This Old House

According to Blogger, I wrote this post on December 14th, 2014. I never posted it because it felt too revelatory. Like it needed to preceed some kind of announcement that we didn't have. Which isn't true anymore, so I feel like I can share it with you. Because it will perhaps explain why our decision to buy a house and live in Bellingham isn't so sudden after all.

December 2014:
We are fast approaching our 10 year anniversary in this house. In the spring it will be 10 years since we  walked in the front door of an open house and decided this was "the one", we would make an offer on this 98 year old house and it would become ours. This is the house we acquired our first pet in, the house I whispered the words, "I think my water just broke" into, the house we brought Edie home to, and the house we've slaved over, fought over, and generally spent all our money on. Sometimes it almost feels like this house is a member of our family - after all, we have had more tense discussions about how to restore this house than about raising our own daughter. If you had told me 10 years ago that we would STILL be fixing up this house, I would not have believed you. I was 25 and stupid, but also - this house was a real doozy hiding behind pretty tulips and a whole lot of "potential".

Before this house, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment for 5 years, and before that I spent 3 years living with various roommates in college. Growing up, we moved just once, when I was 8. This means that as we approach 10 years in this house, we also approach the longest period of time in which I've lived in one place. I don't think this is the only reason that my body is itching to move on, find something new. I find myself dinking around on Zillow, looking up random houses in random places just to play pretend and picture myself living there. This is us… living in a modern house with an open floor plan, and this is us living in a city loft with industrial warehouse windows, here's us leaving the city behind and living in a house by the water in LaConner…

Perhaps it's just the latest flurry of random repairs that we've had to throw money at, but I feel like breaking up with this house and finding something new. We didn't buy this house with kids in mind. I wasn't thinking about sharing a bathroom with my daughter for 18 years, or how nice it would be to have kids watching a movie in a basement playroom while the adults enjoy a dinner party upstairs. In fact I specifically remember scorning finished basements when I was 25 and stupid. And don't get me wrong - this is a sweet house. I still look at this house every single day and the potential it holds practically screams at me. I can perfectly envision this house with new siding and a classy coat of paint and I'm 100% that it will be the most charming house on the street, maybe the whole neighborhood. I can see myself relaxing on a new deck out back with my new kitchen door open to my fancy pants kitchen. But we are still some steps away from that and even then, we have started to ask ourselves a bigger question - "Do we want to keep living in the city?" And if not, where do we want to live? Finding the answer to that question is potentially more difficult than finding an affordable remodel contractor.