OLD HOUSE REVIVAL : Fixer-Upper Took Couple Across Threshold of Residential Market
When Stu and Diana Livingstone decided to move back to Southern California in 1981, there was no debate about where they would live: Orange, the city in which they were raised.
They bought a tiny place on West Almond Avenue in Orange’s old town section--an 850-square-foot wooden cottage with a mortgage payment low enough to be handled by a flight attendant and a former minor-league baseball player who was just starting an auto wholesaling business.
Eight years later, the Livingstones have just moved into their third home in old Orange, a two-story brick mansion on Maple Avenue built in 1923 by one of the city’s early physicians. They bought the home for $300,000 and will spend about the same amount refurbishing it.
The couple’s experience is a textbook case of old-house living, Orange County style. They have known both the joys of living in homes with a history and difficulties of life in partially refurbished structures.
The Livingstones rebuilt that first small cottage themselves, painting, papering and plumbing on weekends and evenings.
“It wasn’t that we were so desirous of working on an old house,” Diana said. “Stu isn’t even all that handy. He prefers designing. But it was a way to get started” in home ownership.
A second mortgage against the equity they had built up in that first house got the Livingstones into their next old Orange property in 1984. They kept and still own the first place, which brings them rental income.
The second house, on Palmyra Avenue, was a huge project, Stu said. “We completely redid the ground floor, the plumbing and wiring, and all the landscaping the first year, and then we went into the attic and put in a master bedroom and bath.”
After that, the Livingstones built a new garage--the old one was barely standing--with an upstairs apartment.
Through it all Diana became an expert at finding sources for old house parts, often carting doorknobs and other items home from flights to the East Coast or Europe.
Then, while driving home one night in 1987, Diana passed “that brick house on Maple.” She said she and Stu had always loved the place, which they first saw when they were students at nearby Orange High School.
The next day, Diana left on another flight and Stu, without telling her, called a Realtor and made an offer on the house. A few days later, Diana discovered she was pregnant with the couple’s second child.
The Livingstones stayed on the Palmyra Street for two more years, renting out the Maple Avenue home while they solidified their finances and let their young family grow.
They sold the Palmyra house last year--for $335,000, a testimonial to what a dedicated restoration effort in a hot real estate market can do--and began work on the Maple mansion.
