The Scoop on ‘A House is not a Home’

I am not by nature a very sentimental person at least when it comes to possessions.  I don’t think back with longing over fond memories of my first car (a 1988 Ford Mustang LX, the dorky sedan version no less) or anything I have ever owned for that matter.  It is no different  for me with houses, because to me a house is not a home.

When I met my wife she owned a townhome of her own and I was a few days away from purchasing my first place, a condo near uptown (Charlotte-speak for downtown).  After we got engaged she moved in with me because my place was a four mile roundtrip commute for her to work each day.  However, the reality of the situation is that neither of our places was a good fit for us long term.  My condo was close to both of our places of work and had a two car garage (in the city, no less).  Her townhouse was bigger and had a third bedroom, but only had a single car garage in a neighborhood where it wasn’t easy to find parking after dark.  So, we started looking for a place that we could buy that would be ours.

At the time I had been learning about different types of construction loans and was interested in doing a home renovation.  Less than two miles from where my condo is located was a small, in-fill neighborhood filled with older homes built in the 1940′s.  A bunch of homes in this neighborhood were being renovated at the time and we found one that was certainly in need of a LOT of TLC.  To say this home was functionally obsolescent is an understatement.  We made an offer and, after a little back and forth, got the home under contract in November 2005.

We finally closed on the purchase of the home in February 2006, a story in and of itself, and immediately began to experience the issues that all home remodelers warn you about but that you foolishly don’t heed.  I started doing demolition on the house on weekends as soon as we closed, but ran into issues with our architect, engineering team and contractor that nearly sent me over the edge.  Things came to a head a month or two later where I got everyone on the phone and fired them all.  With a major career decision to make and wedding to finish planning the last thing I needed was this nonsense, and, fortunately for me, my then future wife was very patient and understanding.

After we returned from our wedding in late August, I began to reconsider all the options for the house.  We originally planned to knock off the roof and add a second floor, but the money and equity that was lost due to the issues we had and the time that had elapsed pretty much eliminated that plan.  So, instead, we decided to take the house from the not quite three bedroom, sort of one and a half bathroom disaster that it was and transform it into a true 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom home with more storage, substantially upgraded amentities, a gourmet kitchen and a mudroom.

At this time I had quit my job in the mortgage business and made the decision to manage the project to save us money.  I also learned on the job how to do a lot of home improvement including hardwood flooring, tiling, installing kitchen cabinets and doing trim and casework.  Fortunately, I had a good friend of mine who knew what he was doing come along for the ride and we did a lot of the finish work together.  I had another friend, who had recently gotten into the contracting business, to help me handle all the big stuff like outsourcing the framing, electrical, plumbing and mechanical subcontractors and dealing with the hairbrained city inspectors.

By doing as much of the work the way I did saved us tens of thousands of dollars on the renovation.  I estimate that I would have had to earn a minimum of $60,000 in pre tax salary in order to offset what we would have had to spend to hire people to do what my friend and I did.  The result of the project was, for me, a great experience doing things I’ve always been interested in learning more about, as well as a very nice home that I have been proud to show off these past two years.

Now, you’d think with all blood, sweat and tears I put into the house that I would be a little sad to share the news that this house is up for sale.  Well, you would unfortunately be very wrong.  It’s not that I don’t like the house anymore, I do.  It’s just that the needs of my family have changed and it is time for us to move on.  I will always hold the experience of building this house very dear to me, but I will not be sad that the house, whenever it sells, is no longer ours.

I do, and always will, believe that a house is not a home and the only thing that matters in this life is who you have with you not what you have or where you have it.  As to whether or not I’d ever renovate a home again, I’m not going to say that I’d never do it.  Rather, I will say that it would have to be the absolute perfect, can’t miss opportunity for me to ever consider again.

While we were renovated the home I created a blog to capture all the changes for posterity.  If you are interested, please check out our home renovation blog.