Our first home took about three years, which is when we did an almost total remodel. We always thought we would die in that house and never planned to move as we loved it. My husband was transferred out of the area and altho we like this house and have remodeled alot, this house still doesn't feel 'right' after five years. We can't seem to put a finger on what it is, tho. We love our furnishings and decor but something still seems to be off.

Jenna

felling your pain, have been here close to 5 months and it isn't even close to home...It is a fairly new house ,3 yrs old, but it is huge compared to our other home..4300sf vs 2100...takes time to make it a home, but getting there

So glad to hear others feel the same way. Sometimes I think it is the house, other times I think it is getting used to the climate (environmental and social).

I've lived in rentals where all I could do was hang pictures and I felt at home. We lived in our last house for 10 years. Did all kinds of work and I really never felt at home. This house, it was right away.

Gloria

For my current place, it took six months. My husband was away on business a lot for the first few months we were here, so I made all the decisions on furniture placement, decorating and storage. When his schedule allowed him to be home more, he re-thought many of my decisions (grrrr) and we did a massive reorganization that felt like we were moving in all over again! Plus, we moved from a very urban environment to a quieter part of the city and it took me some time to adjust to the quieter streets and fewer conveniences in walking distance. Yep, a solid six months.

It took us about six months as well in our current place. There was a lot of "mental restructuring" from our last home to this one because the layouts were so dissimilar, and we had quite a bit of redecorating to do (wallpaper removal, crazy paint colors to cover).

We've been in our new house (new construction) almost 3 months now and I just said the other day that I don't know if it will ever feel like home. :( Part of it is that we're still trying to sell our previous house so that puts a damper on things PLUS money is tight as far as decorating, buying furniture, etc. UGH!

I have to buy all new artwork for my new house as it has vaulted ceilings and my old artwork would be dwarfed. Little by little it is becoming home after a month and 1/2, and I think ultimately I will come to love the place, but it just takes a while to get everything settled and set up. Heck, your mail catching up with you takes a while. LOL

I agree with you completely on the artwork. Things that really made a statement in the old house don't have much to say in our current space!

Artwork?? Heck I am still working on dining room furniture! (Freecycled my old stuff and made some young SAH Moms really happy but now I have an empty room!)

But Laura doesn't that make vacuuming really easy?? :)

We're still getting used to the new house - it needs work; unfortunately DH and I are not only cheap but we're also incredible procrastinators (why do something today when you can also do it tomorrow?). It took me a month just to get used to the smell of the house as well as the light switch placements (I never knew I was so picky about light switches - I currently have post-its where I WANT them.)

We only moved about 1/2 mile away so I STILL keep turning off on our old street or finding myself not exactly where I want to be in the subdivision.

My daughter is still adjusting to the fact she can no longer run out the door, go to the playground and meet up with other kids there. There's less spontaneity and freedom for her. In other words, she's bored.

jy md wrote: But Laura doesn't that make vacuuming really easy?? :)

It does, you're right! But then.....we have hardwood throughout the new house and the color I chose (lighter than the old house) shows EVERY SINGLE TINY PIECE of dirt, dust, grass, etc. We're still a "no shoe" family so I'm not sure where it's all coming from but it's driving me NUTS!!!

When my hubby and I brought our first home it took 2 yrs and still some of the rooms were still empty, but because of job relocation, we had to sell it and we are now renting. We have been going on 2 yrs and we still live out of boxes. We are now starting to look for a home and honestly I can't wait to we move......

At least when you know the home is your own-you feel like you can redesign the home, but when your renting you can't do anything to make it your own.

I can't wait to start the process all over again.

We moved back into our remodeled house before it was finished and so its full of boxes. I found that with a tablecloth on 4 boxes you have an end table if you put a lamp on it. I think I may have stumbled onto a new school of decorating.
After living in a 2 bedroom apartment--and now faced with huge rooms that are empty but have wood floors it doesn't feel like home yet. But it does feel like the Getty museum. I just try to pretend that the workmen who show up at 7:15 every morning are just staff. Actually they carried my groceries in for me today.

We moved a few weeks ago into a new (to us) home in an established neighborhood that I've always wanted to live in. The first night we slept here, I kept waking up all throughout the night and pinching myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming! lol Even surrounded by moving boxes and a garage stacked with many more, it still feels more like home here than the last house we were in for seven years!

A contented sigh of relief leaves my lips often these days :)

icheer wriote: The first night we slept here, I kept waking up all throughout the night and pinching myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming! lol Even surrounded by moving boxes and a garage stacked with many more, it still feels more like home here than the last house we were in for seven years!

What a great story! It's great to hear about someone who is as happy as you are with their new place.

Congrats on getting your dream home!

We have moved a lot and my experience has been about a year...unless like the last time we moved, we built a house and picked every single thing in it including colors and drawer pulls etc. It felt like home immediately. One thing I have found is that the more you go out of town and come back...the quicker it seems like home.

I'm so glad for this thread! I thought I was the only one who felt this way about my home. For me, it hasn't yet felt that way. It could be because I was surrounded by boxes for several months while my husband was a way at a training course. Then,he got back and we decided to paint and do some renos, but then I started to work. All that went to the wayside. We haven't even put pics on the walls.

So, now we're just ready to do the painting, new tile and carpet and guess what? He gets accepted into another federal agency and we're moving across the country! So, we get to update the house, but not enjoy it. Sigh.

I am determined to find our "home-home" when we move. This house just never felt that way to me.

I lived in one North Jersey city for 53 years. It took me 3 years in my second house before It felt like home and 10 more years for that feeling to completely reverse itself.

In came the illegals swarming like ants on sugar candy, more drug problems, more crime, overcrowded schools
filled with illegals, more government social programs etc. Hundreds of thousands of North Jersey residents have fled over a 10 year period. They had the right not to like it. The exodus still continues to the promised home.

So here I am in NE PA. I moved almost 4 months ago with 3 members of my immediate family. There is low crime, low taxes, very friendly neighbors. It felt like home almost immediately!

We moved 3.5 years ago from VA to Seattle, under protest from me(thanks US Coast Guard) and it still doesn't feel like home. I dislike my house, the neighborhood, the rain, the distance from my family. I think it is the overall situation that makes me hate it, not necessarily the house. That is, if my kids were happy and I had made some good friends and my family lived closer, then I wouldn't mind the small kitchen and ugly master bath, etc.

We'll be moving next summer(hopefully back to VA for our last move) and I am SO EXCITED to shop for the home we will live in for a long, long time.

It has varied from several weeks to several months. I can always tell when it's really clicked. DH used to travel constantly for work. Whenever we bought a new house I was always creeped out about being home alone at night. This despite having lived on my own for years and always living in very quiet and safe neighborhoods. At dark, I'd lock up downstairs and the kids and I would share the bed in our MBR. I've even sleep with a nightlight (for the kid's sake-yeah right)
The first night I fall asleep on the couch, I know I'm home! The next night, the girls get tucked into their own beds.

Well, apparently I'm not the only one in my family that finds island life less than idyllic. My five year old is complaining that he wants to move back to California. Jellyben I hear you! The constant rain, the gloomy days, I don't think I have the right personality to live in Puget Sound. But I do love my house (if only it was on the coast of So Cal instead).

This is a fun thread. I've had such a weird love/hate relationship with my new construction home. We bought the land over a year ago, then decided to put off building until Spring. Over the past fall and winter, I had so many misgivings about building the new home at all. We were staying in the same township, same school district, etc., but were building a bigger home on a much bigger lot - so money worries exacerbated the whole idea of the build, and the fact that I've never been totally in love with the new area (moved from NJ to NE PA 5-1/2 years ago) added to my misgivings.

In March the build just sort of started up; I'd spent the winter in denial that we were really going through with it, and then in the midst of the build, it took us four solid months to sell our old house, so I was afraid to like the new house for fear that we would end up putting that one up for sale and see which one went first.

We ultimately accepted our first and only offer in July, closed on both homes in September and moved in on Sept. 15. It actually felt comfortable and homey right away; it is a beautiful, large home, with a lot of acreage, and it helped that my daughters felt at home almost immediately as well. (Naturally, staying in the same community and same schools helped their transition immensely, and ours too.)

Ironically, now that we have been in just over two months, I'm starting to discover things that I don't like about the house that I hadn't really focused on before. And I mean BIG things, like dh and I really aren't that in love with the two-story foyer (like that's ever going to change!), the fact that my daughters' bathroom is directly above the stairway and can be seen from the foyer and the huge window on the front wall (how did I not notice THAT gaffe in planning - I modified the home plan myself!). And small things, such as odd placement of light switches, closet shelves too high to be useful for my girls, etc. etc.

My dh and I are so fortunate to be here, it is a great home on five acres on a cul-de-sac in a small, quiet, new community of only 20 homes, we have so much to be thankful for, but still . . . we both agree that new construction is great in that you can design things your way, and get everything brand-spankin' new, but it also allows for so much second-guessing and re-thinking and re-assessing, and you have only yourself to punish!

What a great thread!

After selling our house last year, we rented in PA for nine months. That never really felt like home because we never fully unpacked.

We bought a house in NJ and moved this past August - a spec home. Strangely, it's been a little harder to get used to because it's so new. It took about two months for us to feel really comfortable, although we're still not unpacked. DH has been busy with work and I started a new job, so all the house projects we have sit waiting for blocks of uninterrupted time.

This thread inspired me to at least start putting up artwork, and that seems to make a big difference. Now it's really starting to feel like home :)

We also love our new area, so that helps.

We moved here (Atlanta) two years ago under duress, and I have never felt at home in this house. My husband's company was consolidating and we had to take the lateral transfer they offered, or he would be without a job. It's a lot more expensive here than where we moved from (Knoxville) and we had to buy what we could afford, and believe me, the selection was abysmal. Our house is 20 years old and falling apart - everything from the dishwasher to the toilets to the rotting porches - and, because the move was lateral salary-wise, we can't even begin to fix what's broken, let alone redo all the awful decorating. I hate this house more each day I live in it - I could pick up and move tomorrow without any regrets!!!

It seems like each of our 5 homes took different amounts of time to feel like home, depending on the circumstances.

Years ago, our first house in CA felt like home right away, because we were young, proud, and so excited to be homeowners and out of an apartment. We bought a "real" couch and chair (no more college furniture) and felt right at home.

The last home we moved from in CA (but are still trying to sell) never felt like home. Looking back, we should have never bought it...just had a bad feeling in my stomach the entire escrow. Though we loved the area, the job situation changed quickly after buying the home. We should have just rented then, because we decided to move to CO. Hindsight is 20/20. We could have made it out *alive* if our buyer hadn't bailed 3 days before closing back in July.

Now that we are in CO, we feel very "at home" with our decision to come here. I don't really feel at home yet with my present house, mostly because we still have the elephant-in-the-room stress of the other house in limbo. I even second guess my decision on buying my present house, because the CA house has devalued so much, leaving less to roll over.

Oh well, maybe in 5 years we will look back and see how everything happens for a reason. :-)

fifidanon wrote: My dh and I are so fortunate to be here, it is a great home on five acres on a cul-de-sac in a small, quiet, new community of only 20 homes, we have so much to be thankful for, but still . . . we both agree that new construction is great in that you can design things your way, and get everything brand-spankin' new, but it also allows for so much second-guessing and re-thinking and re-assessing, and you have only yourself to punish!

It's great to see you posting, fifidanon!

I can't believe how similar our experiences have been. I feel the same way about our new place after three months: there are definitely some things I don't like (the two story foyer!) and some things I am kicking myself for because we too modified the plans extensively and could have changed them. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20, right?

On a more positive note, we too love our 5+ acres, the quiet and privacy are priceless.

I hope you have a wonderful first Thanksgiving in your new home!

teelag wrote: I don't really feel at home yet with my present house, mostly because we still have the elephant-in-the-room stress of the other house in limbo.

Teelag, I just wanted to say that I completely understand your feelings here. Although we are off the market at present (doing changes and fixups per the new Realtor) it's only a matter of time till we are back in the fray.

Here's to both of our houses getting lots of attention (and offers!) from all those "serious" buyers who house hunt over the Holidays!

We are in a rental now (and have been since selling our house in July) and I so much can't wait to get out. We are closing on the house we are buying next week and I want to move in immediately (but we want as we are doing some painting and other work for a couple of weeks).

My last house we lived in for 7 years and, truthfully, it never really felt like home (except when sitting in the pool spa). I think it was because we bought something that really wasn't right. We had a contract to sell the house we had before that and I didn't want to move to a rental so we bought a house that was too much of a compromise. I was never really happy with and wanted to sell it almost from moving in. As much as I don't like our current rental I'm glad we rented rather than make a mistake. I can't wait to move to the new house.

We have lived in this home since May and I am just now beginning to feel like it is home. Of course, I had to remodel the kitchen and a bathroom first and am still working on paint decisions everywhere. Next project for the Spring is stripping the awful wallpaper in the master-it literally makes me dizzy!

I think when you move into a home that needs a lot of upgrading that it is hard to feel at home. Having lived with drywall dust and remodeling mess for over 6 months now has been very stressful so when out current kitchen project wraps up in a couple more weeks then I think we will take a breather and attempt to settle in more.

Our last home was one we built, and the lot felt like home before the house was even built. Still pulls at my heart strings just thinking about it. If my loft hadn't been just a couple minutes away, we might've camped out there! LOL

This one had disgusting cabinetry in the kitchen (no, really...disgusting...), master bath, and pool bath that I wouldn't dare put anything in, and appliances that were so filthy I sprayed them with bug spray and didn't touch them. The carpets were horrible as well. Carpet was replaced, new appliances were delivered, house was scrubbed, painted, and then it felt a little better, but still not home. Tore out all the old cabinets and put in a new kitchen and new vanities in baths, and almost magically it became ours.

I went from feeling like I cannot wait to throw this baby on the market and build asap, to wanting to hold on to it indefinitely. It's home! :0)

Great thread!

Nat

Our new house felt like home immediately to me when we moved into 2 years ago. However, my 10 year old at the time (who by the way was SO excited to move into a neighborhood where all of his friends lived with woods and a stream behind our house...which is what he always wanted) totally changed his mind the minute we handed the keys to the buyers of our old home. I think he cried every night for at least 6 months that he just missed our old house and his old bedroom so much and "why can't you just call those people and tell them that we miss our house and we want it back NOW!?" It truly broke my heart. He now loves his house, his bedroom and all his friends, but it took a very long time, a black lab for him to fall in love with immediately and many small gifts. Every once in a while if we drive by our old house while visiting friends, he'll say, "you know, I really liked that old house...I like our new house better, but sometimes I miss our old house...just a little." Our old house was much smaller, on a much smaller lot and we now live in a "nicer" neigborhood, etc...but to him, he just wanted to be back home.