This American House

Sneak Peek: Mr & Mr Blandings Finally Found Their House

11/20/2013

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And here it is folks. This is the house that will become Mr and Mr Blandings’ dream home.

Our purchase of the house has been in the works for a number of weeks but I wanted to wait until we were certain that it was actually going happen before announcing it. And right now it seems quite certain. We’ve had the inspections, the bank approves and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, we’re all set to close on it at the end of the week.

I’m only going to give you this little sneak peek right now. Once we’re in the house I’ll be inundating the blog with all my plans and schemes for making it our dream home. I will, however, give you a little bit of info about the house – if only to help you understand why we chose this house. There are three things about this house that made it seem like an unlikely candidate for our dream home.

First of all, it’s much bigger and older than we thought we would want. Built in 1917, the house has three bedrooms and two bathrooms spread out on two levels, plus a partially finished basement. We never imagined we’d buy someplace so large!

Also, the house is a little farther than we had planned. Clocking in at four and a half hours from the city, we’re more than an hour over our initial limit for distance. The upside is that by the time we reach the house, it’s easy to forget that our lives in the city even exist.

Lastly, the house is in a small town. Like, right in the middle of it. You might have noticed from the other houses I’ve posted about that we were initially interested in a rural property. We had visions of being gentlemen farmers in a little house surrounded by acres and acres of land. While this house does feel somewhat rural, it is in a small town, surrounded by other houses.

So how did we look past these three issues and decide to make this our dream home? Two words: architectural significance. Mr. Blandings discovered this little gem of a house on a blog about notable architecture and, well, it was just too good to pass up. The house is in amazing condition, inside and out, and will provide the perfect setting for the DIY projects that will turn it into our dream home. We’re also excited to buy a little piece of history. Which is rich, considering the fictional Mr. and Mrs. Blandings bought their dream home because the real estate agent promised them that they buying a piece of American history! “General Gates stopped to water his horses here,” he promised.

I look forward to showing you the inside of the house. More importantly, I look forward to sharing all of our projects with you. The house is in great condition but it needs some major cosmetic enhancements. Think of it as Joan Rivers pre-plastic surgery. Can we talk!?

Stay tuned for a room by room assessment of the house as it is, along with our plans for turning it into a dream space.

Image: Mr and Mr Blandings

dream house, furnishing, Our Story

How We Plan to Furnish Our Dream House on a Budget

11/13/2013

twin beds

Cary Grant’s Mr. Blandings apparently had some pretty deep pockets when he was building his dream house back in 1947. Still, he spent every nickel he had and put his family into hawk to put together his house. Constructing and decorating it had nearly torn apart his family and driven Mr. Blandings into the poor house. And then, at the last minute, he was saved by a catchphrase supplied by his maid. His advertising career was rescued, he had the money he needed to pay off his lenders and they all lived happily ever after. Ah, a Hollywood happy ending!

Unlike the fictional Mr. Blandings, we are on a very tight budget for buying and decorating our dream house. If we could scoop up all the money we have right now and time warp back to 1947, we’d be rich. By 2013 standards, however, we’re just getting by. We certainly don’t have a lot of money throw around in furnishing the house. Nor do we want to go into debt to achieve the dream home. And you know what? We’re totally fine with that. In fact, we’re going to love the challenge.

We’ve got a plan, you see. We have a plan to outfit the dream house on a small budget while still looking like we spent a million bucks. It’s probably going to require a lot patience and there will definitely be plenty of elbow grease involved, but we’re up for the challenge. So what’s the plan? It’s simple:

Almost every piece of furniture we bring into the house is going to be used. We’re shopping Craigslist, thrift stores, flea markets and estate sales to furnish the home with vintage pieces. Save for a few items (mattresses, perhaps a sofa) we want every piece of furniture in the house to be unique. And you know who makes the most unique furnishings? The people of yesteryear. They also made high quality furniture that can be scooped up pretty cheaply.

Now that we have the actual dream house in our sights (rumor has it we may be ready to make an announcement soon) we’ve started shopping for furnishings for it. My first purchase was two mission style armchairs that I found on Craigslist. They required a one hour drive outside the city but they’re damned nice chairs. They’re big, solid and well made with a nice dark finish and brown leather cushions. If I had bought them new they would have easily been $500 apiece. I scored two chairs for $225.

But wait – it gets better. Our plan for furnishing the dream house is two-pronged. While we’re buying and collecting used furnishings to put in the new house, we’re also selling off some of what we already have sitting around.

A couple of days after I bought the chairs, I sold a bed that had been collecting dust in our storage unit for sale. I set a price of $300 on Craigslist, assuming that the buyer would negotiate. Three days later, a young couple handed over fifteen $20 bills and carried off the bed.

If you’re keeping track, that means I not only recouped the $225 I spent on the chairs, I had gained $75 more!

Armed with $300, my next mission was to find two matching twin beds. I’ve been hunting for weeks actually. I’ve gotten up at 5AM to hit estate sales and I’ve trolled Craigslist and ebay. And then yesterday, thanks to friends who are super vintage scouts, I scored the twin beds in the photo at the top of this post. They’re definitely vintage, although I’m not quite sure how old. I was immediately drawn to their French Provincial styling and by the fact that they have wood side rails with original hardware. But the best part was the price. I got both beds for $175.

I’ve already spent the other $125 – and then about $100 more. I also bought a pine full-size sleigh bed, a drop leaf table, a small bench, one giant basket and a few odds and ends at the same thrift store.

Still keeping score? OK here’s the breakdown.

Originally spent $225 on chairs –

Sold a bed for $300 +

Bought two beds and assorted other furniture for $400 =

Have practically furnished a house and have only spent a few hundred bucks.

Now that I’ve gotten started, I’m really loving the challenge! It’s so easy to sit down and buy new furniture out of catalogs. That’s never how I’ve wanted to decorate a home. Hunting out quality vintage goods takes patience and a willingness to be resourceful. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Image: Mr and Mr Blandings

Our Story

The Search for the Dream House: The Cabin & The Airstrip

11/11/2013

sanpierre1

After the disappointment of the cabin in the pines and its literal cesspool of thirty year old shit, we were feeling pretty frustrated by the house search. We took a break to lick our wounds and then went back to the drawing board. Or, rather, back to the real estate listings.

The next house to pique our interest should have been the cottage of our dreams. Sitting on a large parcel of land only 2 1/2 hours from the city, the house was surrounded by farmland, as well as a plot of land with a unique history. It was the history of the land adjacent to the house that really intrigued us.

The area, which was near a large river, had once been an oil pumping stop and then later became a Nazarene Campground. Then, sometime in the 1980’s, a man with a vision of turning the land into a vacation housing development bought the parcel. He gave the land a new name and constructed a few cabins while he occupied the occupied the old campground buildings. An amateur aviator, he also cleared out a strip of land to build himself an airstrip. Based on what we could find in online searches, the developer would fly from his home in the vacation development to a his favorite restaurant a few counties away.

Yes, that’s right, the man built himself an airstrip. If you’re imagining a long strip of concrete and red flashing lights, you’re thinking way more sophisticated than it really was.

airstrip

This airstrip was basically a long stretch of flat grass that had been carved out from the heavily wooded fields around it. And it was right beside the house for sale, separated by a row of trees. Sounds cool, right?

Well, the development never quite took off (pun intended). As you might expect of someone with grandiose visions and a penchant for building airstrips for himself, the developer ended up getting into financial trouble and lost control of the entire project. While a couple of the houses were actually constructed, the developer lost the land in a tax deal and the current housing association was locked in a lawsuit to get control.

Now, the house we were looking at was not within this vacation home community. We wanted no part of the vacation home community, which felt too much like the condo situation where we currently live. Besides, with the development under new ownership, it seemed like too much trouble. While the house had been built by the vacation community developer, it was on its own parcel of land just outside the development. The original owner, quite wisely, liked the houses that were being built but didn’t want to be part of the community.

When we looked at the aerial view on Google maps, with the airstrip and the wooded landscape all around it, the house intrigued us. The house itself was built in the late 1980’s and seemed to be simple structure with a large shared living space, a separate bedroom and a sleeping loft. Before driving to the house, we made plans for adding another building or two on the ample acreage surrounding the house. We started planning living in the rustic cabin while we built a modern glass house elsewhere on the property.

lomax-cabin

Once we got to the house, our plans started to fall apart. It turns out that most of the land that comes with the house is covered by swamp, making building on it improbable. Strike one! Also, it was definitely a rustic cabin, even more so than the cabin we had tried buy a month earlier. The house hadn’t really been intended as a year round residence and that was evident in its construction. Strike two! The house was built on a wood foundation and, thanks to its proximity to the river, was in a flood plain. Strike three! Your’re out!

To add insult to injury with this house, it shared a driveway with another house. Even in the best scenario, we would not be very happy about sharing a driveway with another house. That the other house was surrounded by old bathtubs and junked cars, well, there was no way that was going to work for us. Neither of us could imagine a future of sharing a driveway with a house that looked like it was occupied by hoarders.

So that was that. We got back in our car, drove back to the city and wondered if we would ever find the house for us.

Images: Mr and Mr Blandings

dream house, Our Story

Mr & Mr Blandings’ 5 Dream Home Must-Haves

11/04/2013

barn

Mr Blandings and I are not especially picky people. We’re actually quite easy going. If you’re going to live a happy life in the city, you have to somewhat flexible, right? Like good Midwestern boys we’ve always subscribed to the “you can’t always get what you want” camp. We’ve often settled for things that weren’t exactly what we wanted but, hey, it was close enough.

When we bought our little city condo six years ago, we made a list of requirements and then slowly whittled it down until it included just a couple of items. We discovered Early in our search that many of our must-haves were totally out of our price range. Oh, sure, if we wanted to move to a struggling or isolated neighborhood, we would have had more choices. But having crossed all of our dream neighborhoods off the list already, we we weren’t willing to sacrifice location any more than we already were. While we would have loved an extra bathroom and a separate dining room, those condos were out of our price range, even in the the neighborhoods we could afford. We started trading amenities, like in-unit laundry for off-street parking, and eventually landed in our tiny little condo in a so-so neighborhood. While we’ve loved the in-unit laundry, we both frequently bemoan the lack of parking.

We’re under no illusion that the dream house will be perfect. Nothing’s perfect. But this time we’re a little less likely to settle for less. As we’ve drawn up our list of must-haves for the dream house, we’ve looked at some that didn’t quite match up but they were usually dismissed straight away. We’re done settling, kids.

So what are these must-haves? Well, there are five big requirements for the house that will become our dream home. Of course, there are many other things on our wish list, but these are the five things that we absolutely, positively won’t give up.

FIRE We’d prefer it be indoor, in a grand old fireplace or wood burning stove, but we’ll take a fire pit. Bonus points if the house has both.
BATHROOMS There has to be multiple bathrooms in the house. They don’t have to be full bathrooms, as long as there’s more than one.
PRIVACY Whether it’s on a half acre or ten, we want the house to feel like a respite from our crowded, busy lives in the city. We don’t want a house on a busy road or a corner lot. And definitely nothing with a shared driveway or any other communal property.
GARAGE We’d settle for a one car stall but a two car garage would be even better. If there’s room for a workshop in the garage, all the better.
GAY FRIENDLINESS Listen, I wish we didn’t have to care about this. And maybe we don’t have to. This is, after all, 2013. Unlike my experience growing up gay in small town America in the 1980s, things seem to have changed a bit. Still, we’ve tended to look for the dream house in communities that tend to be more liberal. We have searched mainly in areas with nearby universities or thriving arts scenes. Because, you know, where there are professors and artists, there are sure to be homosexuals!

Now, we almost gave up must-have number two for the shitty cabin. With a little hindsight, we’re actually relieved that that house didn’t work out. While it did fulfill the other four requirements on our list, we would have hated having another home with one small bathroom.

Image: Mr & Mr Blandings

Our Story, Uncategorized

The Search for the Dream House: Cabin in the Pines

10/24/2013

spring-green-house Like I said in the introduction post, we’ve been looking for our dream house for a number of months. We’ve relied heavily on Google Maps and other satellite imagery to try to suss out whether a property was in a desirable area before we did a drive by. Let me tell you, when you’re looking for a house long distance, Google Streetview is your best friend. If we got interested in a listing, we look at satellite and Streetview images for the address to make sure it wasn’t sitting next to a big industrial sight or a trailer park or some such. Still, Over the course of the summer we spent countless hours driving around to small towns and rural areas hours outside the city. Even with satellite images, location can be deceiving. And even if location was perfect, sometimes the house itself looked nothing like the ad had suggested.

We had a few false starts by the time we came across this cabin nestled in a small pine forest. After driving by a few clunker houses and feeling discouraged, finding this little cabin seemed very promising. We requested more information from the real estate agent and then studied the location on Google Maps. The Streetview option wasn’t available for this location so we had to rely solely on satellite imagery. The location looked pretty desirable – secluded but near a thriving small town and within 3 1/2 hours of the city. There were a few houses nearby but we didn’t see any trailer parks or highways. So we finally made the trek out to see it.

The location was indeed close to perfect. When I say it was nestled in pine trees, I mean it. From the road, the house was practically invisible. As we pulled into the driveway, all we could see were trees and wild greenery. Because there’s a turn in the driveway that leads to the house and garage, the driveway seems to dead end in the forest. I think we both let out a little squeal when we first pulled into the driveway. Yeah, we’ve never been very good at hiding our excitement. After seeing a few terribly ugly houses and properties, we sorely needed the delight of a good one.

spring-green-01

The house itself was tiny. Like, smaller than our apartment tiny. Built in 1977, the house has always been used as a rustic cabin. Many of the houses around it were built as cabins and second homes around the same time and, In recent years, most of those have been rebuilt as year round homes.

Despite its modest size, we saw potential in this house. With a two car garage and another small woodshed, the sat on enough acreage that we could imagine potential for future growth. Whether we converted the garage into a separate studio or built a new small structure on the property, we knew we’d have room to grow.

We even saw potential in the house itself. With two small bedrooms, a tiny bathroom, galley kitchen and living room, there’s roughly 700 square feet of living space inside. There’s also a large screened three season porch that bumps the square footage up by almost 200. We had visions of painting all the pine paneling white and knocking down the wall that divides the two bedrooms to create one big room. We made plans for simplifying the kitchen and modernizing the bathroom. But more than anything, we imagined using the big fireplace in the living room.

The second we walked into the cabin the first time, we both breathed in deeply and announced, “Mmm, I smell the fireplace.” We probably even said it in unison. In this tiny little house, the fireplace was the main feature, both visually and aromatically. We decided that we could overlook the limited square footage and vintage cabin kitchen in exchange for the fireplace and the seclusion of the pines.

spring-green-02

We didn’t make an offer that day but we had made one within the week. It was a pretty quick little process, actually. We made the offer one day, the seller countered the next and we accepted the counter immediately. It was on my birthday, as we were standing in front of the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust office in The Rookery building that we saw the email with the seller’s counter offer. Since the house is near a town with a lot of notable Frank Lloyd Wright tourism, the setting for receiving the news seemed perfect. It also seemed like the best birthday present ever!

Oh, but not so fast. Things can’t be that easy! A week later after signing the contract, we returned to the house for the inspection. We found the real estate agent sitting in the house and she directed us to the inspector around back. After we introduced ourselves to the inspector, he started telling us about having trouble finding the septic system. Mr. Blandings and I glanced at each other with a look of “oh shit.” As it turns out, oh shit indeed.

When the inspector did find the septic system, we couldn’t believe our eyes. It seems that the man who hand built this cabin in 1977 also built his own septic system. Buried in a shallow little hole was a small propane tank that had been retrofit to be used as the septic system.

“Oh, this isn’t good,” the inspector said. “I can’t believe no one has fallen into this thing. Look at how the top is all rusted out.”

Can you imagine falling into a tank full of sewage? Oh shit!

The inspector turned up a few other small problems but nothing could top the septic issue. Mr. Blandings and I talked about trying to work with the seller to fix the problem and try to split the cost but eventually we walked away. The seller wanted to remove the listing completely and have the septic system completely replaced before trying to sell it again.

Of course, we were heartbroken. We had started looking at paint swatches and brainstorming little measures we could take to make the house more comfortable. We were already planning our first Christmas in the house. I knew exactly where I was going to put the Christmas tree.

But what are you going to do? There was no way we would buy the house with the septic system as-is – even though the real estate agent tried to talk us into it. And now in hindsight we can see that perhaps the house would have been too small anyway. I mean, the whole reason we want to find our dream home is so we can stretch out. Exactly how much do we think we could stretch in a house that’s smaller than the apartment?

And so the search for the dream house continues…

Images: Mr. and Mr. Blandings

Older Posts

Newer Posts

Our Story

Sneak Peek: Mr & Mr Blandings Finally Found Their House

How We Plan to Furnish Our Dream House on a Budget

The Search for the Dream House: The Cabin & The Airstrip

Mr & Mr Blandings’ 5 Dream Home Must-Haves

The Search for the Dream House: Cabin in the Pines

LIVING HISTORY IN THIS AMERICAN HOUSE: AN AMERICAN SYSTEM-BUILT HOME DESIGNED BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT | 1917

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