We're also in Oakland but used to live at 26th and California in the city for decades. Assume your lot is small and the soil can be poor, so you need to draw your lot to scale and figure out what you want from it. Seating on those rare nice days? Play area for kids? BBQ area for grilling? Flowers? Veggies? The options are endless but your space is limited. THe majority of your budget will go to hardscape unless you are lucky enough to have precisely what you want already. Plants are cheap and seeds even cheaper. There are no really good nurseries in SF. Sloat is barely passable and the others are worse. The closest "serious" nursery is Golden in San Mateo, a superb nursery right off 101 that is sitting on at least $1M of prime real estate - I'm sure that even now, the developers can hardly wait for the family to consider selling, LOL. The East Bay has Berkeley Horticultural and East Bay Nursery, plus Evergreen in San Leandro. Richmond (city of) has Annie's Annuals, a local fav whose website you should check out. She will be having her open house garden party soon, in May I think. She's the source for many terrific heirloom plants that do well here, including the stunning Ladybird poppy, one of the few annuals that I will buy. Contra Costa and Marin have some good Navlet's garden centers, a local chain, but nothing really near you. Don't overlook the big box stores, some of them have decent garden centers with cheap prices on basic stock. If you arrive when the stock is fresh, their plants are fine. EVERYBODY gets their stock from the same three major wholesalers; the private nurseries aim for more specialized plants and a better quality level on the standard plants. Because of this, even when you finally decide what you want and where you want it, don't expect to be able to buy every plant you're interested in. The growing stock comes in at specific times during the year, and special ordering is very costly (I've done it, and it isn't fun when a $250 4-ft tree dies). If you're into cottage gardening, the forum here is very active. I posted recently in the Gallery section of that forum, as spring has brought a lot of blooms in the last month. I don't find the CA Gardening as interesting, but it's more weighted towards edibles and Southern/rural CA gardening, which doesn't apply to me, but YMMV. You might also want to check out the Landscape Design forum. Bahia, a professional landscaper who works out of San Jose, does a lot of beautiful succulent installations and has been recently posting pictures of some of his work. Really remarkable stuff, very inspiring.

This change is probably doable, but will involve some significant work to keep the structural integrity. The post you want to remove is certainly load bearing. To replace it you will have to install robust support posts on either end of the span, and then install a beam between them that can support the weight. In most new homes they are using manufactured wooden LVL beams instead of steel beams, although you can probably still get steel beams. The challenge is that you would want the bottom of the beam to be as high as possible, so you need to remove or modify existing framing to recess it as much as you can. LVL beams are generally taller for longer spans, although in some cases they can be doubled up (width) to carry a bigger load. However, the beam will be relatively bulky for a span that long. If you like the look of reclaimed lumber you may be able to install a new LVL beam and then glue on a veneer of reclaimed lumber (maybe 1" thick) to make it look like the entire beam is reclaimed lumber. When I hired a contractor to open my floor plan and install new beams it was very easy for him to figure out span length and sizes, since the manufacturers had good documentation. However, the city required me to have the plans reviewed by a PE, who signed off and stamped the plans. It was a waste of time, since my contractor understood the work better than the PE, but the PE had the right credentials and the official stamp. Bruce

A couple years after the article Sharon posted was published. This was published. I can’t link to it since I am searching for these articles through my workplace at Caltech, and you would get a broken link, but here is abstract copied below. It seems that an important consideration for a banker plant used to host the predator mites is “tuft domatia”, which are little chambers on the leaves that are meant to house the beneficials. The plants provide little hidey-houses along with pollen :-) The predator mite Amblyseius swirskii is an omnivore, eating both pollen and other mites, thrips, whitefly etc. Selecting an ornamental pepper banker plant for Amblyseius swirskii in floriculture crops. By: Avery, PB et al. Abstract: Preference of phytoseiid mite, Amblyseius swirskii (Athias-Henriot) was assessed on four cultivars of ornamental pepper banker plant candidates; Red Missile (RM), Masquerade (MA), Explosive Ember (EE) and Black Pearl (BP) for potential control of pestiferous insects in floriculture. Significant differences in cultivar preference by A. swirskii was observed in choice experiments whether the test was pre- (with pollen) or during bloom. Overall, female mites laid more eggs when pollen was provided as a food source. The number of tuft domatia per cultivar leaf appeared to positively influence host preference in the choice plant tests pre-bloom. In addition, cultivar RM had the highest mean number +/- A SEM of tuft domatia per leaf (5.1 +/- A 0.3) and motiles per plant (4.0 +/- A 1.2), followed by MA, EE and BP. In choice tests on blooming plants, A. swirskii showed preference for both cultivars RM and MA compared to EE. These experiments indicated that the number of tuft domatia and availability of pollen can influence the host preference of A. swirskii for an ornamental pepper banker plant cultivar. Results from this study will help growers, researchers, educators and extension personnel in understanding the plant phenology promoting adoption of suitable banker plants for managing greenhouse and landscape insect pests.

Try house movers or any contractors who specialize in work on old houses. It's not very difficult, just requires a bit of planning to support the structure. As a DIY project I've always done them in segments so I didn't have to support the whole building at once. If you have the room (and not a lot of installed plumbing underneath) building a new foundation and moving the building over it is an easier way to approach it than working underneath.