But seriously. Those housing prices! How do you do it?

[Elixir]

I love mid century modern styles. My house isn't quite that, but it does have some elements of it, like large rooms, and lots of windows. Plus, while almost all of the homes on my street are brick, my house is different from the rest.

My two parrots live in the large, all glass sunroom during the day. We just had our favorite workers patch up the woodwork they had chewed up. The birds are older now, so when they are out of their huge cages, one sits on top of her cage and the other one sits on a stand and looks out the windows or laughs and makes silly noises. They seem happy and I'm hoping I will at least be able to care for the little cockatoo until she dies. She's 32, with a life expectancy of 30 to 40. I've had her since she was 3 months old. The other parrot was a rescue. We probably shouldn't have taken her in, but she wan't being properly cared for, so she's better off with us, even if she hates me. I know how to handle her and I know how to get her to say silly things. She's just a biter, so I have to be careful. Sorry for derailing, but real estate is related to life style and this house is perfect for pet birds. In fact, the previous owner also had a pet parrot who lived in the sunroom. My dogs love sitting in the formal living room, so they can look out the windows when we are out, and watch for us to get home.

I think my little city is suffering from Atlanta sprawl. It's grown a lot over the years and the traffic can be congested, especially downtown. Atlanta became too expensive, so people started moving further away. The traffic heading to ATL is a nightmare, which is why we haven't been there in about 5 years.

Sounds like your priorities are similar to ours. The home is the animals that live in it, and the house adapts to, or is adapted to that.

 

[southernhybrid]

And since we are animals too, the house adapts to us as well.

But yes. When I saw this house and the sunroom, I knew my birds would love it. The dogs love walking through the back yard in the early morning so they can chase away deer or bunnies. They also enjoy sitting inside the fenced in pool area in the summer. So yeah. The house is just as much for them as it is for us. The dogs loved the beach condo too. They would sit in front of the sliding glass patio door and bark at people as they walked by. It makes me sad to think that three of those dogs are no longer with us. We only considered condos that allowed pets, when we bought the beach condo. In fact, we always traveled with our dogs. It's not fun being without them.

 

[gmbteach]

I bought my first house in my late 20’s because I was lucky enough to have been paying around $20 a week rent for a government subsidisEd house while teaching in NW Qld. I paid $85k for it. Due to the ex’s gambling and running up debt, I foolishly refinanced it as the value increased. When we split, there was still enough equity that half of it was 50k, and I was advised by a family lawyer that it would cost me that mich to dispute it, so I paid it and walked away. I eventually sold it for $320k after having it for 9 years and bought a 3 bedroom single story bungalow for $270k in the suburb I live in now - across the street in fact. I spent $30k on a new kitchen, built ins and doing up the library and office area.

Then I met Bilby and we ummed and ahed about buying together or him by himself. We eventually decided to live in my little house, and it proved way to small for 3 dogs, 2 cats and 2 houses worth of furniture…. So we upgraded to where we are now. The house over the road didn’t sell for a while, so we rented it out, and because the mortgage was more than we were getting in rent, we finally sold it. i had it for nearly 3 years. I lost $7k on it when you add in the renovations…

 

[Ford]

I love mid century modern styles. My house isn't quite that, but it does have some elements of it, like large rooms, and lots of windows. Plus, while almost all of the homes on my street are brick, my house is different from the rest.

There's quite a few mid century modern neighborhoods here in the Phoenix area. I used to drive around one in Scottsdale for work and loved seeing the homes...then I looked at the prices and if I sold my current little place and took all the equity for a down payment...I still couldn't afford it! This city is an interesting mix. Mostly bland suburban sprawl where all the houses look the same, a lot of McMansions, and then little pockets of interesting stuff. My sister - who does historical preservation for an architectural firm - came here for a conference and they took a tour of all the mid century modern neighborhoods. Wish I would have been able to do that, but I have been to Taliesin West, which was Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home. It's pretty interesting. There are also a few other buildings and homes around here he designed. There's even one for sale! So if you have about 9 million dollars...

 

[southernhybrid]

I love mid century modern styles. My house isn't quite that, but it does have some elements of it, like large rooms, and lots of windows. Plus, while almost all of the homes on my street are brick, my house is different from the rest.

There's quite a few mid century modern neighborhoods here in the Phoenix area. I used to drive around one in Scottsdale for work and loved seeing the homes...then I looked at the prices and if I sold my current little place and took all the equity for a down payment...I still couldn't afford it! This city is an interesting mix. Mostly bland suburban sprawl where all the houses look the same, a lot of McMansions, and then little pockets of interesting stuff. My sister - who does historical preservation for an architectural firm - came here for a conference and they took a tour of all the mid century modern neighborhoods. Wish I would have been able to do that, but I have been to Taliesin West, which was Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home. It's pretty interesting. There are also a few other buildings and homes around here he designed. There's even one for sale! So if you have about 9 million dollars...

I saw a few beautiful but small mid century homes for sale in Indy, in the last few years. They were very affordable and upgraded, but they usually sold in a week or so and I wasn't ready to take the plunge.

There are maybe a few in my small city, none are in good shape or for sale. Nice to know that someone else appreciates the style. My sister and I were just talking about how our crazy, but very creative father, made us beautiful children's furniture in that style in the mid 1950s. But, then our parents went crazy over Early American styles and he built Early American furniture. We always hated it, and have never understood how it became so trendy during that time.

 

[Toni]

Yeah, I'm bah humbug on midcentury modern. I'm certain that part of that is that when my grandparents who had the apple orchard had an especially good year, they got rid of all of their old furniture (lovely antiques) and bought what I thought of as hideous midcentury modern furniture. I still have an involuntary shudder whenever I see one of those sunburst clocks or 'wall art.' Same with macrame from the 70's. Yuck. My late and much beloved MIL used to refer to those 90's dried wreaths as pubic hair. I had not thought of it that way but once she said it, I could never unsee it. So, none of those in my house.

When we purchased our home, it looked as though 1970 had thrown up in it. It took me years and years and years to expunge all of that horrid loden green and celery green and harvest gold. YUCK.

I realize that the early 70's are not what most people mean by mid-century modern but still. At least for the house that we have, I prefer timeless classic. Our house is clearly Victorian and renovations done (kitchen, 3 bathrooms, floors refinished, woodwork stripped and restained, lots of painting) were all done with the type of house it is in mind. I didn't/don't want to live in a museum or with anything too precious but I really don't like most of midcentury modern. The house is comfy and homey but has beautiful floors and woodwork and high ceilings.