We moved into our home 11 years ago. That’s not THAT long ago, but it feels like my husband and I were different people back then. We had been living in an apartment built in the 1890’s. I was pregnant, but we didn’t really have any idea of what it would be like living with a child, let alone children.
We bought a place that felt like home, because it too had been built in the 1890’s. We hadn’t looked at any ranch homes, because there just weren’t any built in the areas we were looking. Most of the houses in our neighborhood are Victorian or bungalows.
We realized pretty quickly after having kids and living in this house for awhile that we liked ranch houses. ESPECIALLY the mid-century modern ones. My taste tends to run to vintage & my husband likes more modern homes. We can find design common ground in the mid-century modern homes.
I did this painting of a home that has been on the market for a few months in our area. I am in love with it. Too bad that it is about $125,000 out of our price range. I still keep looking at the listing pictures, feeling a pull towards it and fantasizing about closing on it.
It happens a lot, that I will find a listing of a vintage home, and fall in love. The difference is that this time we are actually in the market to buy. So often though, I will stare at these listings with pink bathtubs, or turquoise tile, and I will be so depressed, because I know someone is going to go in and demolish what makes that place so special.
Perusing real estate listings, I sometimes feel like I am viewing the Stepford wife version of what was once a beautiful and amazing house. Someone has taken all of the soul out of this mid-century modern home, and tried to make it a cabin, or some Tuscan palace that it just was never meant to be.
I keep telling myself, if we can rescue just one of these homes from that fate, I will be doing a service. So I look at listings like this one, that’s so out of our budget, but I dream big! I dream of my children having their own rooms, of us fixing up the home and making it happy in it’s own way. I fall asleep fantasizing of how I would place our furniture in it, and how our lives would work there, and it makes me happy.