Hearth and Home

“What I like about this one,” said E as he clicked open yet another real estate listing,” Is that it has two fireplaces.”

We had been looking for a home for about three months, which may not sound bad, but when those months include the holidays and winter, things can get a bit dreary. Especially when the housing market is so good for buyers, it’s terrible for sellers. This meant that owners of interesting homes were only selling if they absolutely had to, and so were few and far between. The rest of the offerings had often been on the market for ages because no one was interested in buying the house with the bathroom in the kitchen, or the third bedroom in the stone floor basement.

We were planning on heading into the showing fray once again and were making a list of possibilities. We had decided to see anything that looked promising online, for any reason, just to make sure we weren’t ruling out anything unnecessarily.

The listing E opened was indeed for a house with two fireplaces. I desperately wanted one, so two was a bounty to be sure. The rest of the house gave me pause, though: a development home from the late 1980s, it appeared to have been decorated when it was new and left that way: hearts, geese, welcome signs, dusty rose and country blue. Blue kitchen countertop. Smurfy blue wall-to-wall. Sigh.

The exterior was a little more promising -- although only 20-plus years old, the double chimneys gave the house an older appearance that I liked. There real stone on the front of the house helped as well.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle was the development issue. A history major and veteran of multiple childhood summer vacation trips to both Colonial Williamsburg and Old Sturbridge Village, I had always sworn I’d buy an older home – not 200 years old, maybe, but at least pre-war. Developments to me too often meant no trees, no sidewalks, and an artificial feeling of being plopped in place with no relationship to a real community, no center other than the occasional strip mall. I completely understood why they might make sense for others, but not for me.

But two fireplaces. We added it to the list, along with four other houses we planned to see in a marathon Saturday housing run.

It was the second stop that day, after a pricier house that had recently been redone. It stood little chance. Dazzled by the gorgeous new flooring of the previous place, I was in no mood to tolerate 80s early American. Part way through, I turned to E and told him I was finished. He said he’d like to keep looking since we were there.

We finished the grand tour of homes that day with the house essentially ruled out. But over the weeks to come we realized we could get that house significantly cheaper than the “finished” house, and make it our own – choose our own lovely flooring, paint colors, etc., instead of having them picked for us. In addition, this particular development showed no evidence of plopping – it was a natural outgrowth of a small town, walking distance from schools, a pool, restaurants, a library, and more. The house has sidewalks and is located at the intersection of two real roads that predate the development. E would still be surrounded by cycling country, something we had hoped to retain from our apartment’s location. And we would have two fireplaces. We had found our house.