May. 5th, 2009 12:27 am
Lessons in suburban humility
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textualdevianceBack when we bought Chez Fou nine years ago, we were both ridiculously excited by the whole thing. It was just slightly more expensive than our original budget, but we were able to swing it.
We both grew up fairly poor, and had struggled financially in our early adulthood, so owning a home at all was something that we'd originally thought we'd have to wait much longer for. Being able not only to do it, but do it well made us feel incredibly lucky, and perhaps even just a tad guilty, like maybe we weren't supposed to have something so nice just yet. We were both slightly disappointed that it was a spec home--albeit a nice one and not in a Stepford Subdivision--and that it was a long commute, but we didn't intend to stay there forever, so we decided we could tolerate suburban life for a starter home.
One of the deep frustrations of searching for our next house (aside from scotching our custom home building plan for a while) is knowing that we have to have something newer. First because we have to be on the Eastside (We did the bridge commute before. Won't do it again.) and second because we have to have a house with modern wiring because of all our power/networking needs.
The Eastside being what it is, this has meant we're mostly limited to, again, spec houses in subdivisions. Finding individual houses built in the last ~10 years is next to impossible. It's only slightly easier to find ones in smaller subdivisions without CC&Rs.
There are dozens of new construction places scattered all over, but a month of looking at them is giving me a sense of numbing sameness. It's not that I don't like their style--surprisingly, most of what's current in design trends these days is my taste anyway--but that there's just so much of it, and it all just kind of runs together after a while. Trim levels vary, and so do lot sizes and elevations, but for the most part, just about every new-construction house these days is a fairly generic "Northwest Craftsman" style, with little variance.
Getting stuff that's more original means going well over our budget, so that's just not an option. And neither is building. At $130/sqft plus land, we simply just don't have the cash to do it right now.
I'm almost embarassed to be considering buying in a Stepford Subdivision, but it's increasingly looking like that's our best option, if we want to have a newer house in the area we need to be in. We may even end up with one of the little boxes with a tiny strip of grass instead of a back yard. And that kind of terrifies me.
But I admit that I'm far more terrified by the idea of staying where we are any longer. Living at the villa for only just a few weeks has made it clear how far out Chez Fou really is from... well, just about anywhere. And I just can't stomach the isolation anymore. There are certain things we can sacrifice in this move, and that just can't be one of them.
We both grew up fairly poor, and had struggled financially in our early adulthood, so owning a home at all was something that we'd originally thought we'd have to wait much longer for. Being able not only to do it, but do it well made us feel incredibly lucky, and perhaps even just a tad guilty, like maybe we weren't supposed to have something so nice just yet. We were both slightly disappointed that it was a spec home--albeit a nice one and not in a Stepford Subdivision--and that it was a long commute, but we didn't intend to stay there forever, so we decided we could tolerate suburban life for a starter home.
One of the deep frustrations of searching for our next house (aside from scotching our custom home building plan for a while) is knowing that we have to have something newer. First because we have to be on the Eastside (We did the bridge commute before. Won't do it again.) and second because we have to have a house with modern wiring because of all our power/networking needs.
The Eastside being what it is, this has meant we're mostly limited to, again, spec houses in subdivisions. Finding individual houses built in the last ~10 years is next to impossible. It's only slightly easier to find ones in smaller subdivisions without CC&Rs.
There are dozens of new construction places scattered all over, but a month of looking at them is giving me a sense of numbing sameness. It's not that I don't like their style--surprisingly, most of what's current in design trends these days is my taste anyway--but that there's just so much of it, and it all just kind of runs together after a while. Trim levels vary, and so do lot sizes and elevations, but for the most part, just about every new-construction house these days is a fairly generic "Northwest Craftsman" style, with little variance.
Getting stuff that's more original means going well over our budget, so that's just not an option. And neither is building. At $130/sqft plus land, we simply just don't have the cash to do it right now.
I'm almost embarassed to be considering buying in a Stepford Subdivision, but it's increasingly looking like that's our best option, if we want to have a newer house in the area we need to be in. We may even end up with one of the little boxes with a tiny strip of grass instead of a back yard. And that kind of terrifies me.
But I admit that I'm far more terrified by the idea of staying where we are any longer. Living at the villa for only just a few weeks has made it clear how far out Chez Fou really is from... well, just about anywhere. And I just can't stomach the isolation anymore. There are certain things we can sacrifice in this move, and that just can't be one of them.
