Next Chapter...Colonial?

The summer is gone – there is a strong breeze and a chill in the air. The flowers are all but dead, and a friendly caterpillar has made his cocoon under our Japanese Maple tree. It is time for me to emerge from my summer bubble and announce that we have decided not to add onto our house, for a plethora of good reasons.

It all started when we heard that our empty-nested neighbors were putting the word out that they would entertain a private sale of their home over the next couple of years, if anyone were interested. The house, a colonial, is one of the largest on our street (about 2,800 square feet), and sits perched on a hill with a very private wooded backyard. My husband does not love the sloped driveway, but the front yard is perfect for small-scale sledding. It will need quite a bit of renovation as the front steps are crumbling and the interior appears to be completely original. But to us, a renovation project is infinitely more desirable and doable than an addition. Of course, we are not chasing this particular house, and in fact there are several other empty-nester homes on the street that may go to market first. But this one got our juices flowing.

While we have determined that we can make an addition to our Raised ranch work (yes, we revised it again), by simply adding a new kitchen, expanding the dining room, and adding a bedroom and bath downstairs, it does not give us what we truly want out of our house: flow and lack of redundancy. Our enormous downstairs family room was virtually unused all summer. We have separated our daughters into their own bedrooms, so we no longer have a guest/play room upstairs on the main level. And we can see with clarity now that we will want more separation between the public and private areas of the house as these girls grow up. With my aging brain, I continue to go up and downstairs ten times a day because most of our storage is downstairs and I am forever forgetting why I went in either direction/what I was looking for. This can only get worse as I get older!

Besides, moving to an existing house is GREENER. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to disturb the plant and animal life that live in the earth behind our house? We have a large number of boulders at the very back of our yard that were excavated when the original foundation was dug. We would undoubtedly find more rock in digging a foundation for an addition, and I can only imagine the added expense (and noise, and irritation to our neighbors) of chipping it out.

Another consideration is that I will (hopefully) soon be returning to a regular job, and will have less time to manage a large-scale project. We would have a much easier time managing one project at a time, when we can afford it, to make an existing house perfect again. In the meantime, we have outlined about $20,000 worth of projects that we would tackle immediately to make THIS house perfect before selling or renting it.

I still believe that our addition plan would work for any Raised Ranch. But based on our specific needs, we do not feel it will work for us going forward – at least, not to the extent we would like. This family is entering a new era, in which our kids are older, we spend less but higher quality time together at home, and we are not as willing to compromise when it comes to our house dreams. The next 12 months should be interesting…