Good Enough Homes & Destinations: What You Get For $290,000

Have your two million dollars out and counted? Good, because the Gray Lady has rounded up some prime candidates on which you can spend your real estate bucks, including an estate in the colorfully named Blue Mounds, Wisconsin:

The living room is a lodge-like space with a 28-foot vaulted wood-paneled ceiling, paneled walls and a wall of windows. One side of the room has a large stone wall with a fireplace in the middle and French doors on either side that open to a library. The library is paneled in black walnut and has a fireplace, a 14-foot ceiling and storage for about 5,000 books. Also off the great room is an office. Kitchen updates include appliances, Silestone counters and a breakfast nook. … This house is on more than 40 wooded acres, with two waterfalls and a pond. The property was developed as a replica of a 19th-century Norwegian village, including a stave church built for the Norway Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hi! Sorry, did I miss anything? I passed out at “5,000 books.” All right, well, I might not be able to find you a replica of a 19th-century Norwegian village, but here are some impressive places you could get for the less stratospheric price of $290,000:

Three bedroom, two bath, 2,200+ square foot Craftsman in Bisbee, Arizona, for $289,000, via Realtor.com. There is something so friendly about this place. Everything from the broken flagstones out front to the yard full of cactus and lavender flowers to the address itself — 5 Moon Canyon! — is adorable in a Joni Mitchell kind of way. Have you been to Bisbee? It’s like a tiny San Francisco nestled in the mountains near the border with Mexico, so, no fog. Plenty of killer bee honey, though.

Four bedroom, two bath, 1800+ square foot brick country home just outside of Louisville, Kentucky, for $289,900, via Realtor.com. Needs some love, okay, but who doesn’t? There’s character here. Look at that painting above the fireplace! Look at the lilypads in that pond! Look at the statuary! (You probably don’t get to keep the statuary.) There’s an office in the back, too, and a mother-in-law suite.

Were you perhaps more intrigued than turned off by Sari Botton’s blunt assessment of Kingston, NY, which Upstater.com called “the best pros/cons list for living in the Ulster County city that we’ve read so far”? Here’s a four bedroom, two and a half bath, 2600+ square foot stone house for $285,000, via Trulia. There’s so much history here, we might as well be in Europe: this is the Johannes Masten House and it dates back to 1668 (!!). It’s been renovated, of course, but there are still cool period details everywhere. I’m sitting here repeating to myself, “Icy winters. Lyme’s disease. Icy winters. Lyme’s disease.” Oh, forget it, where’s my credit card?

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