10.21.2006

pre-fab dreams

our new obsession is getting a little house for ourselves outside the city. well, honestly our new obsession is star wars legos episode iv, v, and vi, but in a close second, is getting a retreat, somewhere with mental space far beyond the caverns of eighth avenue and off in some wooded area of upper new york state. and i know, i know. i posted that i wasn't ready to leave the city, and i'm not. i'm not ready, and i'm not leaving. i just want to be able to escape when i want, and not "vacation" at my in-laws.

so we had just gotten back from a grueling two hours there and two hours back trip to look at a house we'd found on craigslist in bethel, (site of the original woodstock and maybe those tosser follow-up b.s. ones, too), when we were sent a sign, while picking up the times at the newsstand. before us, dwell magazine's pre-fab issue, glaring up from under the florescent lights. after katrina, we'd looked briefly at pre-fabs as a suggestion for my parents rebuilding, but found that in a lot of cases they were more expensive than traditional building. but, we'd never seen the lvl, and oh buddy, have we fallen hard.


now, i know it doesn't look like much from this outside shot, but it's super cool. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, super open floor plan, choices of all sorts of materials and exterior colors, and my favorite part: it's like this house was totally made for ikea. i'm not sure what is up with all the gravel in the photo above, but it isn't required landscaping. and you can get one of these puppies built for the same price as most of the fifty year old shacks, we were looking at.

so now we are searching for land. i feel like such an explorer. i love new adventures like this. i have always loved going out into previously-unknown-to-me-realms of pervasive industry like real estate or politics or any other bureaucratic institutional area that is an inescapable reality i've had no prior need for, and having to learn on my feet. it is utterly shocking just how much land there is out there, and it is equally shocking how much and how little some of it costs. does it seem crazy to anyone else that you can own 1/4 of an acre 50 miles out of the city for 80,000 and 5 acres that are 100 miles out of the city for 30,000?

i'd rather be 100 miles out anyway.

1 comment:

Miss Marisol said...

You can't get earplugs delivered to your door 100 miles out of the city. Just remember.