14 Dec The Day our House became a Home
I was in the middle of writing up my last Simple Things post about Christmas decorating and reminiscing about the last 12 months living in our very first house.
We were so excited and nervous to become homeowners. When Paul got the keys to our house last December, he picked me up from work and we excitedly drove to our new home. When we opened the door, my heart sank. Right away we noticed the tiling in the front foyer was unfinished, which had been hidden during our viewing and inspection. The former owners had also taken some fixtures with them and left the rest of the house in a mess. I was so disappointed to the point where I didn’t even feel excited to move in.
Over the past year we have made several renovations to our house. We fixed the tiling in the foyer, made some major changes to the bathrooms and painted several rooms. We also purchased quite a bit of new furniture and decor. I have become quite a fan of interior design since owning this house, but my major incentive behind these renovations and changes was to “make our house a home.”
Fast forward to last week’s blog post – I was describing our holiday decorating and typed in how these decorations make our house very homey – and then immediately deleted it because all of a sudden it made no sense. Our house was already a home without any of the decorations. Our house isn’t a home because of the colour of the walls or the new furniture in the living room – it is a home because of the people and animal who live in it – Paul, Navi and me.
Are there still things I would change about our house? Absolutely! Our home renovation and painting list gets updated on a monthly basis. Would I love to have a beautiful, big porch, a soaker tub and a cozy fireplace in a future home? Yes, one day. But these things don’t make our house any more of a home.
Our house became a home the day after we got our keys. After the disappointment I described above, Paul spent the next day in our new house scrubbing the kitchen cupboards and floors, cleaning the bathrooms and getting in a carpet cleaner. He picked me up from work that evening and showed me the work he had done to our house. We continued to do some cleaning, and when we were hungry we drove to the local store for some food. We brought it home and sat on our kitchen floor eating out of styrofoam containers with plastic forks and knives. Our house may have been completely without furniture, but it had already become our home.
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