[Open House] 63 Lindberg Northwood... Motel 6?

irvinehomeowner

Well-known member
We were cruising around Northwood last weekend and we saw Open House signs but no listing on Redfin on our iPhone to match it. We switched it to just 'Homes for Sale' and 63 Lindberg popped up... it caught our interest because it was 2900sft and had 6 bedrooms... that's like a motel! It was originally a single story 3 bedroom house but they did some add ons and remodeling to the 1st floor and added a second floor.

$815k, 6br/3ba, 2900sf, 8125sf lothttp://www.redfin.com/CA/Irvine/63-Lindberg-92620/home/4780463

The front location is nice as it fronts a park and an elementary school... the back not so much, the corner of Trabuco and Yale. I've already detailed how I don't like being near main roads (although Yale and Trabuco are more like secondary roads)... but being at the intersection just adds more noise.

The exterior of the house reminds me of our first home, red brick and dark forest green wood accents. There is a sizeable front lawn and a porch area (they even had lawn chairs). The first thing I noticed was even though the garage was attached, the entrance was on the outside, so from your garage you still had to go through your front door.
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As you step in, the kitchen and nook are on your left and a master bedroom is on your right.  I think it's a master bedroom... they had it set up like a family/living room but it had its own closet and a bath attached and was pretty large.
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The kitchen has nice upgrades, granite/stainless but it feels smaller than it looks in the pictures.
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Around the corner from the nook is a laundry/mud area add-on that has a sink and access to the backyard. I don't really like having laundry rooms near kitchen/eating but at least it's an interior laundry room rather than in the garage.
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As you go farther in there is a dining and family/living area. The ceiling is vaulted and the decor is really nice with a nice built-in entertainment center.
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There is an atrium in the center between the front master and the back two rooms, the first room is set up like an office and the second room looks like they made it much larger as it's a sizeable 2nd master.
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There are multiple exits to the backyard (through the living room, back master and laundry room) and the yard is still big even with the extra 1st floor additions (and yes... you can hear the street noise).
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They built a stairs near the 2nd room that's a U-shaped switchback to the upper floor. On the second floor there are three bedrooms that share a large (and pink) bathroom (the picture doesn't show it but there is a pink-tiled shower to the left).
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The 3 upstairs bedrooms aren't very big and the top floor feels more closed in than the bottom floor.

I'm not sure if this is an ideal house for a family with younger kids because usually you want the parents bedroom next to the kids rooms... and if the kids were older... the rooms seem small for tweens/teens and having to share that one bathroom (with no dividing doors for privacy) could be an issue. It also felt like some parts of the house had a different design/style than others.

It's an interesting home... not something to our liking but others may want something like this because of the multiple living spaces and rooms and they want to get into the Irvine motel business (isn't there someone here interested in an extended stay place?). :)

EDIT: Forgot to add the Redfin link and property info.
 
Interesting house.  Thanks for the write-up.  Just curious, how difficult is it to get permits for this type of work?  And if it's not difficult, why would people do these type of renovations without permits?
 
OCgasman said:
Interesting house.  Thanks for the write-up.  Just curious, how difficult is it to get permits for this type of work?  And if it's not difficult, why would people do these type of renovations without permits?
Since this particular neighborhood doesn't have an HOA... I think it's less difficult than the newer areas. You still need to go through City of Irvine though... who may be more stringent now than in the 80s.

I never asked if the add-ons were permitted... I guess that would have been a good question for the realtor but she was talking to other people and I usually try to avoid conversing with them unless I'm really interested in purchasing the home.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
OCgasman said:
Interesting house.  Thanks for the write-up.  Just curious, how difficult is it to get permits for this type of work?  And if it's not difficult, why would people do these type of renovations without permits?
Since this particular neighborhood doesn't have an HOA... I think it's less difficult than the newer areas. You still need to go through City of Irvine though... who may be more stringent now than in the 80s.

I never asked if the add-ons were permitted... I guess that would have been a good question for the realtor but she was talking to other people and I usually try to avoid conversing with them unless I'm really interested in purchasing the home.

the HOA would only have to approve the changes to the structure, then i would think you are done with them and then move on to pull the permits with the city.

you can check permits that have been pulled with the city of irvine here:

https://irvinepermits.org/Default.asp?Build=PM.pmPermit.SearchForm&utask=normalview

63 lindberg has two permits pulled on it, both are "encroachment" permits, one is by the irvine ranch water district, the other doesnt say so im guessing it is the home owner.  the one that appears to be pulled by the owner says "emergency repairs" - not sure that qualifies as permit for an addition of second floor. the city of orange's permit site is much better as the permits give you alot more detail as well as what the permit cost.

 
Good review, IHO. I went to this open house over the weekend as well.

I thought the floorplan was really awkward. I often think houses that have had big addition or extensive remodels end up looking odd. I'm also not a big fan of atriums (atria?). I also thought the backyard was way off to the side. The first floor just felt zigzaggy and weird.

I can't believe I may have come this close to seeing IHO! We were in the same place at roughly the same time!
 
irvinehomeowner said:
You know I'm kidding... unless you were dressed as a middle age Middle Eastern man.

Yeah, that's one of my go-to disguises...it fools a lot of people.

Actually nobody else was there when we were looking at the house...weird for an Irvine open house.

You know, IHO, I thought I saw you once at the Spectrum, or at least someone I pictured as looking like you.
 
Yeah I saw a big white guy one time driving a sienna and I thought to myself - there is a good chance that is IHO.
 
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