Recently, I was in the market to buy myself another house. It’s been a little more than 2 years since I was laid off and thus sold my first home. This is something that I genuinely look back on as a bad idea. The truth is that it was a smart financial decision, but not the best decision for myself. My house shopping was put on hold by Hurricane Harvey, but recently picked back up.
It had to have a big yard, I’m talking give me an acre so I can have trees and an enormous garden landscape. Let me have my giant wind chimes and a bajillion smaller ones without concern for a subdivision of angry, annoyed neighbors. There needed to be the space for a studio/workshop where I can setup a place for sewing, jewelry making and crafts. I was also trying very hard to find a nice en suite with a garden tub and stand-alone shower. And naturally, this would all have to be within my minuscule budget.
What I found was close enough. Small house, but not in bad shape with an acre of land for me to do whatever I please. I was sold. There were so many things I could do with the property and the house, but we kept running into roadblocks as my realtor combated an inexperienced sellers agent. Side note, the stories she told me about the other agent were both funny and scary at how little this agent understood about the process. But finally, we were discussing pushing back the closing date to accommodate the selling agents failures when I got a terrible text.
My grandmother, who had been struggling with pneumonia for several months, was at the end of the line. It could come at anytime, the text said. Come up and say your “goodbyes”. And in the hours that the family spent up at the hospital, diligently watching over her, I threw out to my mom that perhaps she would want to move into her childhood home but mostly that I could not stand the idea of seeing and knowing that someone else was living there. Would they appreciate the cabinets my grandfather handmade? Or the pecan tree grown from a seed from my great grandmothers home? The sheer amount of history in this house that my grandparents built together?
Instead, they decided to offer me the opportunity to buy it and match what I was at on the house I was almost closed on. This was a heavy choice to make, but I was assured that even if I went and made all sorts of changes, they would be happy with it. And so, I will be making my new home in the home my grandparents built.
Stay tuned for the upcoming renovations that will be happening!
