Pros and cons
Our house is up for sale and generating a lot of traffic. Good news, though I'm not sure if we've found the place we want to live next. I have a lot of feelings and decisions to sort through and this seems like a good place to try. I can't talk to Derrick about much of it--he'd prefer to stay where we are and thinks it's a bad idea to sell right now (true, we'd get more for the house after the economy improves--but then any house we bought would cost more and we'd be paying a higher interest rate for the next 20-30 years).
So I want to take some time to list the pros and cons of where we live now, and of a place I looked at this weekend. I apologize for the length of this entry but if you do read all the way through, I welcome any and all comments, opinions, etc. I feel like I have no one to talk to about this.
Pros--our current house (or, things I will miss)
- Location: walking distance to an organic market and Trader Joe's, a coffee shop with play space and baristas who know Max and take an interest in his development, 3 playgrounds within 3 blocks, easy access to downtown and restaurants. Really, if I had the money to just build a new house on our current property, I would. (Fixing up the current house would still leave it too big and poorly configured.)
- Max's room. It's perfect, especially now that the crappy yelling, drug-dealing, breaking-and-entering neighbors on that side of the house have been gone for a year and a half. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I can convince the friends who painted Max's mural to do something similar in the new place (wherever that may be). I don't know how Max feels about it, but I love the cartoon animals on his walls.
- Our backyard. Except for the fact that you can't mow it with a lawn mower (it's too uneven). I love that the back door opens from the kitchen to the yard, and there's a straight line from the stove/sink area to the sandbox at the end of the yard, so in nice weather Max can play outside while I cook or wash dishes, and I can just leave the back door open and keep an eye on him while he has fun and I get stuff done. I also like the patio we put in a few years ago.
- My bedroom. It's big. The empty space makes me feel calm.
Cons (what I won't miss)
- $400+ monthly heating bills in winter, and STILL being cold downstairs.
- Poor water pressure in the bathroom and it taking at least 5 minutes for the water in the sink to get warm (which wastes a lot of water, so I never get to wash my hands in warm water except in the kitchen sink).
- Stairs (ideally, I'm looking for a 1-story plus finished basement house with a family room in the basement but at least 2 bedrooms on main floor).
- Sloping floors, cracked doors, creaky stairs, general old-ness.
The place that intrigued me over the weekend is not my ideal 1-story plus basement with a yard. But it offers something no other house can: community.
Pros of the prospective house:
- Newer construction--only seven years old and well built.
- Smaller (as are all the places I'm looking at) and more energy efficient, with programmable thermostats for each room.
- Community: it's a co-housing development, with a common house where the members can share meals up to four times a week (though you don't have to, or you can do take-out of the common meal). In the "common house" (a separate building) there's a big children's playroom, a living room where you can have gatherings (it's where my book group meets--everyone else lives there), a central terrace with tables and chairs, a large sandbox and treehouse for the kids. There are other kids Max's age and I already know and like several people who live there. There are people of all ages.
- The bedrooms are a nice size; the master isn't quite as large as our current one, but definitely big enough to fit everything we need in there plus a much more spacious closet.
- It's very convenient to Derrick's work. If we moved to the north, where just about all of my friends live and where I've mostly been looking, he probably would give up his job. And when he talks about work, even though it utterly exhausts him, his face lights up and he's so proud of his accomplishments, I would hate to take that away from him. He loves it just as much as he loves being a dad, I think, and that's saying a lot.
Cons of the prospective house:
- It's a townhouse. There are stairs. Although if I let Derrick have the room on the basement level as his area, I would only have to deal with two floors.
- There is no yard. There is a small garden area outside the main entrance with flowers and a planting bed and a brick area where we could put either a small table and two chairs, or Max's sandbox (so he could still play just outside the kitchen door/window). And there is a p-patch nearby where I could plant veggies. But there is no grassy area, no private outdoor space (the house does have three balconies for sitting outside). This is the hardest thing for me to get past.
- It's not as safe as our current neighborhood. There is garage parking for one car, the other would have to be parked on the street and the friend who showed me around said straight out that it wasn't safe and to park the "older more beat-up car" out there.
- It's about 10 minutes walk to the decent playground, and longer to a grocery store.
- There is a new condo development (unrelated to this one) going up across the street, so the living room and master bedroom look out on construction right now and will have an enormous building as their view once it's done. (The other side of the house overlooks a private walkway and the other row of co-housing units.)
So I want to take some time to list the pros and cons of where we live now, and of a place I looked at this weekend. I apologize for the length of this entry but if you do read all the way through, I welcome any and all comments, opinions, etc. I feel like I have no one to talk to about this.
Pros--our current house (or, things I will miss)
- Location: walking distance to an organic market and Trader Joe's, a coffee shop with play space and baristas who know Max and take an interest in his development, 3 playgrounds within 3 blocks, easy access to downtown and restaurants. Really, if I had the money to just build a new house on our current property, I would. (Fixing up the current house would still leave it too big and poorly configured.)
- Max's room. It's perfect, especially now that the crappy yelling, drug-dealing, breaking-and-entering neighbors on that side of the house have been gone for a year and a half. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I can convince the friends who painted Max's mural to do something similar in the new place (wherever that may be). I don't know how Max feels about it, but I love the cartoon animals on his walls.
- Our backyard. Except for the fact that you can't mow it with a lawn mower (it's too uneven). I love that the back door opens from the kitchen to the yard, and there's a straight line from the stove/sink area to the sandbox at the end of the yard, so in nice weather Max can play outside while I cook or wash dishes, and I can just leave the back door open and keep an eye on him while he has fun and I get stuff done. I also like the patio we put in a few years ago.
- My bedroom. It's big. The empty space makes me feel calm.
Cons (what I won't miss)
- $400+ monthly heating bills in winter, and STILL being cold downstairs.
- Poor water pressure in the bathroom and it taking at least 5 minutes for the water in the sink to get warm (which wastes a lot of water, so I never get to wash my hands in warm water except in the kitchen sink).
- Stairs (ideally, I'm looking for a 1-story plus finished basement house with a family room in the basement but at least 2 bedrooms on main floor).
- Sloping floors, cracked doors, creaky stairs, general old-ness.
The place that intrigued me over the weekend is not my ideal 1-story plus basement with a yard. But it offers something no other house can: community.
Pros of the prospective house:
- Newer construction--only seven years old and well built.
- Smaller (as are all the places I'm looking at) and more energy efficient, with programmable thermostats for each room.
- Community: it's a co-housing development, with a common house where the members can share meals up to four times a week (though you don't have to, or you can do take-out of the common meal). In the "common house" (a separate building) there's a big children's playroom, a living room where you can have gatherings (it's where my book group meets--everyone else lives there), a central terrace with tables and chairs, a large sandbox and treehouse for the kids. There are other kids Max's age and I already know and like several people who live there. There are people of all ages.
- The bedrooms are a nice size; the master isn't quite as large as our current one, but definitely big enough to fit everything we need in there plus a much more spacious closet.
- It's very convenient to Derrick's work. If we moved to the north, where just about all of my friends live and where I've mostly been looking, he probably would give up his job. And when he talks about work, even though it utterly exhausts him, his face lights up and he's so proud of his accomplishments, I would hate to take that away from him. He loves it just as much as he loves being a dad, I think, and that's saying a lot.
Cons of the prospective house:
- It's a townhouse. There are stairs. Although if I let Derrick have the room on the basement level as his area, I would only have to deal with two floors.
- There is no yard. There is a small garden area outside the main entrance with flowers and a planting bed and a brick area where we could put either a small table and two chairs, or Max's sandbox (so he could still play just outside the kitchen door/window). And there is a p-patch nearby where I could plant veggies. But there is no grassy area, no private outdoor space (the house does have three balconies for sitting outside). This is the hardest thing for me to get past.
- It's not as safe as our current neighborhood. There is garage parking for one car, the other would have to be parked on the street and the friend who showed me around said straight out that it wasn't safe and to park the "older more beat-up car" out there.
- It's about 10 minutes walk to the decent playground, and longer to a grocery store.
- There is a new condo development (unrelated to this one) going up across the street, so the living room and master bedroom look out on construction right now and will have an enormous building as their view once it's done. (The other side of the house overlooks a private walkway and the other row of co-housing units.)