Better to buy a newer or older home?

LOL Were you stomping your feet while you typed that out Soz?

Cute little place. It's on a tiny lot but it's a very interesting house.

Soz it look wonderful and great for raising a child, lots of nooks and crannys for pretend.

Yep.

There was just a wee bit of foot-stamping.

The thing about the tininess of the lot is that it's RIGHT BY Minnehaha creek. These pics will be too big and stretch things but I'll post 'em just for a bit and then edit:

Do you see that built-in bench/windowseat? And I think that sideboard is built in too. And the light <swoons>

Gotta love the bungalows...verra nice soz..and the creek would be fab for the wee one to stomp about in

Soz-The sideboard isnt built in but its definately arts and crafts. if its period it could be limbert, Stickley, G&G, Roycrofters, or Sears. If the sideboard comes along Id send a pic to Craftsmen galleries, they are (IMHO) the best and most honest of the artsncrafts period dealers. Id kill for a Limbert sideboard .

From the inside out, the house appears to be Prairie Bungalow style. the oak looks warm and dark with age. its a beaut

I was thinking it was possibly a Stickley sideboard as well...wouldnt that be a nice perk?

<swoon>

Me too, farmerman. If it's not built-in, they're probably gonna take it with them. Don't you think? If you look, though, you can see the reflection of the picture-taker and the sideboard seems to be the focus of the picture. i.e. why have a picture of that unless it's a selling point?

Quinn, the creek gets pretty deep, but so cool to have it right there -- paths go to the falls and river in one direction and lake Nokomis in the other. (Grew up nearby.)

[size=7](Studiously ignoring the price which is pretty much but not entirely so I hold out a shred of hope given current interest rates out of our price range...)[/size]

Ooh, if it were Stickley --

Farmerman, the "I want it I want it..." link goes to an overview of the house, and they characterize it as a Craftsman Bungalow.

OK, gotta do something about the drool all over my keyboard...

Soz-the only argument i can give you that the sideboard is free standing is this;
The chair rail and wainscot of the window seat is not at the same level as the serving surface of the sideboard. If it were built in, Id say that the carpenters would have tried to get everything in the room to align vertically as well as horizontally. Artsn crafts style made you stop and look at the craftsmanship as an integral unit. Rosettes or cut blocks on window frames would be repeated all over the place. In the case hear, you have the really neat bead work on the beams and the window box. if you buy it, just clean the woodwork with a light methanol and detergent based cleaner, for wood, nothing stronger Just try a little bit on a corner and see if the shellac is too yellowed However the patina should be allowed to go on unmolested. If you want, after cleaning (gentle now) you can add a clear coat of shellac to protect. Anything thats done should be removable, and shellac can be removed by alcohol. the folks at Winterthur are the building conservation experts of the planetUSWINTERTHUR CONSERVATION LABS

totally cool

Oh, great info! Thanks farmerman! (Hmm, I'm now picturing you in some sort of flowing cape and spandexy outfit with a large "F" on the chest...)

Your assessment makes a lot of sense, even though if I got that house I'd SO want that sideboard, too. On the other hand, we have several Arts and Crafts pieces (mostly modern re-dos but good quality -- Michaels, which was later bought by Restoration Hardware) that would fit right it.

OK, getting waaaaayyyyy ahead of myself seeing as how the interview hasn't even happened yet, much less offer, deciding between offers, etc. But I like that house.

Soz...then Go for it, go for it, go for it. Sometimes you have to trust your heart. It looks like a pretty sweet house. You can diddle around forever debating all of the pluses and minuses but at some point you need to make the plunge (y'all will wake up in the middle of the night and ask yourselves if you've made a horrible decision; not to worry, we've all been there in buying our first house).
By the way, I retract my estimate of the cost of new heating and a/c. My new estimate, based on one of my employee's getting an old 2200 sq ft farmhouse done, is about $12000 in today's dollars.
-rjb-

Yer sweet, rjb! The main thing I'm referring to though is that we won't be moving unless the hubby gets a job in Minneapolis, and that job is just at the interview stage (next Tuesday.) So not in any position to be buying houses just yet.

some of my students used to call me that mean MF. Ill settle for just half of a word.

well, I hope you get what you want. that sweet home looks like it needs a loving owner. We talked about selling our home when we get to the age that increasing frailty doesnt allow our 3 floor chasing of kids and pets and the fun we have and have had in the house. I suspect that the spirits of the former caretakers approved of our turn and , as we enter into our fifties we see that our caretakership is finite. So weve already got an add prepared . we will publish our add more as an interview than a sale of property. We want the right people to buy it.
You sound like some of that same recognition of your space is stirring inside. neh?

Yeh. I've done this with all of our houses, starting with our first apartment in Madison -- found something, gotten what E.G. calls "The Look", and made sure we get it. Each have been just barely beyond our means but we found a way to swing it. With our house in Pasadena, we were the first "outsiders" to live there in at least 50 years, I think longer -- the person who was renting it had grown up there. There was a lot of interest in it, and she told us later she had decided to rent it to us because of the way my face lit up when I saw it. She wanted people who truly loved the house to live there, and she knew we did. (I still miss that house, if not the environs...)

I usually have a few "ooh" moments before finding The One, though, and can't tell yet what's up with this one. It's awfully early in the game. I have an appointment to see it next Tuesday, though.

(Just occurred to me that I'm possibly broadcasting to all of the internet my future address... hmmm...)

Well, one advantage of househunting in Minneapolis is that I have spies there -- I know someone who knows someone who lives a few blocks away from that house and she says it's right on the approach to the airport. The Metropolitan Airport Commission provided new doors, windows, and reinsulation, so it's not so bad inside (?), but noisy outside.

Perfect for ME, of course, but a problem for sozlet and hubby.

We'll see.

address noted