I have been working on getting this house ready to sell later this summer.  It is a pain in the ass to be sure.  This week, all my spare time will be spent cleaning and painting the half of the basement that I haven’t worked on yet.  People, you can not imagine the grime in a basement that has not been thoroughly cleaned in 40 years.   Blech.

The only thing that has kept me going is obsessing thinking about the house we will build some day in the far far off future.  For the three people who read this who care about houses,  this is the challenge we are dealing with:

We love the town where we live.  It is a walkable inner ring suburb with good schools.  The only downside of the town is the fact that the houses in the area we want are either very old, moderately old but in desperate need of serious renovation or ridiculously expensive because someone else already renovated it.

The house we live in now is ok, but it 85 years old.  We want a house with all the modern pleasures like a finished basement and a master bathroom.  We bought this house because it has an empty, buildable lot attached to it.   It is a tiny lot, which currently serves as our side yard (and takes   forever to mow.)

The lot is 55 X 138 feet.   We live in a historic district so there will be strict requirements about the external appearance/style.  We also have rules about the setbacks on all sides.   As if those challenges were not enough, there are two buildings from neighboring properties that are sitting almost directly on our property lines (our current garage and a garage that belongs to the church).  There is also a driveway right on the edge of the property line and a parking lot on two sides.

There is a 34 foot setback from the sidewalk and a 10 foot setback in the rear.  That leaves about 94 feet of buildable length, 24 of which will likely be garage (74 feet of length for the house).  The side setbacks are either 6 or 8 feet, plus we need about 10 foot on the north side for a driveway.  I believe that means we probably have about 36 feet of width to work with.  We are hoping we can get everything we want, including a 1st floor master in about 2,500 square feet.

The one good thing about the lot, beside the location is we have southern exposure along the full length.  I plan to take full advantage of every speck of southern sun.

Right now, the most likely plan is that we will build an L-shaped house with a small courtyard in back rather than a yard.  I think the street side of the house will be as close to a traditional, historic craftsman style.  The proportions might have to bend a little because I want 10 foot ceilings on the first floor, but I think we will be close enough to get the approval of the historic review board.

I have spent a lot of time worrying about the clerestory windows I really want in the living room.  Slapping them on the side of a flat wall would probably not get approved.  This week, it occurred to me that we could use shed dormers to let in extra light in in the winter and to shade them from too much sun in the summer.

I haven’t talked to an architect yet.  I probably won’t begin that process until after this house is sold.  I have sketched dozens of versions of the floorplan, each solves a few problems.  I hope that we will have a solid handle on what I want before we start paying someone else to tell me what I can’t have.

Right now, this is how I am imagining the exterior.  This would be the long side of the L on the south side of the house.  I have taken some of the ideas for the exterior from this plan, but I wouldn’t keep any of the floor plan at all and there would be significant changes to the exterior design (especially making it much, much less elaborate and hopefully less expensive).

So anyway, that is it.  That is what I have been thinking and thinking about.  I am sure I will write more as time goes by.

Too bad for all you non-house people.  heh.