Roxbury Line: Bookend?

So, I feel comfortable talking about it now. After looking at 15 to 20 places on Sunday, we put in an offer on a home. After a little bit of back and forth, ("They're willing to leave the washer and dryer, but want $10,000 more than you're offering"), we have an agreement.

It's a single family home in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. It's not the most glamorous neighborhood in the world, but it is only a 5 minute walk from the South End (which is certainly Boston glam) and it's about half of what we would have paid if the house were simply 5 blocks east of where it is now. Real estate agents like to call the area we're in a "South End alternative" or "a bookend neighborhood to the South End". Roxy, our cat, likes to call it "Roxybury".

We'll get some decent pictures up here later, as all we have are little shots from the real estate websites. It's three floors and 1050 square feet. You walk in on the second level and there's a formal dining room and a living room. Down in the basement is the kitchen, the 1/2 bath, the storage area/pantry and the patio that opens out on to the backyard. Upstairs are the two bedrooms and the main bath.

Since the kitchen and the dining room are on separate floors, I doubt that we'll use the dining room much, so the plan is to convert it into a library with comfy chairs to sit and read in and a table for spreading out the newspaper and studying. If you've ever been to our apartment, you know we have lots of books, and anticipate lots more for the Chickpea. Maybe, we should get him a little reading rug like you had in elementary school. Or we could get him a matching comfy reading chair. I'm so excited about this house, but especially about this room.

Jen's really excited about the storage space (I know. I think it's impossible for men to get excited about storage space.) and the yard. Now, the yard does rock. It's small, but plenty big for Chickpea's first steps and a nice garden.

We had no idea that we'd be able to get a single family home in the city. We had resigned ourselves to sharing a two or three family in Jamaica Plain or someplace like that. We hadn't really considered Roxbury until we saw this place. I think people are afraid of moving into a neighborhood that they don't see a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts on every corner. There's something to be said about the local bodega and knowing that you know the name of the guy who works there, because it's his name on the store.