My Dream House

One of my favorite TV shows is This Old House. I marvel at the amount of effort they go through with their rehab projects. Currently, PBS is airing reruns of a shingle-style home in Newton, Massachusetts. The couple outgrew their house and didn't want to spend a lot of money adding on to the house. Instead, they bought a HUGE home that just needed a little work.

Little? My god, for what they spent on that rehab, I could've bought five houses! Where do these people get that kind of money?

But I love the show anyway. I love the "hosts" (Kevin, Norm, Tom, Rich and Roger--hmm...no women). I love the attention to detail. Last Saturday I watched a rerun of a show I'd missed. It concerned stained glass restoration. Wow. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. If I had some kind of crafty talent (which I don't), I'd be interested in trying stained glass. (Maybe I should take a class anyway?)

I love watching home renovations. This Old House takes months for these rehabs, unlike other rehab shows that take an entire house and fix it up in 30 minutes. I learned with my very first house that every home improvement project takes 6 million hours longer than you expect.

I live in a contemporary ranch and I would DEARLY love to add details like crown molding. My husband doesn't agree. Therefore, anything I want to do in that direction would need to be accomplished at our summer cottage. Unfortunately, I don't have any "building" skills, either. (Hmmm.)

Our entire neighborhood is nice, but pretty much...well, boring. And our neighbors to the south are making their house even MORE boring by ripping off all the cedar shingles and replacing them with vinyl siding. Beige vinyl siding. (Our house is unique to this street, which is at least a tad more interesting.)

I don't know about where you live, but here any time a new neighborhood goes up around here all the houses are ugly (do these builders ever hire real architects to design these houses--and if so did they graduate with mail-order degrees?), outfitted with white, beige or gray vinyl siding. All of the fronts of these houses are dominated by a double (or triple) garage. All the mature trees are ripped out and twigs are planted. (We call these developments "Sunny Acres," and there sure are a lot of them.)

When I first thought about owning a home, I wanted an old one. Preferably a farm house. All three of my homes have been one-story buildings--one a shotgun, two ranch houses. Don't get me wrong. I love my house. I just wish the details were more, well, girly. Hubby doesn't agree.

Maybe I should have married a woman.