Life in the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods must have been very romantic in many ways! I know that during the bubonic plaque (Black Death) times, the people in the city who were fortunate to own country estates, would travel out there to avoid the plague. And they had the option of spending summers there just for the pleasure of it. Wouldn't that be great, to have a summer place in the country to retreat to?

And to have a country estate filled with the lovely art of the Old Masters would be awesome!

Phyllis, you've described my idea of Heaven!

Good! You will be invited to my first Ladies Tea! Then we can have a tour of the halls that display all the beautiful paintings and sculptures. Ahhhhh! To dream is fun!!! To dream with a friend is even better.

Well I don't have an estate but I feel like I do, we love living rural now, wouldn't trade it for anything. As a matter of fact we wish we would of bought a bigger piece, HA. Now let's see if we did have an estate I would lean toward Victorian.

I love Victorian, too! My sisters always say that my home is very "Victorian like" because of the way I decorate with clusters of collections, pictures, etc. and the use of pillows and cozy comfort corners.

I think Victorian is my favorite, too. There is a house on a country road about 20 miles from us that is painted light blue and all the gingerbread around the porch and the window frames are painted pink! It's so pretty. My hubby hates it, of course. LOL
But if I lived alone I think I would want my house to look like that. With lots of English Cottage gardens.

DH and I visited a small town over the weekend that has street upon street of Victorian homes that are for sale. When we asked one of the locals what they were selling for, we were astonished at how inexpensive the prices seemed. He said the reason they were selling was because the owners were getting up in age and couldn't do all the painting and maintenance required and couldn't afford to have it done for them. I can imagine that it would cost a lot to keep them looking good and to heat and cool them. But how beautiful they were!

msbaby - what town is that? If I had the money I would run there right now.

I know exactly what you mean, Phyllis! We just rode through because my husband had heard a lot about a new golf course they had built there. I was knocked out by the main street with sidewalks, trees and beautiful old churches.

When we got home I went to realtor.com (area code 38901) to see what the houses were selling for and I found three or four that were all built in the late 1800s for around 179,000 with 4,000 sq. ft or thereabouts. Most had central heat and air and some even had swimming pools!

Even if I could swing the payments, I wouldn't be able to pay to run the heat and air! HA Oh, but I can dream, can't I? DH could not care less about a beautiful, old home but I might convince him to relocate to be closer to that golf course and the lake that's closeby.