1213 Lamont St. NW

List price: $862,500

Previous sale price: $368,000 (December 2004)

Square footage: 1,860

This three-bedroom row house, located down the street from Harriet Tubman Elementary School, is perfect for a young family—especially one used to unorthodox living arrangements. Your little ones can make their bedrooms in the finished attic that, with 4-foot-high ceilings, only they can really fit inside. And because you’ll likely want to have some privacy—the bedroom contains the ladderlike attic stairs—you can turn the basement into the master suite. (You’ll also avoid the current master bathroom, whose toilet is badly stained and chipped.) It comes with a view through an underground crawl space—a perfect spot to store open paint cans—to the back yard, where crumpled metal siding holds up a splintered wooden fence. —Brian Beutler

Art accompanying story in the printed newspaper is not available in this archive: Photograph by Darrow Montgomery.