Meeting the neighbors
There’s about fourteen houses* on our street, and we decided to try to meet the people at the four houses closest to us this weekend (you gotta start somewhere, right?!).
How we gave the muffins – yeah, I am not that crafty! We tried, ha!
Saturday was almost a bust – we walked to everyone’s home and no one was there! They were probably out enjoying the strangely spring-like weather.
On our walk back to our house though, we saw our neighbors to the east pulling in to their driveway, and walked over.
What an interesting couple! They’re both originally from Zion, and born in the late 20s/early 30s (I am guessing, based on when he said he graduated from high school). The wife went to the same university as me and Steven!
They built their house in either ’59 or ’69 (he told us both dates, hee hee), and were there when our house was built in the 70s and remember the doctor who built it. They said “How do we put this politely? There were a lot of girls coming in and out of the house.” HA! So apparently, the house was a bachelor pad. I told them they shouldn’t see that anymore!!!
They recalled that two couples owned our house after the doctor, and that the last ones trashed it (probably because it was a foreclosure?) and that it was spruced up in the summer of 2014. And that it’s been sitting since. Yep, it sure has been.
They also talked to someone in fall 2015 who was really interested in buying our house. Eek! I am happy it was still on the market when we needed to find a house after selling ours.
The couple gave us a lot of Zion history (and their personal history too!) which we enjoyed and have been wanting to learn about. The guy who founded Zion had a lot of interesting ideas… he owned all the land and you leased it from him. The town was dry and no modern medicine was allowed to be practiced. Everyone had to pay in to the Zion bank. Sounds… cult-ish?! Interesting, nonetheless.
It’s really fun learning the history of the people on our street and especially, learning about our house! These families have been on our street for years! It turns out all the land around us used to be one big farm, until the farmer decided to sell it in five acre parcels. That family still owns the first house on the street, and the parcels are still all five acres.
On Sunday, we were able to meet our neighbor to the southwest who has a ton of hens, roosters, and rabbits outside. And we spent more time talking with our next door neighbors to the west – we really enjoy chatting with them (they’ve lived here since ’83) and I can see us spending more time with them!
Hopefully we’ll continue to meet more neighbors in the next few weeks. Steven’s talked to our neighbors to the south before – they own a local restaurant – cool! And the house to their east is actually being remodeled – eventually we’ll have to meet those people too! (We actually looked at that house as well, to buy, but there was no way we could afford the renovations it needed. The work they’re having done looks beautiful!)
*A few people have asked if we met Denali‘s owners – nope! Denali doesn’t live on our street! Denali lives in a house north of ours, on a different street.
Since I showed a bit of our counter in that photo above, let’s talk backsplash. It’s a lot harder to pick it for your forever home, than the house you are trying to sell! We think we’ll go with something simple, since the counters are so busy, and we like the way these two options look (and we’ve looked at QUITE a few options). Now, to pick one. Maybe.
We’d like to get the backsplash up so we can put the hood up, but we need to have a structural engineer look at the wall the backsplash would be going on, so it doesn’t make sense to rush in to it (especially if work needs to be done on that wall). Gives us more time to think, anyway!
Themocracy
It’s so cool that you’re meeting your neighbors, and even better that they’re people you’d actually want to hang out with!
That’s one thing that’s weird here – we haven’t really met any neighbors! Heidi has a dog BFF in the neighborhood, so we’ve at least talked to his people a few times. But a lot of people seem to keep to themselves around here. I think I was spoiled by my last building in Chicago, where the neighbors were super friendly (they even left a housewarming plant on the porch to say “welcome”) and always up for hanging out.
I wonder if it’s townhome culture not to try to get to know your neighbors? Or, more common? I know in our old hood, there were a few sections were all the families were friends and would even have little “block” parties in their area! But that seemed to be the exception!
Do you think you’ll try to meet more people? Or strike up a convo if you see people outside?
It’d be nice to know more people around here! I’ve seen another woman around my age running during the day here recently, so I’d love to have a running buddy (or at least someone to wave to on runs!). And maybe Heidi can introduce us to more neighbors 🙂
I hope you get a chance to talk to the runner lady! That is how I met the person I know who lives in the neighborhood south of you (not because she was running, but because I said hi to her neighbor who was running).
Is that me you’re talking about? 😉
It does sound very cultish! Thank goodness that’s not the case anymore. I like the cream tile better than the grey I think it ties in better with your countertops..if you were looking for an opinion 😛
Yeah, right?! The funny thing is, the major industry here now is a hospital – one of the things the founder was trying to keep out!
I like the beige better too 🙂
I also vote beige
That’s so cool you were able to hear stories about the history of the town and your house! I like the one about the doctor with lots of girls coming by. The woman we bought our house from had lived in it since it was built in the late 50s so it was really cool to talk to her about it.
I thought that was interesting, too! Especially that our neighbors were so disapproving of it! Ha! It told me a lot about their stand on things 🙂
Oh cool!!! What neat stories did she have to share?!
It’s great that you were able to meet a few of your neighbors! I am sure they appreciated you coming over to introduce yourselves and bringing them muffins!
We haven’t really met our neighbors either. I always try to wave and say hello to people if I see them outside but I haven’t seen many people outside yet.
It’s really interesting to hear about the history of Zion. I wonder when all those weird rules about leasing and the other “cult-ish” rules got changed!
They seemed happy we stopped by! The couple originally from Zion said “We should be bringing YOU something!” Awww.
I hope you get a chance to say hello to people, soon! How’s it going so far?
I find the history fascinating! The building the founder used to live in is now the historical society – I think I need to go visit and find out more!
Things are going much better at the new place. Maybe I’ll have to bake cookies and knock on my neighbors’ doors.
At most of the other places I’ve lived I’ve met people because they were out walking their dog! That is going to be my next method.
That sounds like a really good way to meet people! Interestingly, we meet one neighbor in our old hood (who now lives in NM) because we were out walking our cat. HA! We became good friends with them 🙂
That does sound cultish, and no modern medicine? Sorry! I know doctors don’t make house calls anymore, but I’d rather be healthy over any community.
It’s so cool you got to meet your neighbors and that they seem like nice folks 🙂 The history of Zion sounds very interesting. Hearing that makes me want to research the south loop a bit more to know more about my hood. But the burning question for me is: when will you meet Denali’s owners!?! 🙂
You should totally research your hood!
Ha! I don’t know if we’ll ever meet Denali’s owners! Unless they were actually WITH Denali about some point 😉
Team beige tile, only because it goes with your countertops. Otherwise, I am all over the gray…
Nice of you to make the effort to meet your neighbors, and the town history lesson sounds so interesting! Not allowing medical – wow.
Yeah, the beige definitely matches the counters better!
The neighbor did tell me the founder allowed a chiropractor in town! So there’s that!
That’s so interesting…and fun!! We bought our house from the “original owner” and though we never got to meet her, it’s been fun to learn about our house, that family, and others who have been around since the beginning. (Our neighborhood was built in the 60s and it’s still a mix of AGING original owners and younger couples/families…not a lot of turnover!)
Oh cool! What did you learn about your house?
Isn’t it interesting how you don’t meet the previous owner (usually) when you buy a house? We never met the people we sold our townhome to!
It seems like a lot of people on our street have been here FOREVER but there are a few newbies like us, too. 🙂
That’s awesome you are getting to meet your neighbors. Our neighbors to the right of us have become like family.
Yay, that’s awesome!
That is so interesting meeting the neighbors and the history they gave you about your house.
That’s so nice of you to make an effort to meet your neighbors! I’d probably just wait for fate to bring us together, which might not happen since you’re not living in an apartment building, haha.
I’m catching up on your blog, so maybe you’ve picked the backsplash already! I’m curious which one you end up picking.
Since there aren’t many houses on the street, and our house sat vacant for so long, we thought it would be nice to say hello 🙂 We’ve already talked to them several times since! Our neighbors to the east brought over banana bread and a piece of mail this week, and I talked to our neighbors to the west several times yesterday about the power outage. 🙂
Still haven’t picked out the backsplash. We are having a structural person visit Tuesday so we can see how messed up the walls are before we put a backsplash up.