If at first you don’t succeed…
While creating our sanctuary, some projects don’t work, so we try again
When we were looking to buy a home, we found many in the location we wanted, but all would take massive upgrades or renovations—until we saw the perfect house for us on Peoples Court.
My husband reminds me of that each time I start thinking about a new home project: “I thought you said this house didn’t need anything fixed or changed.”
I just roll my eyes.
We bought the house almost two years ago and have made some significant enhancements. Each time I start a sentence with “I was thinking…” he shutters and braces himself for whatever scheme is brewing in my head. He has reason—I’m the idea person, and he is the muscle.
We’ve added a shed, tripled the size of the back deck, installed a fence around the front yard, finished walls in the basement furnace room, replaced a sandbox with a fire pit, removed two trees, and added lots of landscaping. Most of those big jobs ended with a heated “We’re never doing this again!” (Yes, that would be me.) But years of renting, watching HGTV, and wishing I could do home improvement projects mean yet another idea will arise.
Most of the projects turn out well, but one hair-brained idea I had that just didn’t work was a walking path from our driveway, around the garage, and into our backyard. In my infinite wisdom, I decided we could cut steps in—because the yard to the side of the house slopes—and use porcelain tiles from Habitat for Humanity ReStore to save money. Can you already see how this idea fell apart?
The tiled, step-down walkway looked significantly different in my head, and execution was a complete failure.
The 12-by-24-inch tiles were not deep enough to walk normally. The distance was wrong and threw off gait and balance. The tiles cracked from weather and pressure and were slick when wet. The path wasn’t wide enough to be ADA sensitive, while the rest of the house is. Oh, and we didn’t have enough tiles to finish so it just stopped 15 feet from the back deck.
I hated it almost instantly.
We’ve lived with it for almost a year, but I’ve been project planning since the first of the year, trying to brainstorm a solution. I settled on one that my husband was actually on board with, which was good, because he was the one who had to cut through thick grass and rock-hard soil three feet wide for 80 feet.
With our younger son coming to see our home for the first time, this project suddenly had a time limit. So, we kicked the path-renovation project into high gear last week.
And I loved the results instantly.
Looking back over the past two years, I see the many, many things we’ve done to change this “perfect, move-in ready” home, and I’ve wondered why it is that I have felt the need to make changes to a property that I’m already happy with. I think it’s simply that we are giving our blood, sweat, and tears to this house, and the house, in turn, is giving us a home.
We look at our homes differently post-COVID. Our houses once were places we returned to at the end of our work day, but then we were confined within those walls with no idea when we could leave. Some of us who began working remotely in March 2020 didn’t return to offices and commutes, which likely intensified our desire to have home spaces for sanctuary.
So that’s what we’re creating—our sanctuary. We do more than eat and sleep here—we live here, we are at peace here, and we can be ourselves here.
And for now, my project list is empty. So my husband can rest easy.
“But I was thinking…”