The best of both worlds — solitude and access.
It started with a question, part of a larger conversation:
What if you could have the best of both worlds — access to all that a city has to offer AND the peace, quiet and earth-connected experience that can come from living in the country?
When you decide it is high time to have a home to call your own and you live in a large city, like Chicago, you can easily get discouraged. Quaint bungalows in far off neighborhoods without public transit to speak of go for upwards of $350k, and come complete with mold and crooked floors.
Oh!, the crooked floors.
The first open house we sought out was for a lovely rehab in the up-and-coming-but-not-yet-quite-nice-enough-to-feel-completely-safe-in Logan Square neighborhood. Right near the 606 path. It was $500k, had no backyard, tiny bedrooms, and a basement door that didn’t shut. Seriously. The place was completely torn apart and built back up only to have a slanted second floor and an immovable basement door. For half a million dollars! A “jumbo” loan’s worth.
What we came to find from almost a decade of living in the city, and we confirmed immediately upon looking to purchase a home, was that the whole of Chicago is basically held together with spit and sticks. Torn down to the studs, left over the winter to rot a bit, built back up, a new layer of drywall, some improperly installed plumbing and lazy electrical, cracked foundations, rickety decks and porches, and mildewed crawl spaces.
If the city were prairie grass, the best way forward might be a controlled burn so that it could spring back to life, better than before.
Paying several hundred thousand dollars for a condo or town home was also out of the question. After living in apartments for more than 12 years, we were exhausted with sharing our space with others. The noise. The negotiation.
We yearned for some control. Some quiet. But we also knew that the suburbs weren’t right for us. We turned to a new idea: an affordable house in the country with a “doable” commute to the city.
If we could pull it off, it would provide the best of both worlds — solitude and access.
Of course, this is only a possibility for the few people who can work remotely or for those who work jobs that are required everywhere, like teachers, lawyers, or doctors.
My job provided an excellent opportunity for this new adventure. I was mostly working from home before this new country/city question came about. Even though most of our company is Chicago-based, many of my colleagues are located remotely — Nashville, England, Hawaii. And Josh was almost finished with his Master’s degree in History, which only required that he visit the city one day per week.
Yes. If we found the right place, we could pull it off.
Country living and city working. Greener pastures and city skylines. Peace and chaos. Slow and fast everything.
This is the beginning of something new for us. And it feels big. There is a lot to discover, and we are thrilled to share our experience with anyone who will listen!
