Where do tree hugging, vegetarian liberals belong in north Chicago? (Deerfield: home search, neighborhood)

[mia220]

It really blows my mind that you can't find something "decent" within your $550K price range. You're really fortunate to be able to afford that, even if it's a little bit of a stretch, on a single income.

I really don't see how owning a half a million dollar home in Evanston would constitute "simple living." I understand that the north shore is pricier than other areas (for good reason), but there a lot of other areas where you could live simply for a lot less money and not buy into the rat race of life.

I'd love to have your budget, especially with only one income. You're actually in a better situation than you think.

Originally Posted by jaynetarzana

Now it is $550K which is a real stretch for us on a single income. In fact, we should really be looking in the $300K range! I happen to think that over half a million dollars should be enough to get you into something nice. But true to form, people on this board have wished me good luck in finding anything decent in that price range. What in the world has happened? No wonder Americans are so stressed out and stuck in the rat race of life; "Getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car, and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it." - Ellen Goodman

We've always been minimalists and very interested in simple living.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by chet everett

No one is going to claim that it looks good to plop some generic "Acme Plan Book" house on some barren lot, but I gotta disagree that the teardowns happening currently are mostly terrible. For every nasty looking concrete-block sided "fortress" there was probably an asbestos sides abomination that had been carved into so many rabbit warren apartment that it gave fire fighters chills just thinking about how many unlucky renters would smother to death in the event of blaze...

When I spend time around Park Ridge, Hinsdale, Glenview, Deerfield or any other suburb where teardowns have been the norm I have to say those that are improvements outnumber the "what were they thinking" houses by an easy 50:1.
This is /was especially true as the cost of the underlying land soared. Builders with the wherewithal to construct projects that sold/sell for over $300/sq. ft. can afford the architects that put every bit of the personality into places that was common in Chicago's golden age of architecture.

Even in Chicago's priciest neighborhoods when folks like Penny Pritzker teardown most of a city block to but up their modernist pad you don't have to say it is the most beautiful thing in the world to agree that it certainly looks better than the dumpy faux Oliver Twist's London places it replaced.

The burbs have grown in the sophistication of modern homes that are found as teardown replacements too. If the site is right, the kind of places that one finds on the cover of Dwell or Metropolitan Home are certainly an improvement over some freakish home that recalls the New England coast as interpreted by a builder who probably only saw it in bad pre-war movies...

Sorry Chet, the burbs haven't "grown in sophistication" as much as you think they have. The default American Bourgeois architecture is still terrible, and this quest for "uniqueness" in the absence of architectural education and taste is what is leading to the plague of ugly teardowns. Sure, there are some great wine bars and haut cuisine restaurants in the burbs now. But 99% of the new-construction suburban architecture is still absolute garbage. And the teardowns rarely respect the existing fabric of the neighborhood. It's possible for buildings to be contextual without mimicking existing architectural styels, but scale, rythm, setbacks, etc. must be maintained.

[SloopyJ]

Hmm...I wonder if the truth lies somewhere between Chet's 50:1 good/bad ratio and Lookout Kid's 1:99 ratio? Come on guys, some of the teardowns are a huge improvement, some are pretty damn ugly. Methinks it's somewhere between your extremes.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by SloopyJ

Hmm...I wonder if the truth lies somewhere between Chet's 50:1 good/bad ratio and Lookout Kid's 1:99 ratio? Come on guys, some of the teardowns are a huge improvement, some are pretty damn ugly. Methinks it's somewhere between your extremes.

Nope. At some point in the 1980s the new construction home styles in the U.S. went badly awry. There is some trend now back towards faithful reproductions of traditional American styles (an offshoot of New Urbanism pehaps?). As a modernist architect I would advocate a more forward-thinking architecture for American homes, but I prefer these faithful reproductions to the frankenstein monstrosities you see in most newer suburbs. Here are my biggest suburban house pet peeves:

1. Too much roof. Why in the world would anyone want to see a front elevation that is mostly roof shingles?

2. "Shotgun effect" with architectural styles. Instead of mindful composition, many builders appear to load a bunch of architectural features into the barrel of a shotgun and blast them on to the front of a house in the name of "uniqueness". They are rarely composed in harmonious manner, and just look tacky.

3. Crazy roof massing. Since many McMansions are bulky, builders try to break up the massing of the roof by creating all kinds of ins and outs, protrusions and setbacks. In the end it just looks like a jarbled mess.

4. Giant garage doors. I know Americans love their cars, but do you really want a garage door to be the dominant feature on the front of your house?

5. Out of control brick patterns, or other "fancy" material palletes. Once again, this is done in the name of "uniqueness". But the cumulative effect of these "unique" material choices is a neighborhood that lacks cohesiveness. There has to be a medium ground between Levitt-town and the junk that's built today.

I could go on and on, but it's probably healthier for me to end my rant now.

[chiados]

Among the things which are potentially contradictory in her search is that she really wants to be in the New Trier District rather than Evanston or other places that with supposedly "lesser" schools.

From what I see, "simple" is defined in a lot of different ways, and it can take a lot of income to live "simply" by certain definitions. Seems to me that actually living "simply" in a community with a diversity of income levels (and all that goes with that diversity such as more property crime, schools with lower median test scores, etc.) is a lot messier that living in a removed enclave of well-intentioned "tree huggers" who are sympathetic but keep their hands very clean and keeps their kids away from the realities of those who are not as well-off.

Ultimately, everyone tries to figure out what works for them. Some folks have the resources to be able to make real choices of where to live, etc. while others don't have that freedom. Nonetheless, it seems helpful to be clear about the values that revealed as one who has resources makes such choices though.

Originally Posted by mia220

It really blows my mind that you can't find something "decent" within your $550K price range. You're really fortunate to be able to afford that, even if it's a little bit of a stretch, on a single income.

I really don't see how owning a half a million dollar home in Evanston would constitute "simple living." I understand that the north shore is pricier than other areas (for good reason), but there a lot of other areas where you could live simply for a lot less money and not buy into the rat race of life.

I'd love to have your budget, especially with only one income. You're actually in a better situation than you think.

[nanannie]

New home construction,- I HATE the ones that have a garage as the first and formost thing one sees. Just awful. I suppose thats to cram as much house as possible into the lot.

[Calidreemer]

I hate the Pie House down the street from us. If I can find 300 other people willing to put up 1.5K we could buy it and tear it down and donate the little plot of land to the city never to be built on again. It's a complete disgrace in my opinion.

[chet everett]

I don't want to debate L.K. in this thread either, but I continue to maintain that his jabs at teardowns are misplaced. There is nothing inherently "suburban" about the builders that screw-up and put inappropriate properties on sites. This happens all the time in urban settings.
The reality is there are a number of builders that have a much better eye than L.K. is willing to give them credit for, as well as numerous talented architects that do have valid rationale for making design decisions. The Chicago region is a mecca for those with any sort of appreciation of design and the sins here are far less severe than in other regions. Don't get me started on how wrong the designs in Atlanta or Texas are for their regions.

I do agree that too many "builder types" are guilty of the dumping the "bucket of architectural features" onto houses with too little thought, but that is something that has happened for decades/centuries. Even "classic" builder of ancient times are frequently a mish mash of previous themes, some of which do not work well together, but are accepted becuase "they've been that way forever"...

To the specific complaint of "garage majhals" I have had homes with detached garages and those where it is built-in and believe me in this climate "built-in" wins by a landslide. As to alternative orientation, the effect of rotating the garage creates a "snout" that is no more attractive and has other negatives in terms of "walling off" adjacent properties. In a perfect world cars would not exist, in our imperfect world they do and at least garages that are functional serve an honest purpose.

I have no defense for overly ornate brickwork or fancy material. Every architect I have ever met/heard of has a philosophy on that they try, to varying degrees, to get their clients to buy into.

I would argue teardowns are no more guilty of any of these sins than the typical tract builder. Further, as teardowns are far more likely to have an owner personally involved in the the design and hopefully a skilled architect working to find the best solution, that the potential for really good designs is far higher. I have even seen a handful of renovations where the existing facade is unchanged and an architect chooses a radical departure for the new addition. Personally I would LOVE to see more of this. I suspect that this is an even bigger challenge than starting from a clean sheet of paper, and the cost of an architect with such skills would be outside the reach of all but the most high end project...

[nanannie]

I dont have any objection to built in garages and have one, its the ones that dominate the whole house and stick out so its mostly what one sees that are ugly.

[Steve-o]

Originally Posted by chet everett

I don't want to debate L.K. in this thread either, but I continue to maintain that his jabs at teardowns are misplaced. There is nothing inherently "suburban" about the builders that screw-up and put inappropriate properties on sites. This happens all the time in urban settings.
The reality is there are a number of builders that have a much better eye than L.K. is willing to give them credit for, as well as numerous talented architects that do have valid rationale for making design decisions. The Chicago region is a mecca for those with any sort of appreciation of design and the sins here are far less severe than in other regions. Don't get me started on how wrong the designs in Atlanta or Texas are for their regions

Amen!