neighbor on one side. But even that neighbor's house is on the other side of a strip of land big enough for us to build a bathroom extension and still be ten feet from the property line and their driveway, so we have some space around the house.

How we found our house

Once Larry and I made the decision to move, we made a list of the features we wanted in our new house and then we started our search on the Internet. After we found that there were many houses in the Clearwater area that met our needs in our price range, we felt confident we could sell our house and find a house we would like in Clearwater.

Before arriving in Clearwater we had found a realtor who was a referral from a friend of a friend of a friend. We had made an advance appointment, so when we arrived, she was ready with a list of houses to show us.

First, we eliminated any house under power lines or near power substations. In California this wasn't a problem, but here in Florida the big overhead powerlines run right over residential areas and the substations are right in the neighborhoods. We found a house we loved, actually, but it was a couple of empty lots away from a substation. I got out my gaussmeter, which I took to all the houses to measure electromagnetic fields (EMFs), and they were higher than the meter could read. So I crossed that one off the list.

We also eliminated any house on major busy streets because of noise and car exhaust, and any house where heavy smokers had lived.

Also, we rejected houses that had recently been remodeled, though we went and looked at them to see what exactly had been done. Sellers are often advised to "fix up" a property to make it show better, resulting in inexpensive quick-fix construction or decorating that may be toxic. Though we knew we could handle most toxic problems, we didn't want to pay for remodeling or decorating we didn't want or would have to remove.

One house we looked at had a new name-brand wood floor installed that I knew contained formaldehyde. We didn't like that house for other reasons, but if we had, we could have removed the floor if we could have negotiated a reduction in price. Other remodeling and decorating problems we looked for were new paint (particularly oil-based enamel, which is still allowed in some states, including Florida), new synthetic carpets, and new formaldehyde-emitting particleboard in kitchen and bathroom cabinets and built-in.

What we were looking for was an older (pre-1950) house with trees in the yard. We chose 1950 as the cut-off date for both aesthetic and materials reasons. Until about mid-1960, houses were built with real wood. After mid-1960, you start finding more and more plywood and particleboard and poorer-quality construction. We wanted real wood and solid construction. And we just prefer the design of homes built before 1950. That's why we chose that date.

We were also looking for a house that had few owners. We didn't want a house that had been bought and sold and bought and sold every few years, because every few years it would have been routinely tented and fumigated for structural pests in order to qualify for the loan.

After looking at houses all afternoon, our realtor asked if we minded if she stopped by her house, as we were nearby. She was renting and her landlord had asked her to move out at about the same time we initially set up our appointment with her. The landlord wanted to sell the house and had set up an appointment for pre-sale fumigation that day. The fumigators hadn't come that morning and she just wanted to check to see if they had ever arrived,

In fact, the fumigators hadn't come. I looked at the house. It was a bigger than the houses we had been looking at. Inside were the original oak floors, 9-foot ceilings with crown moldings, and a big "Florida room" with a wall full of windows looking out into the garden that I could use for my writing room. After living and working in a 750 square foot cabin in California for twelve years, I just burst into tears standing in the 15 x 30 foot living room. After living in California my whole life, paying a fortune to live in little boxes, I couldn't believe that we could live in this big beautiful space for much less money than we had been paying in California. And...it hadn't been fumigated.

The realtor was very natural-minded and had not used any pesticides on the property during the previous three years she lived there. No remodeling had been done. And fumigation actually wasn't necessary. We found we could pass the termite inspection after a nontoxic termite treatment using boric acid in a few small areas. It had some lead paint on the exterior doors and window frames, but that could easily be removed or replaced. No problems with asbestos, particleboard, or any other major toxic exposures.

The house wasn't listed yet and the seller hadn't even set a price. So we made an offer that our realtor thought was reasonable, specifying clearly that we would only purchase the house as is. If the seller did one thing to it, the deal would be off. No pesticides, no cleaning, no painting, no floor refinishing. Nothing. She accepted.

A work-in-progress

I wouldn't go so far as to call this house a "fixer-upper". It is certainly habitable, but does need some work. It is still the original 1940 house with no kitchen or bathroom remodel. It had some strange paint colors--like a bright red room and one with purple walls and a neon green ceiling.

Our house wasn't built with any kind of environmental specifications, but it was built in an era when few toxic products were in general use. We have wood floors, plaster walls, and a kitchen full of solid wood cabinets. Our bedroom is on the east side, so sunlight comes in the window in the morning. We have a mud room where we can stop when we come in from the garden. Rather than build a new green house from the bottom up, we have chosen to restore this lovely older house and update it with features that will improve its environmental performance.

So there are things to do, but basically we're comfortable and happy and at least once a week one of us will exclaim, "Don't you just love this house?!"

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