On buying and living in a home

Letterpress put up a post on her blog, directing to a New York Times article, that I found so fascinating I have decided to turn my comment into a post.

The article argues that until very recently (this year), homes seemed to have been built and remodeled solely with resale in mind. Which appliances will attract the buyer? Vaulted ceilings and granite countertops. And bigger is always better.

Maybe that's why we had such a hard time finding a house. We were looking for a house to live in, not to sell. Of course, those of you who know our home buying story will be surprised. We bought our house sight unseen off the internet. What do we mean, hard to find? But it was one of a kind.

When we were looking for a home in 2008, we were looking purely for "livability" factors. Top priority: within walking distance of the places we need to be. By 2008, Tim and I had lived five years in campus housing, where everything was walkable, followed by three years in a beautiful newer home in commuter land, where I found myself stuck on a freeway for 30 minutes at a time, mornings and evenings, listening to children's music ad infinitum with a toddler in the back seat. From there, we moved to England for a year and did not buy a car.

Going a whole year without a car was tough. There were days when it was raining diagonally, I had a massive migraine, and yet Jonathan was at school a mile away and needed to be picked up. Bundled in my coat and overcoat, I grumbled to myself that these were the days that everyone else gave up their exercise routine. We didn't let ourselves have the choice.

But in spite of those diagonal rain days, we found we were overall healthier. We ate all the double cream that we wanted with no affect to our waistlines. We spent time together. Every day Tim and I walked and talked and laughed. Down the hill, through the park, to the preschool. Back across the park, and up the hill. Thirty minutes of walking rather than 30 minutes on I-35. What a difference.

We needed a home within walking distance of the places we needed to be. Number one priority.

The second thing we were looking for was a relatively small home. About half way through our year in England, we were shocked to realize that our house there was about the perfect size for our family. Permanently. There was a medium sized kitchen on the first floor, a master bedroom and living room on the second, Jonathan's bedroom and an office on the third. It was a typical mid-row house in a working middle-class neighborhood. It was all we could afford on my postdoctoral salary and a brutal pound-dollar exchange rate, and significantly smaller than working middle-class homes in Texas. But halfway through the year, we realized the space was perfect. Each room was used regularly. No space was wasted. No space was too tight. Cleaning took a couple of hours. That was it.

Looking for homes here in the mountains, the newer homes with the better wiring were over 40,000 square feet. Each. One. Of. Them. There are only three of us. Who was going to clean those extra 30,000 square feet? Who was going to heat the vaulted ceilings? While we really wanted the most modern electrical systems that money could buy, we couldn't justify purchasing all that wasted space. In the end, the house we found had all those England rooms on the first floor, plus a bonus basement. The basement has been nice. It's nice to have a guest bedroom for the occasional guest. It's nice to have a large playroom and a separate laundry and storage room. But we really don't use it as much as the first floor. I can't understand why families like ours would want 40,000 square feet.

Location, size. Price. And a garage was also a make or break deal here where it snows a lot.

We found a house that was perfect. It needed new electrical work, some modernization of the windows and decor, a new kitchen, new bathrooms. But we bought them for ourselves, for livability. Solid surface in the bathrooms -- no more scraping black out of tile grout. Solid surface countertops in the kitchen -- no sealing granite or stone, or chipping formica. Extra lighting in the living room where we would be reading. French doors opening to the back yard where we would be... um... apparently picking fruit.

And I love it. I really really love living here in this home. The colors, the lighting, the ease of cleaning. Riding my bike to the library. Walking to work. Dropping Jonathan off at school on foot. Neighbors and fruit trees and community. I hope it is years before we need to find out the resale value of this home. Because I want to live here longer.