The answers do not correspond to one another… that is, not all A’s refer to Quaint Suburbia, not all B’s refer to Fabulous Craftsman, etc. Though I am sure that you can quite easily connect the picture with the description of the house.
1- Based on exterior?
A-Quaint Suburbia
B-Fabulous Craftsman
C-Bland Ranch
2-Based on rooms?
A-3 large bedrooms, 2 bath, Living room, Dinning room, Great Room, Kitchen with great cabinets, washroom in the cellar basement, 1 car garage and work room
B-3 small bedrooms, 2 baths (one being just a shower), a small dining room, a nice living room, a finished basement with a great room, a bonus room, and washroom, 1 car garage
C-4 bedrooms (two nice and large, one small fit for office, one fun for kids), 3 1/2 baths, large living room, large kitchen with breakfast bar and eat in dining section, washroom/mudroom, 1 car garage, great room in basement, guestroom in basement (one of the full baths in basement).
3-Based on yard?
A-Nice tall holly trees in back, chain link fence, large grassy yard, bland little patio.
B-Fabulous three tiered deck, raised garden, great trees, good landscaping.
C-Fabulous covered and screened deck, perfect for entertaining, bricked patio under deck, small back yard, but really nice flower garden and room for swing set and a very small tree stand with slide.
4-Based on commute?
A-8 miles to job or 25 minute commute, should traffic not be too horrible. Though it could be 30-40 minutes in bad traffic, if you hit the lights at the wrong time.
B-3.6 miles to job or 15 minute commute, depending on traffic or 25 minute bike ride.
C-2 miles to job or 10 minute bike ride regardless of traffic.
5-Based on schools?
A-4 star elementary (that is three blocks from home), 4 star middle school, 4 star high school
B-Worst elementary and middle school in city, best high school in city (15th in state)
C-1 star elementary school, 4 star middle, best high school in city (15th in state)
6-Based on location?
A- At the edge of a sketchy neighborhood that scares locals away from buying, despite the street being as fabulous as the house, pretty close to a food co-op and 5 minute drive to a kroger
B-Pretty close to downtown and in a solid and solidly bland neighborhood, really close to a food co-op (5 minute drive) and a krogers (3 minute drive)
C-Cclose to a really beautiful green park with picnic tables, a creek and quaint bridges, 10 minute walk to a pool, 7 minute drive to kroger.
7-Based on image?
A-This house is what a house should be, especially for a fabulous professor of humanities.
B-This house is so boring that most of America was born and raised in this sort of architectural mistake.
C-This house is solidly bourgeois, very suburbia, very adult with two kids and a dog.
8-Based on needs?
A-Cramped but large and has all the rooms one “needs:” i.e. bedroom for everyone in the family and an office/guest room.
B-Large and fabulous but no room for guests, except in great room and no room for office except in great room or in unfinished cellar basement.
C-Bedroom for everybody, office for the work from home mom, and guest room.
9-Based on Price?
A-Uncomfortably at the upper, upper limit of price range—will need income from both salaries to pay for home.
B-Comfortably done on the salary of the humanities professor.
C-Even more comfortably done on the salary of the humanities professor because the people have connections to future job and have lowered the price.
Exterior: B, though they’re all lovely (even bland ranch is much prettier than our local version of bland ranch)
Rooms: C, but all sound great
Yard: Both C & B sound excellent
Commute: C
Schools: A—you probably don’t need to look too far into the future at this point (middle & high school waaay down the road)
Location: Either A or C—depending on crime rate—we live on a nice street “at the edge of sketchy,” but i still feel pretty safe jogging after dark—sometimes the sketchiness is over-hyped
Image: A, but methinks that prof & fam are way too fab to worry about image :)
Needs: C
Price: C or B, obv.
Good luck!
by kl—Jul 11, 05:58 AM
well, we put an offer on a house.
unfortunately, for fabulous craftsman, it is on the edge of a sketchy area (i almost convinced t that that didn’t matter), it’s the most expensive, in the worst school district, and does not have the rooms for each child to have her and his own room (though i almost convinced t that she needn’t worry about that either), but it didn’t have the room for her to have an office (and she will be working at least 20 hours a week all from home).
unfortunately for me, it’s the one that is two miles from job and it’s the one that has a raised garden in the back yard.
however, we are are quite happy with our la,la,la, la,la, la, la, la, la, la, la…..our house is a very, very fine house.
it is: A, C, C, A, A, C, C, C, C
regarding commute, they said they’d tell me the secret passage ways to get to the school in the quickest way possible.
all of this, of course, depends upon our house closing at the end of the month. we are halfway through the due diligence process. we’ve passed inspection… so yay! now, we just need the house to appraise at or more than the value agreed upon.
by Jeremy—Jul 11, 06:27 AM
So what’s it like to be bourgeois?
by greg—Jul 11, 07:01 AM
I’d rule out the ranch on principle. I like the craftsman, esp because of the short commute, but the green-shutterhouse sounds much better than its lack of a front porch makes it seem. Fingers crossed the house in Atl sells!
by greg—Jul 11, 07:16 AM
It’s all that and shopping spree at Walmart!
It’s all that and a cocktail platter of ilegally farm-raised jumbo shrimp that are destroying the mangroves of Peru and SE Asia.
It’s all that and a 5 dollar
tankgallon of gas.It’s all that and a little red convertible at 50.
It’s all that and a heartattack at 47.
by Jeremy—Jul 11, 07:41 AM
I think my answers are on the same lines as KL’s, but I’m sure the school thing would be a big factor were I in your place. I grew up taking good schools for granted and have since learned that such things are much rarer than I thought.
by Laura—Jul 11, 07:44 AM
5: That sounds awesome!
by greg—Jul 11, 09:28 AM
Well, I hope all goes smoothly. “A” looks like a lovely house indeed, and I hope you’ll set up the guest room just the way we like it. (Porn collection? Just kidding.)
by kl—Jul 11, 09:29 AM
Interesting that the sweet little neighborhood with all the cool craftsman houses in IC is also nestled in/beside the poorer part of town and in the district of one of the most struggling elementary schools in the city. Guess those houses sprang up way before IC decided where “those people from Chicago” were going to be placed. (But that’s a blog post in and of itself.)
Oh, but I drool over those houses whenever we stroll around there. I feel like I’m in a fairy tale when I’m in that neighborhood.
by kl—Jul 11, 09:42 AM
G tells me that the houses we like so much are actually arts & craft houses and not craftsman. i’m an architectural idiot, so i’ll have to take his word for it.
same general idea, though, socioeconomically speaking…
by kl—Jul 11, 10:11 AM
crafstmen and arts and crafts are not that different
by Jeremy—Jul 11, 10:24 AM
huh. i thought craftsman style was descended from the a&c movement; i see now they were basically contemporary and/or american derivative. go figure!
by greg—Jul 11, 10:46 AM
sounds like a GREAT choice/compromise of all possible choices. as for the craftsman nostalgia, as someone who lives in a house whose exterior is nearly the opposite of the image we like to project, i can tell you that exterior is way overrated…remember that your neighbors look at it far more than you do!
congratulations!!!
by mary—Jul 13, 08:21 AM