PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

When we moved in 1998, the neighborhood still had quite a few vacant houses, but a lot more people had moved in. We moved to Washington in July 2000, and drove down to Monterey to see family for Christmas in December 2001. Moffett Field was somewhat on the way back, so we stopped to check it out. At the time our second Moffett house, the on-base one we lived in from March 1997 until maybe July 1998, was not only still standing but still being lived in from what we could tell. However, all of the WWII-era houses located just off the base had been torn down. The apartment buildings and newer (1960s-1970s) were still there (and were even still there and still being used in March 2009), but Orange Avenue had been completely erased from existence. The road had been torn up and there were curbs and grass in its place. The playground between Stevens Creek Road and Orange Avenue was still there, but you tell by looking at the vast expanse of grass where Orange Avenue used to be that it had been gone for awhile. As of March 2009, I'm pretty sure no new houses had been built.

 

Before I move on to the next house, I would also like to share the crayfish incident. I'm pretty sure this happened not long after we moved in, in September or October of 1996. We got a lot of rain one time, and the creek behind our house (which the street we lived on was named after) overflowed and flooded our backyard. There was no damage to the house, but our backyard (and the backyard of 480 Stevens Creek Road) was invaded by these creepy mini-lobster things. They obviously were not lobsters as they were way too small and came from a freshwater creek, but looking back they did not resemble crayfish either. They were reddish brown and they had claws. Our Labrador, Molly, did not like them very much and ripped one in half; We did not actually see her do this, but we found half of one along with a trail of guts in the backyard and could only guess what had happened.

 

One of my best friends was a kid about my age (possibly a year younger) named Braden. I do not remember his last name (just that it started with "K") or else I would have reconnected with him on Facebook by now. For some reason, he went to a different elementary school than me, though we were both in the same school district. His family lived in a house just like ours, though unlike our six-plex with four 2-story homes and two 1-story homes, his was a duplex with two 2-story houses. He lived down Orange Avenue (on the right if you were looking down the street from our front yard). Braden's dad was in the Navy, but unlike my dad he was enlisted. Braden had an older sister named Angel. His mom's name was Shanna if I remember correctly. The family cars were a white 1990 Mazda B-series extra-cab pickup, and a black or blue 1990 Ford Thunderbird. The T-bird's transmission went at some point in 1997, and that car was replaced with a white 1994 Chevy S-10 Blazer 4-door 2WD. Just like us, Braden's family was only living in the shitty WWII-era housing while they waited for a bigger house to become available. They moved to a larger 3-bedroom home shortly before we did, though unlike ours theirs was still off base.

My mom and Braden's mom exchanged emails, but she must have fudged when she wrote it down and gotten something wrong, because we never got a response when we tried to contact them after moving to Virginia in 1998. Unfortunately, "Braden K" is not a specific enough name to turn up any worthwhile results on Facebook.

 

This house became available in February or March 1997, shortly before my 8th birthday. The previous family was still living in it when we saw the inside for the first time. Once again, the Navy paid for the move. This house was such a huge improvement over the Stevens Creek house for numerous reasons, including, but not limited to:

• Three bathrooms instead of one!
• Three bedrooms instead of two!
• Covered parking!
• Dishwasher!

Like even the most expensive houses in NorCal, this house did not A/C (never needed). I do not remember what kind of heat it had, but I'm guessing electric baseboard. It was considerably bigger than the Stevens Creek house, but still smaller than any other house we've lived in (I'm guessing like 1,300 square feet). It had three decent-sized bedrooms, but only one full bathroom (as in it had a bathtub/shower combo whereas the other two bathrooms just had a sink and a toilet), which was centrally located in the upstairs hallway area. The master bedroom had its own bathroom, which was only a half bath. The first floor bathroom was also home to the washer and dryer, which was a big improvement over having the washer and dryer shoehorned into the kitchen, but still not ideal...

 

@El Duderino
@LocoLocal
@Plain Jane Taco

In this picture taken on my 8th birthday (March 1997), not long after we moved in, you can see how dated the kitchen looked even then...



Check out those cheap cabinets and the faux wood laminate countertops, and I'm pretty sure that stove was at least 15 years old at the time (keep in mind that this was 1997)!

 

That house was an end unit in a 4-unit building, located on a cul-de-sac of four 4-unit buildings with a parking island in the middle. It was not called a cul-de-sac, but rather a "court". For address/driver's license/mail purposes, it was called West Coat Court...

 

I just brought up the "Stevens Creek" neighborhood on Google Earth, and the apartments and newer houses were will still there in June 2009 (keep in mind that my dad, my uncle, and I took a drive through in March 2009). However, the next available imagery date is September 2009 and all of the apartments and newer duplex homes have been torn down.

 

Upon looking at Google Earth imagery from February 2004, I can tell you that West Coat Court had three 4-unit buildings...

 

Some of the imagery seems to have been mixed up and placed out of order in 2004-2005, but I can tell you that all of those houses and apartments were torn down sometime between July 2004 and December 2004. By March 2006, a new neighborhood of townhouse-like residences had been completed...

They can bulldoze the entire neighborhood, but they'll never bulldoze my memories, dammit!

 

The house we had in Virginia Beach was one of my favorites. My parents paid like $150,000 for it, which was a bargain in my opinion. The house was was built in 1996, and my parents bought it from the original owners in 1998. The house had the typical tract home issues, most notably an issue with cheap plastic/PVC plumbing. However, while every other house on that street was finished in this fake stucco crap (Dryvit) that had quality issues, our house had good old vinyl siding. The house had was 2 stories, with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a living room, and a family room. It was less than 2,000 square feet, but the airy vaulted ceilings in the family room and the living room made it feel much bigger. Most notable was the laundry chute! Yes, that house actually had a laundry chute!

Seeing as it was in Virginia Beach, air-conditioning was obligatory. The house had central air and I'm 99% sure it had gas heat. It had a remote-controlled gas fireplace, so I'm guessing the furnace and water heater were gas. The house had a Carrier air-conditioner if I remember correctly, just a standard efficiency Carrier air-conditioner. If it had been a heat pump, I guarantee you I would have seen it running while playing outside in the cold and then immediately gone running back inside freaking out and asking my parents why the A/C was running in winter. That never happened...

The house had a slab foundation and no basement, so the furnace/air handler was located in the attic. As such, that house did not have typical problems with unevenness that 2-story houses with only one zone of A/C generally had. That was also the first house we'd had since Milpitas that had even one ceiling fan. It came with ceiling fans in the family room and master bedroom, and then my uncle installed a ceiling fan in my bedroom not long after we moved in...

 

This ceiling fan...



Ironically, I've never been into NASCAR, but I loved this fan (I've also played some NASCAR video games too). There was a black Dale Earnhardt #3 fan, and this one, at the Lowes near our house (I'm pretty sure it was a regional thing, just like NASCAR Edition 1998 F150s). The Earnhardt fan was black with all of the red and white graphics of his car. Both fans were the same price. My parents liked the way the white one looked better and honestly I did too, plus they were paying for it, so that's the fan I got.

One weird thing about the fan was that the light took a long and thin halogen bulb instead of a traditional incandescent one, and it was a bitch to change when it burned out. Other than that, it was a good fan. However, unless the new owner of your house either has a kid or is into NASCAR, such a fan will not be a strong selling point. As such, my dad took the fan down, took it apart, and put it back in the original box when we moved out in 2000. It was supposed to be installed in my room at our house in Washington (a rental), but we never got around to it. It stayed in the box for years, and I am pretty sure it was damaged when our basement flooded due to a failed sump pump in late 2006. If we still have it somewhere, I'd be willing to hook it up to electrical and see if it still worked.

 

The Dale Earnhardt version of the same fan...

 

The house in Virginia Beach was one of three houses we lived in (two buys and one rental) that had an electric stove despite having gas heat. I'm not much of a cook, but I do know how to cook; When I do, I prefer a gas stove. I should also point out that all of our houses that had electric stoves (regardless of the type of heat) had those god awful coil-elements. They look ugly and they're a bitch to clean! The Dunhill had a gas stove, the townhouse in Furlong had a gas cooktop, and the house I live in now has a gas stove. The house in Virginia Beach also did not have a built-in microwave.

Also of note is that the TV alcove was located above the fireplace. It was the perfect size for our 32" Sony Trinitron, but the VCR was on top of the TV and I couldn't reach it. My mom had to put tapes in and remove them for me!

The house had a 2-car garage but did not come with garage door openers, either, and was the only house we ever had with a concrete driveway.

I loved that house!

 

Good old military housing. They just torn down and replaced all the housing offer the last 10 years at the Marine Corps base my house

 

My dad rented this house a guy he knew in the Navy, who was moving to Maine. I absolutely loved this house. It was the only house we ever had with a three-car garage. The house was built well enough, but it was very outdated. It was built in 1988, and with the exception of maybe some of the carpet, I'm 99% sure the interior had never been updated. Exposed wood trim abounded everywhere, with parquet floors in the foyer and a kitchen with laminate floors and a butcher block island counter. A good number of the doors were hideaway doors that slid into the walls. They were actually kind of cool, but I'd managed to break one of them to the point that it would no longer slide during the two years we lived there. The house had a working central vacuum system; Just like the laundry chute in the Virginia Beach house had encouraged me to make sure my dirty clothes got to the laundry room, the central vacuum encouraged me to help about by vacuuming the house! I just thought it was the coolest thing! The central vac proved to be too cumbersome and we stopped using it after a while, though.

That house did have gas forced air central heat, but no central air. Like in California, it just was not needed that often! One obnoxious thing about that house was that the florescent lights in the family room burned out every few weeks, and it was not easy to change them.

When the people we renting from sold the house in 2002, the home inspector went into the crawlspace to look around. He found the remains of a cat under the house, and thought it might be a family pet. He started whispering to my dad (because he didn't want to upset my mom who was right there), asking if we were missing a cat. My mom is allergic to cats, so my parents assured him that the cat wasn't ours. Somehow, we were able to figured out that the cat had probably been there for about five years, which was longer than the people we were renting from had owned the house!

 

Lasted over 50 years at Moffett!

 

This was the biggest house we ever owned, or lived in. Period. With the finished basement, the size was easily close to 4,000 square feet (yet the house had only one air-conditioner). The house was originally a 4-bedroom/2.5-bathroom, but the finished basement was large enough to be its own residence and had a fifth bedroom and third full bathroom! The reason I call that house the Monstrosity is because that's exactly what it was. It just a box with gray vinyl siding, built on a too-small piece of land with a power line pole in the backyard! The inside was absolutely beautiful though! Hardwood floors everywhere except the kitchen (which had tile), crown molding, 9-foot ceilings, and upgraded light fixtures. My parents' bedroom was above the garage, and the central air was barely adequate to keep it cool during the summer. Another quirk of that house was that it was absolutely huge, but the laundry room was actually a closet next to the master bedroom. It was also the first house we ever lived in with a the washer and dryer on the second floor. My parents made a killing when they sold that house!

 

Correction: The first house we lived in at Moffett Field was just called Stevens Road, not Stevens Creek Road. Our second house there was on Wescoat Court, not West Coat Court. Both of these still exist, but they never rebuilt after tearing down the last of the dwellings on an and around Stevens Road.

 

You know what I really miss? Good old tax-free toys and free prescription meds at the Navy Exchange, and tax-free junk food at the commissary. I could still get all that with my military ID, but the closest operational Navy base is in New Jersey!

 

@El Duderino

Tax-free everything! When we lived in Virginia Beach, did almost all of our shopping at NAS Oceana Exchange!