93 conway street, greenfield ma

well well well. a year or so after my last post here and some things have changed. a move to greenfield, a new puppy and quitting my job to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming a published author all mean that buying a home is pretty much back burner material for Matt and I right now.

but that don't mean a boy can't dream right? case in point, 93 conway street.

turn of the century elegance.

view from the conway street.

as soon as we moved into our new place on devens street, i noticed this lady at the end of our block. the tall thin banks of windows and blocky, arts and crafts styling had me convinced this house was gorgeous inside. see up there on the left? that looks like a balcony to me. the lines of this house are perfect for me. blocky but romantic. the lot is a great size and the location is decent for this part of greenfield.

 just this week, it went on the market and i knew i had to see it. sadly, i missed this open house this weekend. here's hoping the agents will have another because . . . 

simple stained glass! pretty much my dream windows.

built ins! original fire place!

west facing reading room! i'd probably rework that bench so there's more comfort but i'll take it for now.

the photos on the listing really aren't great. but some selling points beyond what i've shown here are the second set of stairs to the maid's quarters (duh.) and that built in linen closet on the 2nd floor. i really really hope the realtor will have a second open house so i can get in here and live out my 19th century fantasies. the best part? this house is ridiculously priced at $250,000. that's comparable to what my folks paid for the mid-80s colonial revival i grew up in that doesn't have HALF the charm this does. sure the kitchen is dated (but there's a wall oven!). sure there are probably some headaches to owning a stucco home. i don't care. somebody start a kickstarter for me to be able to buy this lady and put her to good use. i solemnly swear to throw a huge halloween party every year as community service if you do.

fantasy islands: 102 highland and 37 alexander

currently, i'm quarantined with a virus that usually effects small children and its making me prone to act like one. in that spirit, today you'll get visit some dream houses in the area that i'll never be able to buy but sure wish i could.

home number 1, downton abbey meets arts and crafts magic.

http://www.cohn-company.com/properties/460

i've driven by this house many times. the neighborhood is a plethora of mansions and victorian throwbacks. this gem is stuck back from the road, high up on a hill overlooking greenfield. its completely out of place with its mediterranean tile roof and portico but the charm is undeniable.

two views! this amazing office would be a retreat to be sure. i can imagine sitting here, incredibly rich and working on the final volume of the first trilogy of books i want to write. i'll totter over to the fireplace, burn old rejection letters from editors who are now begging to publish my work, smoking my sherlock pipe. you know that sort of thing. also, i'd share it with matt. 

original details! just my find of stained glass. that shield at the top is the heraldry of alsace, just as a fun fact. makes me wonder who built the house...

invalid's porch! especially today, when i can't really leave the house this kind of porch demands that i have a gin and tonic, heavy on the quinine while i boss around the help. ah, help.

finally, i'll be hosting our annual costume christmas brunch where you all come dressed as 18th century french aristocrats in the striped receiving room this year. please arrive on time. yours truly, lady grantham.

home number 2, quaker dreams in leyden.

http://www.cohn-company.com/properties/373

matt adores leyden. its a bit too rural for me so this is probably the closest we'll ever get to thinking about buying a property there. this beauty is almost enough to make me change my mind. that little fenced in space in the back would be perfect for our chickens, don't you think so?

this is quintessentially matt. clean, new england historical charm. the previous owners did a fantastic job working in this idiom with modern updates that don't feel like a slap dash HGTV "vintage" update. more This Old House, really. and i love it. i have no idea what i'd use this room for. hanging my brooms?

do yourself a favor and click on the listing link to see all the photos. this is one of many fire-driven heating options. that built in is too sweet and just around the corner is the spartan, shaker kitchen. i can imagine LIVING in this room through the whole winter. probably not the best for our social lives, but hey, its leyden!

black floor. white molding. antique bricks. i love the feeling of this room. another option for above mentioned holiday brunch.

kitchen action! this property has at least three fully furnished buildings, so looking through the photos at Cohn & Company is a little misleading. i'm pretty sure this is "main house" kitchen. but you never know. the luxury of having multiple buildings kinda baffles me. do you rent them? just hang on to them until visitors come over and then, instead of giving them the guest room give them the guest house? 

why can't i have these houses?!

i mean frankly, i can't think of anyone who deserves them more. 

update and 10 walnut.

2012 has been a great year so far.

just not the year of the house.

at some point mathew and i decided that we weren't going to be able to make it happen this year. thanks in a big way to SR + ML showing us their place and the conversations that came out of that excitement.

 that gem is on the market right now.

 http://www.32parkstreet.com/.

 hard to believe the last post i made here was about them starting the selling process.

so when we decided to not buy a house this year, part of that for me was about not looking for a house. difficult at first but after a couple weeks i wasn't missing it very much. until recently. call it the weather. or the fact that we're about to renew the lease on our apartment. or that two of our best friends have nearly sold their townhouse in brooklyn, so they're in the market and i'm looking at houses they might want. whatever, i've got the fever. and this week it hit me hard. over this little gem.

http://www.fitzgerald-realestate.com/Greenfield/Massachusetts/Homes/Midtown/Agent/Listing_58507763.html

10 walnut street. what a tasty treat you are. even if it broke rule #1 (not in turners falls), greenfield felt like a reasonable compromise for what, from this angle, looks like a pristine folk victorian nestled in the woods.

perfect.

all i want to do is decorate this porch for christmas. and have a giant christmas tree behind those front windows. also, that little table by the front door!

inside, its a bit of a different story. the ceiling almost looks like wood. that trim. the feeling is there for me though. i can imagine a finished product. with me in it. and the work that needs to be done in this room, throughout the whole house, is exactly the kind of home improvement i can handle with matthew. 

 i hate that chair more than i hate this wallpaper.

hutch! i'd want this to be the living room. we'd keep our 1st editions in the cabinet.

.

tiny window at the top of the stairs. 

looks like the floor has already been painted here. which would be nice permission to experiment with painted floors.

2nd porch and that horizontal window is over the kitchen sink. 

sadly, this is the last good angle of the house. there is a trainwreck of a "kid's room" on the second floor. the bathroom is mediocre and doesn't have a window. and the kitchen is pretty much just a long rectangle slapped on the back of the house. but. the work it needed was really all styling and surface. it was a project house within my scope of talents. 

i sent fitzgerald realty an email this morning requesting a showing and got an immediate response. someone made an offer that was sure to be accepted. which is for the best. i'm not sure how we'd have swung it, but for a moment it felt within reach. matthew and i drove by yesterday and the neighborhood is almost perfect. tucked back into the edges of greenfield's nice old home neighborhoods, there she was.

 and across the street was the house from hell. 

a rambling, asbestos sided beast lurking in an overgrown lot the width of three lots on the opposite side of the street, looking like an episode of horders. with a boat in the yard. we spent the rest of the night talking about how to create screening along the road using plantings. i dreamt about painting the living room and all of the fucking trim.

i've got the fever again. 

welcome back.

2012: year of the house (hopefully THIS house)

this brief paragraph is the only whining i'll do about how busy my december has been. i felt great about this blog when i started it in november and then, thanks to the new friends, old friends, lots of cocktails and parties-for-them, and a couple of holidays i dropped the ball. but now its january and time to get back on the horse.

- - -

early in the month, matthew and i had a very interesting offer extended to us. some friends, ML and SR invited us over for long anticipated cocktails (see above, re: procrastination) and to take a look at their house. which they were hoping to sell - quickly. side note: ML is quickly becoming the go to bartender for classy/classic cocktails in turners falls. any excuse to drink with him is one worth taking. but back to the facts . . .

these friends had found a beyond ridiculous-good deal-omg-apartment right on prospect park south in good old brooklyn that they were hoping to buy. and it just happens that SR and i had been originally introduced because they've been thinking about selling this house for a while. and its just my kind of house. bungalow, full of charm, and they've spent the past five + years or so doing the clean up that so many houses in TF need. and what a house! SR has done a great job documenting their time there in her thoroughly readable blog so i'll only include some my personal favorites.

front of house. things that would sell it for me, just from this photo include that incredible tree and the retaining wall (which i probably asked too many questions about but is so sweet). also notice if you can, the driveway to right, which has a strip of grass between the pavement tracks for the wheels of your car.

PORCH! this porch, i mean, it was good enough to be featured on design*sponge. it is more than good enough for me. i can just imagine the solid three seasons matthew and i would spend out here. the photos here don't really do it justice, but the windows are beautiful old beasts that swing out and lock into place. i haven't really been able to shut up about this house and it turns out my mother grew up with a porch just like this. all the more reason for me to love it.


here's a quick shot of SR's excellent use of the #1 trend of 2011: chevron.



a kitchen with space. 'nough said. maybe not. let me count the ways i love the non-existence of travertine, or fake marble, or terra cota, or "tuscan design elements". lordy. for the record, ML and SR added the cut out above the stove and it clearly makes the space feel bigger and brighter. the picture above of the bar and chevron is just on the other side, in the dining room. and from the stove you can see not only into that room but the living room as well - solving the age old problem of entertaining: how to be attentive to your guests without them being underfoot in the kitchen.

and there's a whole 2nd floor i won't even get into. not to mention the detached garage and yard. (really, check out the blog, its worth your time and you'll be completely inspired.)

- - -

so of course we want this house. it may have been the drinks but after we left and came home, we squealed and fantasized for over an hour, talking about what walls to knock down so we could put in a wood stove (seriously the only drawback we could see was that there wasn't a fireplace or wood stove, which we thought would be a deal breaker.) but after some serious discussion, it was clear that matthew and i couldn't marshal our resources to buy this gem on such short notice. ML and SR may have been jumping the gun as well, it seems like there are still some pieces in their lives that need to fall into place before they're truly ready to leave TF. so for now, matthew and i are still looking. and holding up every house we see against this one. and come late spring we'll revisit the idea of spending the rest of our foreseeable lives in a bungalow just below the hill. retaining wall and all.

buying things for a house we don't own.

there's a serious dearth of houses in TFMA at the moment. the past two weeks have been the start of what promises to be an excellent if not chaotic holiday season. and mercury is in retrograde. so we're holding off on our initial loan paper work (which is actually finished and sitting on our kitchen table) and the house hunt is on a bit of a hiatus. not to say that i haven't checked my real estate bookmarks three times this week, just that when i do, i can't seem to get excited.

that being said, there is a mysterious house on the Hill, that has a Better Homes & Gardens Realty sign out front. i just can't find any information about it online. and frankly, i'm okay with that. we'll deal with it in january.

in the meantime, i bought a table today.



a long, glorious norweigan relic of times gone by. with a set of six chairs that don't match the table but are close enough. and that offer a weekend project in recovering their seats. and while it works great in our dining room now, i can't help but imagine the host-greatness that i'll achieve once it fills in our "some day" dining room.

so here's to cheap finds and future dinner party dreams. i have plenty of seating, so you're all invited.

congratulations are in order

congratulations zara bode and stefan amidon, on the acceptance of your intial offer on what is, without a doubt, the best house on the market in turners falls.*

*for superstition's sake, i knocked on all the pieces of wood in my living room before i posted this.


i love this house. i can't stand how much i love this house. when zara and stefan surprised matthew and i two weeks ago, in the middle of a crazy wednesday evening of running errands, visiting my folks and trying to get our weekly budget done before midnight, with a visit right after they had seen this house i could only hope we'd see this day. i didn't think it would come this quickly though.

when i first saw the listing for this house, i was iffy. the exterior isn't what i had in mind for matthew and i at all. initially i thought it was a little too sweet, a little too cottage-y. no sir. it has just the right amount of quirkiness to make me love it.

these pictures really don't do it justice.


those excellent doors lead you into the next photo, which is a phenomenal sunroom. SO. MUCH. LIGHT. i hear that z & s want to use this as an office/reading room. i couldn't agree with the sentiment more.

one of the only awkward moments is this weird cabinet next to the fireplace. zara and i had an EXTENSIVE conversation about this space, revolving around changing out the firebox and destroying those sconces. there's a weekend worthy project here with a big pay-off. exactly the sort of thing i want to be able to tackle in a house. that cabinet should probably go too. it would be worth it to pony up the cash and have a real craftsman come in and build matching bookshelves on either side of the mantle.

the rest of the photos in the listing don't convey the perfection of this house for a small family. the bathroom upstairs has another week/weekend-ish project that involves ripping out a dated shower stall. but the rest of the bathroom is perfect! a linen closest, a huge window, tasteful clean tile and access to the pipes and whatnot through a semi-secret door that will give a child an afternoon of narnia inspired fun. the bedrooms aren't huge but there are three and the woodwork throughout looked flawless. (zara remember what i said about painting any of it.) there's a perfect pantry, a big deep sink, a water-closet right off the kitchen . . . i could really go on and on about this house.

full disclosure moment. having zara and stefan house hunting in the same pool of houses as matthew and i had the potential to be terrible. wouldn't it be awful to find a house that both of us fell in love with? what if we were blinded by real estate lust and couldn't overcome our need for sun rooms and water closests? thankfully, we're better than that. and matthew nixed my dreams of this house, because of its proximity to sheffield elementary school. so if its not right for us, i'm thrilled that it was right for z & s.

so congratulations on your first offer being accepted! here's to inspections, quick and painless, and an easy signing before christmas.

seven / ten

i figured, how hard can it be to make a list of ten reasons we want to buy a house. how hard is that? honestly?

actually hard.

i asked matthew to make me a list of his reasons, for this blog and without my input (which is kind of a big deal, because we do next to everything together). while he leapt at the challenge, he only came up with seven. i made it ten but some of them might be a bit questionable. dear reader, i leave that to you to judge. here they are, in no particular order of importance.

matthew's list
1. wealth in solid form - i want to invest in land because i believe that property is a good first sign of wealth
2. privacy - i don't like sharing my space
3. my rules - no being dictated to by landlords ! (puppies?)
4. exciting project - an endless list of fun improvements to make with alex
5. in part because you (alex) want it so badly, i want to see you happy [GUSH]
6. space - need it! (storage space that is)
7. i vote in town meeting so it be nice to pay property taxes

alexander's list
1. dog
2. paying off a debt rather than giving $$$ to a landlord for an indeterminate amount of time
3. space: for guests, storage, more plants
4. projects in home
5. gardening!
6. a more firmly rooted place in the community
7. personal dream of owning an older home
8. starts a new chapter in the life of the owner
9. increases personal wealth which eventually leads to cafe ownership *
10. artistic safe space/hombodiness

* i understand that the idea of the majority of a persons wealth being tied up in their home is pretty much kaput at the moment, but there is some value historically to the status homeownership bestows on a person. and banks are more likely to lend to you once you show how responsible you are at paying a mortgage, amiright?

some clarification:
we have wanted a dog for just about as long as we've been together (seven years strong) and everywhere we've lived, we haven't been able to have one. our buddy, romeo the cat is a great substitute for the time being but nothing beats a four footed friend you can take for walks and who will lick your face. so whenever we talk about buying a house, getting a dog is a big part of that. like as soon as we have the keys we're going to dakin. so there's that.

i'm also an avid houseplant gardener but have mediocre light in our current apartment. this was one of the reasons i loved 253 silver street so much. that porch would have let me have a jungle of indoor foliage.


so what makes a reason valid for wanting to own a home? how do we know we're doing this for the "right reasons"? any thoughts you, dear reader, might have on the subject, would be greatly appreciated. and i promise, there will be another potential house posting very soon.