To help ease my midlife crisis and to get some extra special "space" for me and my active 5-year-old, I recently purchased a newly built 1,500-square-foot, second-story loft near Japantown, just north of downtown San Jose.

I've been here a month now, and when the dual-diesel engines hauling gravel-laden freight cars rumble down to the switching track past my loft, I still jump and remind myself it's not an earthquake. My daughter just jumps for joy.

Beyond the tracks, the busy brewery, the furniture depot and the bustling miniature men installing new roofs on expansive commercial buildings, there are sunrise views of the Mount Hamilton Observatory in the dusty eastern foothills and dramatic moon rises, and Mars has never been nearer Planet Earth. The Red Planet is right outside my 5-by-7-foot window.

Along with plans to purchase a high-powered telescope to bring the stars closer, it all makes a lot more middle-aged-crazy sense than a new sports car.

Undaunted by the inevitable "Where are the doors?" and "What about privacy?" questions from other midlifers who can't think inside the loft box, I'm enjoying a lifelong-dream-come-true. My loft home is an extension of my also-chided penchant for stainless steel, masonry, big glass and other things commercial and industrial in form and function.

Unlike real lofts carved from industrial and commercial buildings in New York and other eastern cities, however, newly built lofts often come with neutral walls painted in the hue of a baby's milk spittle, pristine kitchens and, if you don't limit the flooring option, carpeting—lots of carpeting.

And there's the rub.

You never realize how much carpeting is too much until you have carpeting without walls and doors to break it up and shut it out. In the expanse of a loft, it becomes a sea of carpeting and that sickening sucking sound you hear in your mind—the daily drone of a Hoover and Service Master emptying your wallet every six months.

A sparkling granite and stainless steel kitchen gave me something to hold onto. It floated on an island of lustrous hardwood laminate flooring and returned me to my boyhood during family times spent in a three-story brick row house with a central breakfast nook paved in sturdy oak.

In an instant I knew all that carpet would be history. I instructed the builder to give me a real loft floor in Brazilian cherry to match the cabinetry.

Now, along with my kitchen, dining and cafe spaces (there are only "spaces" in lofts, not "rooms"), my home office space and the connecting walk-through space from the front door to the balcony are all buoyed by hardwood. There's also plenty of open hardwood space left for a dance floor that will accommodate at least a quad of gyrating couples when I entertain.

I'm in with the in crowd.

In 2002, U.S. manufacturers sold 627.5 million square feet of hardwood flooring, a 90-percent increase from 1995, when they sold 330.2 million square feet, according to the Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association.

Tim Carter, publisher of Ask The Builder, tells me I'm hip in my aging years because hardwood flooring is a "now" kind of thing with "retro" cool.

"Baby boomers are relating back to the retro look and feel of homes they grew up in that had hardwood. Hardwood floors with decorative area rugs in the center of a room are simply to die for. The Oriental or contemporary rug adds depth, texture and a distinctive look other than a wall-to-wall carpet look," says an obviously also hip Carter.

Bordered by my new hardwood floor, the carpet is now the island. It softens the multimedia space, where the 10-foot monolithic roll of ripped-out carpet temporarily leans in the corner as an icon of an era gone by.

My hardwood choice also added value to my new dream home. A survey of real estate agents conducted by the Pittsburgh-based Hardwood Information Center estimates that hardwood flooring can add as much as $10,000 to a home's resale value.

Not that I'm selling my loft anytime soon.

Real estate writer Broderick Perkins, executive editor of San Jose-based DeadlineNews.Com, writes regularly for
The Campbell Reporter.