1. The exterior has as much character one can get from a Phoenix area tract house. I think it looks somewhat like a San Francisco row house
2. It has an honest-to-goodness front entry hall. Here, we have space for a bench and console table with mirror. We could even add a coat rack…if we lived in a climate where coats were even worn!
3. The bedrooms are completely separate from the living areas. When one of us can’t sleep, that person can go downstairs, turn on all the lights, start the dishwasher, fix a batch of microwave popcorn, and watch reruns of Celebrity Deathmatch…all without disturbing the upstairs occupants.
4. The house faces north. That means the master bedroom is the coolest room in the house…in more ways than one.
5. There are no other two-story houses around us. The neighbors can’t see into our yard, but—if we were that type of people—we could see into theirs.
6. Separate tub and shower and double vanities in the master bathroom. If necessary, Q and I can get ready without waiting for the other to finish up.
7. We have great views of the mountains two blocks north.
8. Our formal dining room is anything but. We eat all our meals in this room, mostly because the table is bigger than the one in the kitchen. On the flip side, we can easily gussy up the dining room for holiday dinners and other formal occasions.
9. The space under the stairway serves double duty as a closet for jackets, shoes, and baby items I don’t want to part with, and a hiding place for Jango.
10. Our next door neighbors have a huge tree that hangs over our fence. As a result, our pool is mostly shaded over by 1:00. Messy, yes, but the tree only sheds two months out of the year.
11. Unlike most of the houses on our side of the street, there are no utility boxes or street lights in our front yard.
12. The game room. This upstairs loft-style space can—and does—serve any number of functions. It started out as a toy room for the kids and the last stop for cast-off furniture before going to the sidewalk with a handwritten “FREE” sign. Currently, the loft is used as a hangout for the boys to watch TV and play Nintendo. The walls are lined with wood storage cabinets and we managed to jam some exercise equipment in there as well. Someday, Quinton hopes to put a pool table there.
7 comments:
While I normally hate this trend over the last 20 years of putting the garage as the most prominent feature of the front of the house, I think your house is really cool. Especially the turret...what room does that contain? If I were one of your boys, I would totally be fighting over that one!
I agree with you about the garage, Christopher. In fact, we almost bought a house with a turn-in garage, but it was much smaller and the school district wasn't great.
The bottom half of the turret is a tiny bedroom that Q uses as the office. The top half is the sitting area for the master bedroom.
The boys didn't fight over either room. For one thing, Luke was only 18 months old when we moved in. Kyle tried to claim the master bedroom and threw a fit when we wouldn't give it to him. But he got over it. As the older child, he got the largest secondary bedroom.
Of course the difference between your spacious abode and a San Francisco row house is that you actually have a yard (albeit a desert-style yard which would be my choice, i.e. no mowing!) and you probably paid less than the $1.5-2 million minimum that you'd pay here in SF for the same amount of space!
ms val, i have kind of stumbled into your blog and loved reading about your house and your new family member. you write great "lists"--very fun to read and chuckle over.
best wishes, kj
Great feeling when yours is the only 2-storey house in the block. I'm with you. It's nice to get a bird's eye view without getting nosey. kj is right, your lists are very interesting. Val, why don't you make a Thursday 13 list. It could be on anything. Every Thursday - 13 facts. it was fun to do my first one, kj started it all.
Jonboy, that's not the only difference. Yes, it's a great house--for Phoenix. Architecturally, it can't hold a candle to anything in SF. That, of course is reflected in the high prices of real estate. I certainly don't envy you there!
Ces and KJ, I love that idea! But since it's already Friday, I'll have to do mine next week.
KJ, thank you for checking out my blog. I've seen yours too and it's a lot of fun.
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