You could say the buildings we live in are structures, material things that we've accepted as part of our lives. I would say they are the most intimate spaces we occupy. They reflect us. Our personality can be inferred from the apparent choices that fill every room: colors, styles of furniture, how we organize space. Whether we are neat freaks or walking disasters. Where we relax, where we work. The music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books and magazines we read. Whether or not we recycle. How we balance welcoming people with protecting our privacy. All the choices we make that add up to making these structures what we call home.
We moved into our first house almost a decade ago. It wasn't home then with it's peachy pink, plaster and lathe walls and frilly, dusty lace drapes. Drafty windows painted shut. Knob and tube electrical wiring. It took several years for it to become home. It was a fixer-upper, and we put effort into this 80-year old house as if we would be here forever. We performed serious renovation work ourselves, armed with power tools, respirators, work boots and several sets of "work clothes." We endured weekends full of achy muscles. My husband spent so much time under the house with electrical and plumbing work that it should be considered an additional room. I broke a finger and became an Urgent Care regular. All for hand-rubbed cherry woodwork in the Arts-and-Crafts style. Custom stained glass. Triple-pane windows. Insulated walls. An abundance of outlets and switches. A house full of intentional color. A workshop disguised as a two-car garage we built by ourselves. Details we cared about, that met our standards.
And now, we're leaving.
It was wrenching, at first. The worst future buyer scenarios started playing out in my head. They would paint over the trim and park fluid-dripping cars in the workshop. They would discard everything of the 1920's style character we tried to evoke in fixtures and tiles and paint. Hand-painted schoolhouse lampshades would be thrown out in favor of something on sale at Home Depot. They would turn our kitchen into a Tuscan cliche.
Of course, I had assumed they wouldn't love this house the way that we have loved it.
And then I realized that I was assuming only one part of the possible future. I hadn't considered the buyers that could love it like we did, or better yet, more than us. And by finishing all the odds and ends before putting it up for sale, we are preparing it for someone else to love.
Still bittersweet, but no longer wrenching and filled with discouraging thoughts about what might happen.
This past weekend we freshened up the bathroom with new cabinets, paint and porcelain fixtures. Before putting the new medicine cabinet into the wall, I taped a note inside the wall to be found sometime in the future. Maybe it will be found by the very next owners. Maybe it won't be found for another decade.
It was my way of letting go, of passing on stewardship to someone else, another family interested in a long-term, loving relationship with this home.
-Andrea
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