So if you didn't know we have kind been looking at new places to live. We love our house and enjoy the character, but the layout is not optimal for us with 2 bedrooms on 1 floor and 1 on another. It was good when we were a family of 3 but doesn't work as well as a family of four. The problem is that most of the homes in Portland are Bungalows which is usually 2bd/1bath on the main floor. The burbs have the right layout and price, but those houses are in the burbs. The best case would be find a new home in our area, which seemed unlikely. In portland the official lot size is are 25x100 and builders like to build skinny 1500-1700sqft houses on those lots. Some older lots like ours are on 50x100 and 75x100 (ours) which builders would typically build 2 or 3 new skinny homes. There are nice skinny homes but those are usually too small and dinky yards.
We decided to call a builder who is an earth advantage builder (uses sustainable builder materials, practices, low VOC materials, etc...) who also has built some of the nicer skinny houses around. It turns out he builds more then skinny houses (sounds good right). To add some icing to the cake he also happened to own a few properties that are within 3 blocks of our current house. Then to seal the deal he is able to build what looks to be high quality 4bd, 2300sqft house on one of those properties in our price range (a range I won't mention because it still freaks me out).
The house is actually very similar in layout to the Sears house above. We visited a house with the same design that is about 80% done today.
Here is a picture of the front:
It is difficult to get good pictures of the inside, but here is one of of some of the kitchen.
The cabinets are real wood and the counters are granites tiles. The downstairs flooring will be bamboo (sustainable) throughout. There seemed to be plenty of closets, pantries etc... and there are decks on the front and the back of the house.
Make you want to move to Portland yet?
anyways now I need to go pick a few leaves off the old money tree to get the process started. I also need to find some fool willing to lend me the money to buy it. If all goes well we will have a new house in 6 months. In the mean time we need to tune ours up and get it on the market. Our fingers our crossed that it all goes well.
We will get some new pics of the kids on the blog soon too
Rob
3 comments:
Wow.
I love the house. I hope it works out for you guys.
Awesome, can I tell you how jealous I am of the porches? Good grief...
Great house! Still a little pissed that you're going to be staying in Ptown. You know...suburbs might suck, but WE live in the suburbs, and if you lived in the suburbs, we'd be NEIGHBORS! Suckas.
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