In April, I made a weeklong visit to Tucson to look at houses, ride horseback through the desert, and walk and drive all over to see what I could see.

Here’s what I noticed about older homes in mid-town Tucson – they are attractive and charming in so many ways. Also, they often have a step somewhere on the first floor. Sometimes it’s a step down to the living room, sometimes, it’s a step down to the Arizona room. What I learned is, if there is a step, I will either trip over it or go flying off of it thinking the floor was flat there.

I often was very impressed with the charm of a house until I got to the kitchen. I’m not fussy about kitchens, I don’t care if they have granite countertops, for example, but there are kitchens in older homes in mid-town that make me wonder what the builder was thinking.

The upshot of the visit was that I found a house that did not have a step up or down inside the house and it had a “normal” kitchen. “I’ll take it!”