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This is not my beautiful house.
Nov. 13th, 2005 12:12 amI went on my blind date yesterday. In fact, it was really more like one of those 20-minute dating round-robin nightmares than an afternoon of coffee and window-shopping, and I saw three houses and peeked into the windows of another and didn't see a fifth at all. The three houses were each of them mighty fine, in their own way, but because I have a yen for May-December romances, it was the turn-of-the-century houses that were the most seductive.
I still like the red one ( which I will call Bachelor No. 1 ) best. It's a Craftsman, which as we all know is an open obsession of mine. It's a bit on the shabby side, but appears to me to be in fairly decent shape. 1750 or so square feet. Five fireplaces, some of which have been stripped in preparation for staining. It has a wide front porch (albeit a porch inexplicably COVERED IN ASTROTURF OMG). It has a kitchen and a butler's pantry, both of which retain their beautiful glass-front original cabinets. The bathroom is pedestrian, but serviceable. Big, slightly overgrown fenced backyard. Floor furnace heat, no central air. It has glittery ceilings. The floors are in decent shape, with no soft or rotten spots that I could see. The neighborhood is like the house, shabby but decent, and it deserves to make a comeback because the houses in it are genuinely charming. It's $10000 cheaper than
( Bachelor No. 2 ), which, objectively speaking, is by far the best buy. It's priced low because it's corporate owned, and that and the fact that the former owners were partway through a major renovation are the only things that pull it into my price range. It's in a comfortably middle-class to upper-middle-class neighborhood, full of well-kept homes. It's got some major sex appeal. It sits on a slightly larger lot than Bachelor No. 1 does, and it is also fenced. It's one of those Late Victorian/Craftsman Hybrids. The kitchen has been completely modernized. There are three fireplaces. It has what the realtor calls three bedrooms and I call two, and it's huge, around 2200 square feet, and all the rooms are big--I worry that it will be a little too much. It has a back deck, with positively dangerous steps that will have to be replaced before anyone can use them. Central air and heat. There are a couple of spots where the ceiling plaster will have to be patched, and the owners had knocked out a wall between a bedroom and the butler's pantry and finished the walls but the floors are still a mess, though the tile they'd planned on using is stacked neatly against the wall. It's got a wraparound porch and lots of windows (both houses have lots of windows, actually). The bathroom's big but awkwardly laid out, and the fixtures are pink, and the wall tile is pink and bright new-leaf green O_o.
It's a good thing to have two houses to crush on, right? I could seriously love either one. And so now I have to decide which one I'd most want to commit to and fight the onset of a major panic attack and set everything in motion.
*takes deep breath*
:::
Of course you have seen neither of these houses personally. But I'm curious to know: which do you like best?
I still like the red one ( which I will call Bachelor No. 1 ) best. It's a Craftsman, which as we all know is an open obsession of mine. It's a bit on the shabby side, but appears to me to be in fairly decent shape. 1750 or so square feet. Five fireplaces, some of which have been stripped in preparation for staining. It has a wide front porch (albeit a porch inexplicably COVERED IN ASTROTURF OMG). It has a kitchen and a butler's pantry, both of which retain their beautiful glass-front original cabinets. The bathroom is pedestrian, but serviceable. Big, slightly overgrown fenced backyard. Floor furnace heat, no central air. It has glittery ceilings. The floors are in decent shape, with no soft or rotten spots that I could see. The neighborhood is like the house, shabby but decent, and it deserves to make a comeback because the houses in it are genuinely charming. It's $10000 cheaper than
( Bachelor No. 2 ), which, objectively speaking, is by far the best buy. It's priced low because it's corporate owned, and that and the fact that the former owners were partway through a major renovation are the only things that pull it into my price range. It's in a comfortably middle-class to upper-middle-class neighborhood, full of well-kept homes. It's got some major sex appeal. It sits on a slightly larger lot than Bachelor No. 1 does, and it is also fenced. It's one of those Late Victorian/Craftsman Hybrids. The kitchen has been completely modernized. There are three fireplaces. It has what the realtor calls three bedrooms and I call two, and it's huge, around 2200 square feet, and all the rooms are big--I worry that it will be a little too much. It has a back deck, with positively dangerous steps that will have to be replaced before anyone can use them. Central air and heat. There are a couple of spots where the ceiling plaster will have to be patched, and the owners had knocked out a wall between a bedroom and the butler's pantry and finished the walls but the floors are still a mess, though the tile they'd planned on using is stacked neatly against the wall. It's got a wraparound porch and lots of windows (both houses have lots of windows, actually). The bathroom's big but awkwardly laid out, and the fixtures are pink, and the wall tile is pink and bright new-leaf green O_o.
It's a good thing to have two houses to crush on, right? I could seriously love either one. And so now I have to decide which one I'd most want to commit to and fight the onset of a major panic attack and set everything in motion.
*takes deep breath*
:::
Of course you have seen neither of these houses personally. But I'm curious to know: which do you like best?
