Dream House (1956 Time Capsule Ranch)

Good morning!

We start out today's post with a second-long French lesson. Class, repeat after me....Je rêve d'immobliers...phonetically, juh REHVV dihmohbliyAY. That's French for "I am dreaming of real estate". And isn't it the honest truth this morning! My friend Kelsey is thinking about moving back to town when her husband returns from deployment in 2014, and I am thinking that the best course of action is for me to play Barbie Dream House on Zillow in my off desk hours as if it were, in and of itself, a paying job. I've learned how to set the search functions on Zillow to show me houses built from 1800-1970, in Nashville, Tennessee, and under $250,000 (ideally WAAAY under $250,000, but there's no fun in only looking at moderately priced houses!). While I love the house I'm in to death, I'm going to have to homestead some day, and haven't I been having a ball looking under the guise of helping out a friend.

Well, it's all fun and games until someone gets someone gets their heart broken. Folks, check it out. It's my house.

This ranch-style, 1956 house sits on a hill so high up and close to Nashville that you can see the Batman building from the backyard. YOU CAN SEE THE SKYLINE FROM YOUR BACKYARD. This first picture might not knock your socks off, but let's keep looking, it gets even better. All one floor, eighteen hundred square feet, on two acres and some change, and decked out with all the finest bells and whistles 1956 could afford you.

Here's your entryway, brick wall and tiled floor and all the wood paneling you could shake a stick at:

Can you imagine a 1956 hostess, dressed to the nines in sharp heels and a sharper brocade wrap dress, answering the door for her first housewarming party? "Oh, hiiiii, Margie! Tom! I'm so glad you could make it out, come in, come in!" Highballs on a bar cart and jazz blaring from the hi-fi, that planter on the right would be filled in with a luscious, tropical looking silk plant, grazing the ceiling with its artificial foilage. The space under it acts as storage for firewood. Why would you need firewood? For your indoor fireplace, naturally:

The hearth that serves as the center of the home! Check out the light fixtures attached to the wall above it and the built in shelves (is there still a reel-to-reel sitting on one of them?). The ghostly dark rectangles mark out where art used to hang-- can you imagine a family portrait here, or an abstract of a city scape? I would hang one of the oversized pictures from my den here. Because act like I have not seen myself in every room of this house in every possible domestic situation, and where I would put what! Somebody give me the keys to this place!

The other side of the room is almost as impressive as the fireplace wall side. Look at those enormous windows! Do they even qualify as windows when they're that big? And the light that the room gets. Imagine an ultra long, low, all clean lines sofa here-- a conversation pit built on a sectional and a love seat and one of those modern brass arc floor lamps. I know, from moving into my own house, that a room that looks this big can look much smaller when you start putting in furniture, but I'm having trouble imagining that the furniture I have would take up more than a quarter of the space. Maybe you could carve out a formal dining space out of the remaining room?

Kitchen:

Nothing ultra fancy, but a major upgrade from what I currently have. You could put a more retro/new stove under that stove hood there. I feel like the stove that matched the hood must have put in some time in the seventies'. I am so in love with the late sixties'/early seventies' linoleum (put in the same time as the stove, I bet!) that I wouldn't even bother updating it. See the eat-in kitchen, and think about a pair of kids eating cereal while mom packs lunches at that long formica counter. A cheery pair of avocado green café curtains over the sink there and you're ready to go.

Bedroom one:

Sliding wood door closet! Walk-out-to-the-patio access! I would add a mile of pinch pleat curtains to the track-hardware already in place.

Bedroom two:

Look. At. Those. Windows.

Bedroom three:

Bedroom four:

Built in desk! Built in desk! Put a mirror and a line of lights up on that wall and it makes a vanity for morning makeup application! Pair of closets! Be still my beating heart! I spent just this morning wrestling hangers trying to pull a specific dress out of the closet, but not before the plastic had snapped on the one I was trying to free. The solution is not to thin out my inventory of dresses, but to HAVE ANOTHER CLOSET.

Den/office space:

More built in bookshelves, more long, huge windows. Knotty pine paneling!

Bathroom one:

Bathroom two:

And last but not least, the back yard:

So you're probably thinking now-- why don't you have a real estate agent on the phone?! GET ON THE PHONE. Is it expensive? Friends, it is under $150,000. Which is insane. There's a house two streets down from me with missing window shutters and a half falling down back deck that is $129,000. It's not the price, and it's not the house. As I clicked the "map" option on the site and zoomed out of the street to see what neighborhood the house was in, my heart did an elevator drop. Once a mid century community of educated, professional African Americans-- doctors, lawyers, teachers-- this suburb has gone drastically downhill in the last thirty years. In the sixties', this house would have been in a much nicer neighborhood, income-wise, than either of my grandparents' houses. In 2013, it's one of the highest crime areas on those maps of crime areas that make me not want to look up my address for fear of what my neighbors are up to. Why! WHYYYYY. So sad. I guess I'll have to keep on the hunt for....Kelsey! I'm definitely not looking for myself! Haha.

How about you? Do you have a crazy story about hunting for real estate? How did you find the house you're in? What scotches a deal for you as far as buying somewhere you'd want to live in for the next thirty years, or so? Which part of the house makes you pine the worst for this property? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with more vintage things to drool over! Take care, and I'll see you Thursday. Til then!