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adkhiker

Anyone here really commit to a small house as "forever home"?

3 months ago

As my daughter approached age 5, I told my husband this: before she goes into kindergarten, I think we should decide: are we really leaning into this house (1400 sq) and making it work for us, or are we going to move to a bigger house? Because I don't want our daughter to grow up with a house that is constantly in a state of disruption. But, I also don't want to be moving much because of how chaotic that can be. Now, of course, if something major happened, like if my husband lost his highly specialized job in this area, we'd move if we had to. But we have build a beautiful community of people around us over 15 years here - we love our daughter's school (an outdoor private school we can really only afford BECAUSE we live in a smaller home), we have awesome neighbors (the woman on the right of our house is a firefighter, and their son is two - I give them all of our fun toy hand-me-downs.) Our backyard is small but private, and I often wake up to deer grazing on the hill 50 feet from our house and I watch them while I drink my morning coffee. Honestly, I am happy here.
What I am not happy with is the amount of work still to be done to the house. For anyone following, we are currently wrapping up the financing for a total kitchen gut. It's exciting, but it's an expensive proposition. Because of the lead paint and asbestos in our 1940s house, we need to pay top dollar to have it safely removed during the renovation. There are so many other projects also on the list: refinishing our main staircase, refinishing the wood floors upstairs, refinishing the flaking basement walls, residing the house, replacing the windows with popped seals, repaving the driveway...
I know some of this comes down to just homeownership, you know? After a while we'd incur these costs anywhere. But with labor and materials prices as they are, and with my desire to lean in and make this home our forever home, with quality materials - is it financially stupid? Our kitchen is likely to run us $80k all told. In a house we paid $130k for 15 years ago.
I have dreamed since the day we got the keys that we would help this house reach its full potential - turn it into a little jewel box full of charm and warmth.
But that was before we had a kid who will, presumably, want to go to college someday. Yes, we are saving for that, too. And retirement. But is it foolish to put so much time and money into a small house?
Just random musings on a Saturday morning while I sip my coffee and watch the deer.

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