It’s because you’re so wealthy that you have your own golf course behind the house. j/k!
There’s a fascinating book that I read some years ago (Rise: How a House Built a Family, by Cara Brookins) about a single mother, who had escaped an abusive marriage with her four children, who bought a plot of land and, with the help of her kids, build their own family home, using only YouTube videos and advice from Home Depot for guidance. And a beautiful place it is, too.
Brief story with pictures here:
So–other good features using the latest greatest–triple pane windows, high efficiency boiler, heat pump hot water (jury still out), starlink internet hardwired everywhere, metallic epoxy floors, steel waterfall kitchen island (it does stain with acids, though), bidet toilets, wall mounted toilets, handmade steel vent hood, railings, and accents. Build your own home–then it’s really a home.
It can be cathartic, or enraging. Depends on the day. The end result, though…
Unfortunately (fortunately?) that’s the scar from the 10000 acre forest fire that happened while we were building. Most of our neighbors lost their houses. We survived because of the bare ground around the build.
Other guts-level things we did are full house water filtration and softening, air handling and filtration to almost HEPA level, Lutron Caseta smart switches where needed, and powered blinds with Alexa capabilities… This is not a cheap house, but I’d put it against the $2000/foot house at the Yellowstone club for coolness and comfort.
I will be building a new place for myself in the next 12 mo or so. I have no desire to have fancy landscaping or yard elements. I have no tolerance for real estate porn. I am going to be doing a simple build-out in part of a steel building that will also be my personal workshop… All will be pretty generic and things like wiring and plumbing will probably be visible and easily accessible in most areas. It will probably look more like an industrial workshop than a house. Practicality and serviceability over aesthetics almost across the board. Probably the only thing many folks would think is “cool” is my kitchen space will be fairly large and built kinda like a commercial kitchen. Mostly stainless steel, no soapstone counters, no fancy wall hangings. Basically a kitchen you could probably take a pressure washer to if needed,
Will it be pretty…no. Will it have “curb appeal”…nope… it will probably make an interior decorator cry when im done. but its my space, and what I want. the apartment space will probably have a little more “flair” but not much.
- A sarcastic or humorous form of applause performed by lightly and rapidly clapping the fingers of one hand against the palm of the other, used to show indifference or disdain, or to show polite or quiet appreciation.
[bolding mine]
I promise I meant it as a sincere compliment. Your house looks just beautiful !
Good point. The houses in my development, more or less accidentally, are all great for aging in place. There was a restriction against two stories until fairly recently. They’re all almost 70 years old and have one story floor plans with no steps, except one to the garage and two very small steps to the street. And if that was a problem you could go out to the patio to the street with no steps at all.
When we were looking at houses in the town we moved here from, thinking to go back, one problem was that they were all two stories, with the bedrooms on the second floor. My in-laws house had the only bathroom on the second floor, that was a real pain.
I think the trick is not looking at it as strictly a financial asset that has to appreciate in value due to improvements you make on it.
A better way to conceive of it is somewhere you live, that you build equity in and that will tend to go up in value over time, instead of somewhere you live that’s merely an expense. Stuff like renovations, new floors, etc… while you live there are more quality-of-life improvements rather than anything intended to raise your resale value.
That said, I get your frustration. All the previous owners of our house were apparently uniformly moronic and did stuff on the DIY cheap, or bought nice stuff and installed it poorly. Or some combination of both. All of which end up costing US more money and time when we get it redone by professionals.
That sounds a lot like my idea of a great house. I don’t like open concept. Huge vaulted ceilings are a waste of square footage. Plus the Four Square model usually has a decent-sized second floor landing – something I’ve always wanted.
Nice that you got a house you like, @Tride. Not my cup of tea, but that’s not your problem!
Yeah, we have the same problem with the house we bought. I keep telling my wife “I hope Dr Moron was better at putting his patients back together than he was putting anything in this house back together”.
There are all these little stupid things that need to be fixed and actually aren’t that hard to fix. It’s just that no one ever did it.
One thing they don’t tell you about white picket fences is how much power-washing they require.
Can my wife and I retire to your upstairs??
I own my home. You’re quite right, OP. It is a shitty little 1000 sqft 3 bed 1 bath ranch style house built in 1978 when being drunk, blind, or on the take(or some combination of the three more likely) was no bar to being a building/construction inspector. The doors don’t really fit quite right, there’s a huge crack in the foundation. The water main runs under the driveway and garage floor and I’m pretty certain it’s been leaking under there for decades. Also, yeah, yardwork sucks. I’m pretty certain the neighbors wish I’d do something different with the yard.
But it’s mine. I’ve partly raised two sets of kids in it, i keep my stuff in it. It’s ugly as sin inside, partly because I suck as an interior designer and partly because I don’t give a damn about resale value and pick color schemes and what all to suit me, not some hypothetical future buyer.
Actually, in the foreseeble, I’ll be looking for an able young couple, one of whom can drive a tractor and the other of whom can cook, clean, and shop.
My stairs are not retiree friendly. Most of my dogs couldn’t make it up them.
Yes, I feel the same way. I don’t quite get all the negativity in the OP. Some folks here seem to have to really fine houses, like @Ulfreida’s historic old farmhouse, or @Tride’s upscale new one. But even a humble house that is one’s own is far preferable to having a nosy landlord coming around and decreeing what you can and cannot do.
My current house is what would be regarded as a suburban cookie-cutter house, but it’s a nice peaceful neighbourhood with all the amenities I need right around the corner, and an easy commute to the Big City with its grander facilities when I need them. I’m retired so I’m not concerned with commuting, just a nice quiet neighbourhood with all the conveniences. The house is about ten years old, so eminently practical, with very few maintenance needs, and consistent with modern tastes in having hardwood in the living areas and tile in kitchen and bathrooms. It’s new enough to have PEX plumbing, which pissed me off at first, until I read that it was perfectly fine stuff and possibly preferable to traditional copper.
I admit that, overall, my previous house had way more character – it was a mid-century house in an older neighbourhood with a great many mature trees, a huge back yard, and was right near a huge natural ravine with hiking trails that made you feel you were deep in a remote forest, yet you could walk out of said forest and walk to a subway station, and be in the downtown financial district in 20 minutes. The trouble was, maintenance needs and costs were piling up, so I needed to sell in a hot market mainly for the very high land value and move to the burbs for financial reasons. I’m perfectly content here though I miss the character of the old place. When it comes to big-ticket items like houses, unless you’re rich, practicality must be the rule.
I probably shouldn’t have shown this to my wife just now 
We still have 12 years until we could even contemplate such a thing, but she took heart in knowing there are such opportunities out there.
The reason we could afford this giant pile of an antique house (on 25 acres) is that 1) our old house was in one of the most expensive markets in the US, and 2) we moved to the sticks, and 3) the market for giant old piles is weak, for good reason. Our house was vacant for two years before we came along.
I was actually referring to the opportunity to be live-in help, not the opportunity to purchase such a property. 
Our retirement ‘plan’ is much more the former than the latter!
We actually had some previous owner re-do some of the room layouts. Which would have been fine, except that these clowns put the framing OVER the carpet, and then drywalled it, and trimmed the carpet back to where it wasn’t visible under the baseboards.
When we got our home re-floored last month, the install guys were like “Hey- come look at this! We’ve never seen this before - you’ve got carpet sticking out under your wall!”