@lucillelucillelucille My parents live in a Craftsman bungalow that they decorated with all these antiques from the 20s and 30s. They have all this nifty stuff like Roseville pottery and stained-glass lamps. It’s really neat, like stepping back in time.
Right now, I’d most want to live in an apartment or rowhouse like the ones in Richmond’s Fan neighborhood. The neighborhood was build in Victorian times, so there are all these crumbly and uneven brick sidewalks with moss growing out of them. Most of the living spaces are long and narrow, dark in the middle with windows at either end, and they have these old scuffed hardwood floors and walls with like ten layers of paint on them. The bathrooms have old black-and-white tiles and radiators. There are balconies and fire escapes everywhere, and wide, southern-style front porches, and people will climb out the windows onto the roof of the porches and hang out there, too. Out in the neighborhood, the old bricks have fading paint on them and there are plants popping up through the sidewalks.
The whole place has a very down at the heels, lived-in feel to it. It’s not that the architecture is so awesome, but the way people use the space. And the great thing is, it’s really cheap to live there and the neighborhood is full of all these creative people, everyone’s just taking it easy. One day maybe I’ll upgrade to a free-standing house, but I’ll want it to be small, just enough room for me. And I’ll definitely look for a place that has a similar run-down feel to it.