Bungalow Inspiration

We found this great Chicago bungalow renovation via Apartment Therapy.  Catherine and Jarret bought their 1931 Bungalow in May 2009 and spent the next year and a half updating just about every room in the house.  They worked quickly and on a tight budget and did a beautiful job.  Click on the pictures below to connect to the original posts or visit www.bungalowbungahigh.wordpress.com

The Budget

You heard it here first, folks: you can't buy a house with out money.  A LOT of money.  For most of us, especially those of us in our mid-twenties still in grad school and just barely starting out careers, coming up with that much money means lots and lots of saving.  And for us, at least, this kind of saving calls for a strict budget.  

We've had some sort of a budget plan pretty much since we started saving every penny we had for our month-long cross-country move to Portland.  But since then our budget has often acted as more of a guideline then an actual restriction on our spending habits.  Now that we've decided to seriously pursue homeownership however, we're going to have to take our budget a bit more seriously.  We've been working for months at figuring out exactly how little we can realistically live off of.  We've cut expenses, frivolous habits and sharpened our smart shopping skills.  As of now the budget breaks down like this, and if we can stick to it we'll be in pretty good shape:

Where We Are Now

We currently live in a 660 square foot one-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a relatively new apartment building.  We actually like our apartment a lot.  It has nice carpet, huge windows, a decent-sized kitchen and a large bathroom.  We also love the building, the community and the location.  The problem is, we are beginning to outgrow it.  We know we're going to need at least one more bedroom sooner or later, but in the present our storage situation is starting to become highly inadequate.  Between grad school, writing, and crafting, an office would do wonders for productivity.  And I can't express the difference a pantry and a linen closet would make.  As frustrating as all that is, the hope is that where ever we end up, we love it as much as we love living here.  Here's a little (very little) house tour:

Dream House

So, for now this blog is not about finding our dream home... but knowing what your dream home looks like seems like a good place to start a house hunt.  Likewise, we thought it would be a good place to start this blog.  We hope you enjoy these homes as much as we do!