What We Wanted

When we first met with Carrie, she asked us a lot of questions about what qualities we were looking for in a house, what we had to have and what we were willing to overlook or work on. We figured we'd end up in a bungalow, but if we could luck into a cool ranch or split-level that would be great--ultimately, good layout and design were far more important than the style of home. Hardwood floors and natural light were pretty crucial. Well-preserved original details were a plus. We knew we'd be a blend of picky and realistic--having looked at lots of houses before, we could walk away if we saw a dealbreaker, and we'd know very quickly if we walked into a house that could be our home.

These are the hard-and-fast criteria; what we used to weed out listings we considered:

• Two or more bedrooms, at least one of which had to have dimensions of 10' or more*


• If two bedrooms, also additional living space beyond the living room/dining room


• Nice kitchen or cheap house that we could afford to redo the kitchen


• Space to park 2 cars on the property, preferably in a garage


• No stucco


• No mold or damp!

I think these were good criteria--not too specific and definitely not unreasonable for the market and what we could afford. Not like the HGTV Househunters people who walk into a 3-room master suite and demur, "I don't know, it's a little small," or say "Oh, I hate the paint color," or how about "I liked that house, the curtains were great."

The only thing that changed over the course of our search was the kitchen thing. We saw several listings that had completely gutted kitchens, and many foreclosures with no kitchen appliances--which sounded attractive because then we'd be able to choose all the details of our kitchen. But we learned that apparently banks are reluctant to approve loans on a house that's not "immediately habitable," which includes having an operable kitchen. Strike 1. Then it became clear as soon as we started looking--we found ourselves looking for a kitchen we could live with and ruling out the houses with kitchens that needed to be ripped out. We wanted to move pretty much right away, and realized that we weren't prepared to jump right into anything besides cosmetic improvements.

*Unless you're used to living in buildings built more than 50 years ago, this might sound tiny to you... but we saw many 2-3 bedroom houses that had bedroom sizes no larger than 9x9, and it's not at all unusual for at least one side of a bedroom to be closer to 8 ft. A bedroom venturing into the 12-14 ft range is positively enormous in the realm of most Chicago-style bungalows.