About Mom and Dad and the rest of the Stockton Story

Hi, we're mom and dad to Seth and Tina, but Neil and Amanda to everyone else. We've been married 17 1/2 years. Where has all that time gone? For the past 10 years we've been living in California. Before that we lived in Virginia. We're both native to California, but met in Virginia. So yes, I had to go all the way to Virginia to meet a California boy. We were both in the Army at the time. We dated for 3 months and then got married. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone else, but it has worked wonderfully for us.

Our Stockton story began almost 7 years ago. We bought our little house as a bank repossession. It needed much TLC on the outside, but the inside was okay or so we thought.

Our first several years we just worked on the yard mostly. Three years ago Amanda's mother moved out from Mississippi to live with us. Her health was failing and she needed family support. Our 3 bedroom house began to seem really small after that addition. After many job ups and downs Neil finally settled into a career and we felt secure enough to begin some remodeling. A year and a half ago we decided the main bathroom really needed some help. We were beginning to notice some major defects. Once the walls were down we knew we were right. Rot had majorly settled in under the shower. We had separate tub and shower at that time. Our house was built in 1940 and had begun to show her age. We combined the tub and shower and turned the old shower into a much needed storage closet. There's still a few things left to do in there, but they're small things and the changes are great.

A year ago we decided a guest house was what we really needed. Prices of houses had skyrocketed in our region. A new house was out of the question and we couldn't really find one that we could all agree on. Besides we loved our house and it's location. It's only 2 minutes from work for Amanda and a jump onto the freeway for Neil. We had bought our house 6 years ago for $69,000. It had more than doubled in equity. So we began THE REMODEL.....