In the days I have been spending at the house - meeting with this HVAC contractor, that siding guy, some interior designer, etc. - I have started to get my head around how this house is gonna work FOR our family and, in what way as it currently exists, it will NOT work for our family. Not how our family is gonna work around this house (which - as I well know - is how one thinks about an apartment, or a starter home, or a temporary house, or a flip), but how this house has the POTENTIAL to work for our family for the next 15+ years.
This was the ultimate end we were thinking of when we were looking for a house...for almost 2 years. Every consideration of EVERY house that we looked at (and we looked at, literally, 50+ houses in that time) had the "how is this house gonna work for our family?" consideration in mind.
In our search there were several things that, starting out, we were unwilling to compromise: school district, space (we wanted it to be at least as big as our last house), functionality (it had to have the spaces – or at least the potential to create them with in budget – that we needed), feel (an indescribable concept, but houses tend to have a “vibe” to them), location (we had almost no walkability in our old house. We really wanted to be close to “stuff” in our next one), etc.
Despite all the work we have to do, how egregiously huge this place is for our needs and how incredibly UGLY it is from the outside, here's what this house has for us:
LOCATION:
Without even living there I can already see how wonderful this is going to be. I envision weeks at a time where I'll never have to get into my car...I can walk or bike almost everywhere. OK...that's not true...but for "the basics" it certainly COULD be true. The stereotypical tenet of Real Estate that has always been "LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION" has never been as apparent to me as it has been with this house. I am SO excited about this! In this way, this house puts us in our "right place".
Our last house could have been totally fine for us for the rest of our lives if we’d remained childless. But, thankfully, we didn’t. And children change EVERYTHING. Our desire to change the location of our home was inspired by 2 things:
1. Shayna Geyden, a 13 year old child on her way home from the corner store, got shot by gang crossfire in the Funsten school playground that we liked to take G to. D and G passed that playground, in D's car, on the way home from grandma and grandpa's house, not 20 minutes before it happened.
2. Public Schools in West Logan Square were NOT an option for G. Not only did they score incredibly low as far as CPS went (I know, right???) but there was absolutely NO diversity. D and I used to like to quip that what made our neighborhood diverse (me white and him Chinese) was US. While we cared little about racial diversity, we quickly realized that there was little to no economic diversity in our 'hood...an experience that, to us, is VERY important in G's life. WTF is the benefit to him to be from the richest household on a relatively poor block in Chicago
SPACE:
I have always heard the tenet about homeownership "However much space you have, you WILL fill it". When we moved into our last house I couldn't conceive of how we, then two people, could EVER outgrow it. Even if we had a child, as we'd hoped (and were blessed with), I couldn't see it. During the 6.5 years we lived there, despite all the work and reconfiguration we did on it, it became clear what spaces we were missing.
This new house has existing space for almost every use we can imagine: my office (with a separate street-side entrance), a guest room, G's playroom, a gym, D's woodworking shop, etc. It has all the spaces we were able to make in our old house and all the ones we wanted for our lifestyle. And this is what we were looking for. The problem is that all there spaces are MUCH larger then we'd ever envisioned them to be. This is a challenge in and of itself we’ve taken on in choosing this house: how do we justify buying such a large house for our small family?
The first thing that comes to mind is that this house, having been vacant for the last 4 years, needed a family. The intact craftsmanship needed to be appreciated. The house needed to be fixed to be habitable (as all previous “fixes” left it inhabitable). It almost seemed to scream to have its spirit, its soul restored. We got it for a price that enabled us to heed this call. This is what we hope to do in the coming years: make this mistreated and abandoned house a home…and find the “right place” for us. We are very calculated people, but this was something, a “vibe”, we can’t explain in making our choice. In the end, I suppose we simply appreciate a challenge…but one with heart behind it.
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