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Your mom probably had a great adventure living on sailboats, MomToThree. Not as many folks with kids living on sailboats, although there were a few in the harbor who did.
The first boat was wooden, the next three were fiberglass. Much less maintenance with the fiberglass, but less soul. Living on a sailboat is a great starting place since you don't have to furnish much. All the furniture is built in and there's no room for a whole lot of stuff so it's pretty economical living. I was in Honolulu on Oahu so it was a pretty high cost of living area. There's limited availability for moorage (boat parking spot) but once you get a place to put the boat, the rest isn't too expensive. I traded up from one boat to the next until I was able to sell the last boat and buy land and build a house, although that was on a different island, Oahu was still too pricey.
Other than being able to afford it, there's the whole fun part of living on boats, too. If you want to vacation in Maui, you just sail over there and no hotel fees and you have your house with you. There's a lovely little harbor on Lanai and a deserted barge harbor on Molokai as well as the sand bar on the other side of Oahu so there's places to visit and still have your house. Hanalei Bay on Kauai is gorgeous during the summer although it has big waves in the winter. So there's a lot of good points to living on boats. However, there's quite a few drawbacks, too.
Someone gave me a rep but said they though the idea of a "twin" was weird. Perhaps I should explain that a Twin is essentially two separately owned homes with a common wall, where the common wall sits on the property line between the two homes. In the philadelphia area, which we all know has an old history, this is not uncommon. In my case the two lots were over 300 feet deep, so there was a reasonable amount of land for each property. Left to right on the street you had lawn-driveway-house1-house2-driveway-lawn. The homes were 2 story and the building was kind of square, but the fronts had small porches and the windows were aligned nicely. Sometimes people paint each side a different color, but ours were both the same. After WWII some of the twins were converted into two apartments, one upstairs and one down. Some of those are still around and provide for perfect little one bedroom homes in a neighborhood setting.
Our first home and still our home is a 1911 Foursquare that has been totally restored from top to bottom inside and out. It's been a 25 year labor of love project.
Our first house was a 200-year-old farmhouse in Connecticut. Beautiful house, but very poorly insulated, so our wintertime heating bills were totally outrageous.
More info. A Twin in PA differed from a duplex in that a duplex would have been one residential with one owner having two apartments in it. Usually a duplex sits in the middle of the land and the yard is shared. Sometimes the owner lives in one half and he rents out the other side.
In 1985 I bought my first home, a small cottage in a beach town: 400 sq. ft., 1 BR, 1 BA, LR, Kit., and screened back porch. It sat 2 blocks from the river and the bay. Paid $16K. Everyone referred to it as "The Dollhouse". It was literally the cutest little house ever and I will forever be sorry I sold it later.
Someone gave me a rep but said they though the idea of a "twin" was weird. Perhaps I should explain that a Twin is essentially two separately owned homes with a common wall, where the common wall sits on the property line between the two homes. In the philadelphia area, which we all know has an old history, this is not uncommon. In my case the two lots were over 300 feet deep, so there was a reasonable amount of land for each property. Left to right on the street you had lawn-driveway-house1-house2-driveway-lawn. The homes were 2 story and the building was kind of square, but the fronts had small porches and the windows were aligned nicely. Sometimes people paint each side a different color, but ours were both the same. After WWII some of the twins were converted into two apartments, one upstairs and one down. Some of those are still around and provide for perfect little one bedroom homes in a neighborhood setting.
I guess I'm weird then, because I love my paired home and built it new just a few months ago. It's the same as you are describing where my neighbors and I each fully own our half, with a party wall in between.
These are what paired homes look like in my neighborhood.
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