And, Lordy, when you are looking at a resale house, there is the matter of the structural condition of the house. Now, that’s basic, but it often gets overlooked, quite frankly, by the cosmetics of the interior.

Right now I’m thinking about a sturdy brick house with lots and lots of room so you don’t get cabin fever in the long Northern Indiana winters. This would be one with big bedrooms that actually come off of what is an upstairs lobby, not a cramped hallway. This house might have a 30 foot living room with western exposure, with one end of the living room connecting to a paneled den with a working fireplace that has a south and west wall of windows and the other end that has two sets of French Doors, one leading to an enclosed and separately heated porch, where the windows let in lots of light filtered by woodsy evergreens outside that provide privacy in town. This sentence is getting long, so let me start another one. Another set of French Doors gives entrance to dining room, and, yes, there’s a long kitchen through a swinging door, so if you’re being informal, the two rooms can blend together and if you are (cough, cough) being a little fancier, you can keep the swinging door shut so that diners don’t have to know cooking the meal might have been a little messy.

I’m thinking about this fictional brick house that has a basement that contains a large common room, a knock about catch all room, a fruit cellar, a dedicated furnace room and a separate stairs to the garage.
If memory serves right, this house has a front vestibule and a back vestibule to keep the outside at bay when doors are opened.