House rules…

In this district of Studio City, so called by the fact that film studios liked to locate here, there are streets of houses away from the main roads that are quiet and peaceful. The area has a number of quite old houses for LA, old being the 20s and 30s . It’s a desirable place to live especially for families but the housing is not cheap. I’m told it’s not cheap almost anywhere in LA.

The demographic in this area is fairly young professionals. Most houses have a two car garage attached or to the side of the house. Generally service vehicles are the only ones parked on the streets, that is the population of usually Mexican or Latino workers who clean, mow grass, clean inside the houses, or at the moment walk around with small noisy engines on their backs blowing leaves or dust everywhere to keep the streets clean.

The older houses are sadly gradually being developed. As older inhabitants die off leaving behind quite interesting older properties, the big machines move in and flatten them. So they can then build new fancy houses sometimes at least three times the size of the originals in their place.

Just the other day I walked past a house like this and by the next day it was gone, into the back of a huge truck. Very sad in many ways. New houses have to have permits of course, but frequently houses tower over neighbouring smaller properties and have windows and balconies overlooking neighbours. One particular house in the area has been a building site for well over a year, I thought it might be finished when we came this year, but they are still working on it. Building materials are completely different to ours too, with minimum use of scaffolding and a lot of wood used and what looks like compressed wood board. It wouldn’t work in the UK, a week of rain would take an age to dry it out

You’d end up with a warped house!

Here are a few that I passed by today.

Standard wicket fence, pleasant house all round. I’ve only seen one person sitting out on the front porch in this area, though lots of houses have the chairs outside like this.

Here’s part of a pleasant house front. Some good gardens around here too. Generally the grass stays green as they have watering systems.

This one is a successful re-build to me. Clean lines and not overbearing.

This more typical of the bungalow type house, they seem quite small at first but some stretch over a large area.

This illustrates how some dominate their old neighbours. This one not finished yet, so not quite sure how the final new building will look like. Apropos of nothing, that black bin out at the front will be collected by the refuse department truck with just the driver operating machinery that lifts the bin and tips the contents into the back of the truck. It’s noisy and usually damages the bin, they don’t last long.

This one is probably the biggest rebuild in the area. Massive place, with even a second building behind it! I wonder if they’ll leave room for the swimming pool?

Going out again today and broadening my search I came across yet another house due for demolition, and probable replacement with a large new alternative. This rather sweet house is for the chop.