Dream House(s)

My darling wife and I make plans.  Part of how we do this is by thinking about what we would really like if the circumstances enabled us to choose it.  A substantial portion of this thinking involves where we would like to live, a dream house.  I have three sorts of dream house, in a range from temporary and cheap to permanent and expensive, and I believe my wife has similar if not identical ideas. I highly recommend the multiple dream approach.  There are many different ways for each person to be happy and the more ways you look for happiness, the greater the chance you will find it.

I'll start with the things that the three houses have in common.  They all are in, or around a university town.  We would like to live in a place where a substantial proportion of the inhabitants are younger, smarter, and more educated than the average.  We would also like to live in a place where a substantial proportion of the older people are well educated.  It also helps that college towns tend to be liberal places, and it is unfortunately easier (but less challenging) and more rewarding (but less educational) to be around people who share your values.  I like the energy of college students, and the opportunities to do interesting things that come with a university.  It's alright to have fun, and young people have fun.  I still don't understand why many people stop having fun.  A college town has an atmosphere of significance, of the possibility of change, of creativity.  We want that.

The second thing that the houses have in common is the climate.  We wish to live in a place that has all four seasons to which we are accustomed.  However, the winter cannot be very cold, prolonged or dark because that sucks.  Snow a couple of times a year, those clear winter skies, and frost overnight is perfect.  We also don't want the unbearable heat of a Texas summer.  We don't mind some hot days or weeks, but month after month of pounding heat is awful.  I don't want to have to hide from the outside in summer or winter.  Let's face it, we want to live in the same climate that most people want, a Mediterranean/Californian climate.  However, we do want enough rain for there to be trees and greenness year round.  In the USA this either means mid-California (the Bay), or strips on the north and south borders of the Appalachian mountains, from North Carolina to Kentucky.  The second area is much larger, cheaper, and more realistic.  This area is our target for the future.

The third thing that the houses have in common is in ease of maintenance.  This involves two separate qualities, the functionality of structure and appliances the furnace will work forever and the roof will stay on), and not having to care about resale value.  In my dream house I never have to think about what the consequences of my actions will be for anyone but myself and my wife.  There is no housing association with my dream house.  Ideally it is made of stone blocks, the windows are bullet proof, and the garden is full of large, flowering perennials that you just hack back with a machete as the whim takes you.

So, to the actual houses.  The most temporary (possibly) and straight forward is the Craftsman bungalow in a college town.  I'm sure the English readers will be initially panicked by the concept of my dream house being a bungalow, but in the USA they look like this:

These houses are a staple of towns that grew up in the first half of the 20th century, are made of the cheaply available lumber of the time, have therefore stayed up for more than fifty years, and are just the essence of homely comfort.  Hardwood floors, a nice porch, a rational layout.  You have a porch to look out upon the sidewalk so you can wave to those walking by, and a private back garden for hiding.  For a temporary situation I would like to rent one of these that has been used by students.  So, walking distance to the college, beaten to the point where I can't do more damage.  The sort of place in which you can hang Jimi Hendrix posters and Tibetan prayer flags.  The kitchen is entirely linoleum.  There's a fence around the place so The Face of Evil can terrify the locals.  A more permanent situation would be a house very much like the one in the picture, near a large park or multi-use trail.  Basically one of our dream houses is a nice Portland, OR. house in a Mediterranean climate within biking distance of a college.

The second house is where the English should actually start panicking.  This is what the Americans call a ranch house, and the English call a big bungalow.

That looks horrible, doesn't it?  Well, this is the starting point.  This would lie about five-ten miles from the edge of a college town, just in the next county, a rural county. So we could ride bicycles to town and back in a day, and the property taxes would be very low indeed (for the USA).  We could also probably purchase the house outright with our present equity, and so living there would be astonishingly cheap (less than $400/month).  This is part of our long term financial strategy, low costs are the same as good investment.  It would be on a piece of property of at least two acres.  This is just a starting point.  With just two of us and a dog we only need two bedrooms and general living space.  However, what we do love are porches, decks, patios, etc..  So, over time what you see in this photograph would become invisible, surrounded by decks, fences, porches, climbing wisteria, roses, hops.  We would have a little private enclosure for our hot tub.  We would have an enclosed porch to hide from mosquitoes and to look outside in the winter.  A deck for barbecue, perhaps with a wood stove.  Another porch with a swing and Adirondack chairs to while away the evening.  A sophisticated sound system would be strung through the house, inside and out.  A trestled walkway.  The garden would have a pond, bushes, trees, bamboo, a small ruined Greek temple in bleached concrete.  The house is simply a core in which to retreat to sleep, eat and vegetate in front of the television.  Think of the above picture surrounded by these:

The final dream house is the one that costs money.  It is essentially the same thing as the last house, except for being closer to the town, with more property, and being built from scratch.  The front of the house, that which faces the road would be in the guise of a hobbit hole.  Constructed by interlocking geodesic domes and covered with sod that reached the ground around it, the house would look as though it was part of the landscape itself.  A native grass and wildflower meadow would stretch out in front of it.  However, in the back, hidden from view by the grass, would be a sunken, roman courtyard, overlooked by a balcony.  The entire house would be constructed in order to minimize the environmental impact (insulation, solar/wind powered, reclaimed water, climatic appropriate plants, recycling).  A discreet distance from the house would be the cottage/folly of our gaffer, our Samwise Gamgee, the guy who would make his living mowing the lawn, fixing things, puttering and hacking back the plants.  We already have someone who has agreed to fill this role should we somehow become very wealthy.