And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~ Kahlil Gibran



Saturday, May 17, 2008

Indecision

So Mr. Barefoot and I have decided to put an offer in on a house. It is a cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter subdivision with a cookie cutter yard and some miserable looking landscaping that desperately needs an overhaul.

Yesterday I saw that the house across from my parents' house is for sale for about half the price of the other. It is an old, run down place in an old neighborhood. It doesn't have lots of room for a garden, and the yard was landscaped in a way that would cost me hours of back breaking labor to un-do.

Do you need three guesses to figure out which one I want?

My problem is that I love old houses. I love their character, their funny little corners and hidden cubby-holes. I love their sense of history and trying to figure out the stories they have to tell.

Unfortunately, Mr. Barefoot and I have discussed this again and again. We do not want to take on the expense and hassle of a "fixer upper". We decided that it is best for us to get into a house that is easy maintenance and that should have good resale value when we are ready to "upgrade" to what we really want.

We decided.

And yet I am becoming increasingly unhappy with the idea of living in a neighborhood where everything is the same. In a house that is the same as every other house on the block.

But we decided.

So I will stick with it, and we will get the cookie cutter if it is still possible. I will be happy there, because we will own and I will be able to give it my character. Poor house.

Someday, I will have my beautiful old house.....and then I will be super-duper ecstatic.

2 comments:

Lisa said...

I think you are going to love owning your own house! I know this isn't exactly what you want, but consider this a practice house. Every one teaches you things that you didn't know before, and in the end, you can use the knowledge on your perfect old house!

I'm so excited for you!!

Wendy said...

I love old houses, too. I found this incredible, old, Victorian-style house with a REAL fieldstone basement that leaked, because that's what those kind of basements do. It was a gorgeous house on an acre of land in town, right next door to the college. I loved it. Deus Ex Machina hated it. I mean he HATED it. None of the floors were level. They were all painted wood, which he hated. Nothing was square or plumb. It was beautiful.

Obviously, we didn't get it. We have a house, and it's a good house. None of the floors are level and nothing is square or plumb :).