More dreams

So off we went to the next house- a cute cottage style in a wonderful neighborhood. Oh, but the amount of work needed was a bit intimidating: tearing down walls, re-wiring, re-insulating, putting walls back up, refinishing floors, tiling the kitchen, painting everything, cleaning out that unbelievably full attic, basically replacing just about everything on the interior and sanding and repainting the exterior, the structure was solid. The front screened-in porch was so inviting. Our dogs would have loved that back yard. But alas, after a closer look we found out the the furnace was a "Death Trap" (according to our HVAC friend), which wasn't awful news (well, it wasn't good), but we planned on putting in central A/H anyways. The problem was that we needed to be able to wait until next year to do that because of the extrely high price of it (thanks to the passing of a new law that nearly doubled the cost of installing central A/H) and we couldn't have lived without heat over the winter. Well, we didn't want to live without it. We just couldn't afford to get the system and gut the house. So, disappointed and sad we turned away from the cute cottage dream and moved on to the next dream...
But we did learn something else about ourselves. We may not be completely sure about jumping into a total rehab project. At least not just on any old house.

Then we spent a day (yes an entire day) researching the up and coming neighborhood Glenview. It has been getting some very positive attention in the last year as an old neighborhood making a comeback. So we looked into it.
Old homes at great prices!! But what about the nieghborhood- that is after all important too. So we drove around and saw that although the residents have beautiful homes and are clearly working on helping those that haven't been kept up or fixed yet, it is pretty close to some folks we just aren't sure about. You see, we are planning on having kids one day and we figure we should keep this in mind in our first house. So, we just weren't ready to leap into a neighborhood where drugs are openly sold on several corners in a five by ten block area. We just aren't that gutsy, I guess.
The neighborhood is beautiful and the residents were all so friendly (even the drug dealers, actually) so we wish them all lots of luck because they are doing a wonderful job of revitalizing a fine neighborhood!