Ashland House, part II
Dec. 6th, 2006 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apparentparadoxEnough people have made some comments on my previous post that I thought I would clarify things a bit.
The house I was talking about does have a one-car garage, so there is some general storage that is available. I grew up in northern IL, and most of our cars never saw the inside of a garage even during the winter, so I'm not opposed to using the garage for storage. Part of the basement is probably available for storage as well (I think that the washer/dryer are there, shared with the basement apartment).
This house happens to be a "historic" house. I'm not sure exactly what that means in all cases, but it probably limits what we could do to the outside (for example, trying to expand one of the bedrooms probably wouldn't work, as that would not only affect the footprint of the house, but also would be visible from the street). On the other hand, "historic" houses have lower property taxes, so that is a good thing!
One unique thought I had was that we could use the basement apartment as a "master bedroom suite" during the winter, but move to the main floor and rent out the basement apartment as short-term rentals during the summer (Ashland's peak tourist season). During the winter (when we would be more likely to be spending time indoors), we'd have more space, but during the summer (when we're more likely to be out & about), we'd "make do" with smaller space in exchange for some rental income. The main problem with this approach is that as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tdjohnsn points out, we won't really have a guest room during the time we would be most likely to have people who want to sponge off visit us. However, we could always put guests up in the office & disrupt our lives a bit.
All of this is just in the talking stage. We still need to decide if we actually do want to move from the Bay Area (and whether that involves keeping two houses or selling our current house and moving). After we've made that decision, then we'll have to decide whether we want to buy an existing house or build something ourselves. Maybe it would be possible to retro-fit in some of the "Not So Big" ideas, but that cost will have to factor into the cost of the house.
The house I was talking about does have a one-car garage, so there is some general storage that is available. I grew up in northern IL, and most of our cars never saw the inside of a garage even during the winter, so I'm not opposed to using the garage for storage. Part of the basement is probably available for storage as well (I think that the washer/dryer are there, shared with the basement apartment).
This house happens to be a "historic" house. I'm not sure exactly what that means in all cases, but it probably limits what we could do to the outside (for example, trying to expand one of the bedrooms probably wouldn't work, as that would not only affect the footprint of the house, but also would be visible from the street). On the other hand, "historic" houses have lower property taxes, so that is a good thing!
One unique thought I had was that we could use the basement apartment as a "master bedroom suite" during the winter, but move to the main floor and rent out the basement apartment as short-term rentals during the summer (Ashland's peak tourist season). During the winter (when we would be more likely to be spending time indoors), we'd have more space, but during the summer (when we're more likely to be out & about), we'd "make do" with smaller space in exchange for some rental income. The main problem with this approach is that as
tdjohnsn points out, we won't really have a guest room during the time we would be most likely to have people who want to All of this is just in the talking stage. We still need to decide if we actually do want to move from the Bay Area (and whether that involves keeping two houses or selling our current house and moving). After we've made that decision, then we'll have to decide whether we want to buy an existing house or build something ourselves. Maybe it would be possible to retro-fit in some of the "Not So Big" ideas, but that cost will have to factor into the cost of the house.