House and Home

As I sit here writing on the last night that I will sleep under this roof, I continue some reflection that started several months ago. Think about this question, then read through my story below: When does a home become a house, or a house become a home?

In April, we decided to buy a home that was being newly constructed. Being is a relative term, as it was actually a piece of cleared land without final county plat acceptance when we made the purchase. With the construction of the new home scheduled, our current home needed to sell.

In early May, the house I sit in today went on the market. We would work through a trio of offers over the subsequent eighty or so days, and would finally reach mutual acceptance in late July.

For me, when the building became a place of dollars, it transitioned from home to house. It was still the place that I slept, ate, played with my children, but it was different. Now upkeep was not primarily for our health and safety. Instead, all focus was on delivering a premium product to prospective buyers. The home of memories still existed, but its book was ending.

Deciding to sell the house was not easy. I brought both my children home from the hospital to this house. I had the rehearsal dinner for my wedding in the back yard. I have had great parties and lots of quiet reflection here. I moved away from my parents when we lived in this house, and then ended up buying it from them. I’ve lived, loved, laughed, and cried here…It was time to move on.

We bought our new home with only a floor plan as reference. We debated for a long time on the lack of reality. Was this the right thing to do? It was scary, buying something you had only seen on paper. And for me, it was worse, as I couldn’t even see the paper. (Denise would end up creating the floor plan in legos so I could conceptualize the layout.) We measured rooms in our current house to compare them to the dimensions on the plan. We walked the lot several times trying to see the building in place. We had made our decision, and the fact that it was not based on concrete fact scared us badly. The eventual building was not our home. It was a field of paper into which we had sunk money.

In mid-May we went to pick interior and exterior design options. Cabinets, paint, flooring, and brick were shown…Which didn’t help me much. Denise, however, started to see the plan come together. It had some element of reality now. We had a feeling of control.

In late May we had the opportunity to walk a similar, but certainly not exact, floor plan. Even this turned into a frustration, as we missed the model’s closing time by five minutes when we first tried to view it. The second try was much more successful, and for the first time we walked something like what we had bought. The floor plan was similar, and our immediate reaction was to critique the differences. One room in the model was halved by the inclusion of a tandem three-car garage. Obviously (think about it, we only need one car) this would be better in our house. Our lot was bigger. Our location was better…We were starting to defend our choice with a sense of ownership.

And we liked the layout!

And yet, for me, it still was not home. I count myself as being mentally homeless until just a week-and-a-half ago. Over the intervening period, the builder continued work on our new place. At the same time, a model of our floor plan was completed, and we were finally allowed to tour it in early August. With a few cosmetic and lot differences, this was our house. And we liked it!

Suddenly the new place, though we had barely seen the inside of the actual building, became home to me. It is the place that I now think of when I want to go home. It’s where I plan to watch my children grow, develop my life, and pull a lot of turkey out of the smoker. The neighborhood, the lot, and the building are the right place for me. The house, despite the fact that it isn’t finished, has become home.

Home is an emotional place. It is a place where you feel safe, wanted, happy, and loved. It can be a building, a state of being, or a social group. But it is something that you can tie yourself to and know that you are right for it, and it is right for you. Always remember that a house serves three purposes: It contains things, it invests money for the future, and it can serve as that anchor point that you call home. Mine…just isn’t finished being built yet.