"So, remind me again why we are doing this?"

HAHAHAHAHA.

SO, I had gotten some messages from people that have just found this blog and subscribed to it lately, so I thought I would finally get around to restarting my writing over here. I had planned to do it this fall, once things settle down a little and I can properly start rolling out the story of our little massive nightmare renovation and life upheaval, so I guess this pushed me to finally do it. However, I found this draft from 18 months ago, before things REALLY went off the rails, so I’ll leave it here so you can all laugh more knowingly along with me as I roll things out in the coming weeks. I’ll also be writing about real estate and other related topics outside of our renovation story, but for now…. Enjoy this nugget of time, back when I had big dreams and knew little of the coming disaster of inflation, price gouging, supply chains, financial crisis, and a full Grand Designs bingo card of all the things that could possibly go wrong.

To earn a living, I help people move or improve their homes. I advise them on what best suits their tastes and their family, what will work for them financially and prove to be a useful investment in their future, and generally help manage the ups and downs of the entire process. I get really involved, I take it personally, and I enjoy helping balance the stresses of the situation. But for the past few years, I quietly sat on the sidelines of this moving house/improving house game, watching my clients complete their transactions and begin new phases of their lives. My house sat mostly ignored on the market - I changed agents, changed prices, eventually listing it myself. We would take it off and make a few changes, then put it back on a few months later, then we watched as the suburban market went flying last summer - still nothing, not a single phone call despite houses around us that had defied selling for years finally made their match. January rolled around and we decided to officially quit trying, design a ‘standard, popular, market-ready, affordable’ house for the lot we bought years ago that was originally meant for us. However, I was just starting up another round of home searching with repeat clients, I was starting design drawings for another client, and we had just been on vacation so I was behind schedule on everything. I meant to cancel it each morning for a couple days but forgot, and then we got a showing request. Just for shits and giggles I decided to accept it, and took an entire day cleaning, purging, sorting, and polishing the place up. They liked it, but weren’t ready to buy just yet, and shortly after that phone call I got another phone call from someone parked out front and looking at my sign. I offered for them to come in and look around, and now here we are 6 weeks later and I’m not sure I’m ready for that moving truck to show up.

There is a moment when, after you’ve switched off from the ‘let’s make a deal!’ phase of moving into the ‘removing the decade-plus accumulation of memories your children have made’ phase that you start to feel things are different. Is it still ‘my’ house? ‘Our’ house? or is it now ‘Their’ house? I know lots of people move every day, some for exciting reasons, some for expected reasons like a military transfer or the end of a lease, some for tragic reasons, and some because they just like moving. Some people think a house is just a place you sleep and where the fridge is, and some people like to keep things simple and make sure their house fits the neighborhood and people enjoy it. For me, though, a house is everything. It’s alive with all the memories, sweat, intention, experimentation, and imprints of us and our lives inside of it. I never intended for us to live in just one house, and in fact this is the second we built for ourselves and the 4th total that our family has lived in. But this one did some serious heavy lifting for us. We continually tweaked and polished and edited and loved on it. We tried our best to make this concoction of design and tradition work in some fashion, and it definitely has a personality and a soul that I hope keeps evolving as time progresses. So as i’m saying that, how on earth am I supposed to leave it? I have had such a complicated relationship with this house, but it’s always been my home, and in the last year of being mostly cut off from the community, I found myself much happier while not having to be out and about and more appreciative of the house and the sanctuary it provided. I feel so much guilt for wanting to leave it and try something new, and I refuse to believe that a house is just a pile of building materials - anything that is the result of this much emotional and physical and spiritual effort surely has some consciousness of its own, right?? I hope the house can be happy for us and the new owners continue to let it be who it’s meant to be.