When we moved into our 1,900-square-foot Myers Park ranch in 2014, my husband and I were first-time homebuyers with a baby approaching his first birthday. The yellow brick house, built in 1947, had all the quirk and charm we love—the hardwood floors creaked under our feet, and an old-time telephone niche accented the main hallway—so I could overlook the lack of storage and tiny bathroom. The kitchen had been updated in the mid-’90s, and while the light wood cabinets and dark granite countertops weren’t my taste, it functioned just fine. The house was in a good school district and within walking distance of Little Sugar Creek Greenway and Park Road Shopping Center. We could make it work.
A year later, we had our daughter. I soon shared a bathroom with two toddlers, and we all huddled over one sink to brush our teeth. We talked about moving into a bigger house. But we loved our neighborhood and had to stay within a one-mile radius to keep our kids in the school district. It was a common Charlotte dilemma: We wanted a four-bedroom, move-in-ready house, but we could no longer afford our own neighborhood.
We considered tearing the house down and building a custom home, as our neighbors had. It seemed easier than working with our existing footprint. We could raze our house for $15,000 and replace it with something new in nine months for about $300,000. But first we’d have to pay off the mortgage—in essence, we’d buy the house outright just to tear it down.
Denne historien er fra April 2020-utgaven av Charlotte Magazine.
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Denne historien er fra April 2020-utgaven av Charlotte Magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
‘This Is How We're Going to Make Your Child Better'
Pediatric neurosurgery is technically and emotionally complex—and traditionally dominated by men. As Novant’s first female pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Erin Kiehna Richardson has had to learn the intricacies of a demanding field and battle sexism along the way
The Dumbledore of CMC
A surgery resident wrote a series of children’s books and created a special kind of medical magic
LGBTQ HB2+5
Five years after the furor of House Bill 2, the LGBTQ community—in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and across much of the nation—fights attacks on new fronts
Oh, Snap!
New ‘selfie museum’ in Concord celebrates the 1990s
ALLISON LATOS
The WSOC anchor on her hard trek from one episode of loss and grief to another—and the meaning of resilience
GOOD HEALTH
For years, Charlotte has been one of the largest American cities that lacked a four-year medical school. The health care professionals who finally made it happen overcame a series of setbacks, false starts, and failures, and they plan to use their clean slate to create a new kind of community asset
Summer Partee
From woodwork to retail, the kindergarten teacher-turned-designer has learned how to do it herself
Uptown or Downtown?
Archives illuminate how long we’ve argued over the perennial question
NOW OPEN NOVEL ITALIAN
Paul Verica brings a simpler version of the city’s hottest food trend to NoDa
TOP DOCTORS 2021
The annual list you can't without
