Home Is Where the Heart Is – Ten Things Growing Up With House Flippers Taught Me
Dec21
We have a very apt guest post from Free To Pursue given all my recent DIY work! I’ll keep the introduction short and sweet and will just say thanks again to F2P for writing such a great post (the first one is here, in case you missed it!). Over to you, F2P…
I moved a lot growing up. I moved eight times by the time I was fourteen years old. In that time, I lived in everything from a 300 sq ft home to a 4,000+ sq ft home. Some homes were dumps, others castles, and others still were in some state in between. As a kid I really didn’t much care because I always had a relatively comfortable place to sleep, food to eat and loving, hard-working parents.
The reason I moved so often was that my parents decided to make additional cash flipping homes. They’d buy a home in need of some TLC, fix it up and sell it at a profit. So, like clockwork, we moved every two years or so.
House flippers know only one reality: how to live in chaos, because by the time a home is nice and liveable, it’s time to look for the next project. From an early age, I learned that we sometimes need to resort to “plan Bs” in life, such as using the local restaurant’s washroom while a bathroom’s being renovated or doing dishes in the tub. I also learned that it’s possible to create a makeshift bedroom at the end of a hallway (in fact, as a ten-year-old I thought it was pretty cool to live like that for a while).
I learned a lot living in this state of flux. By watching and helping my parents (mostly by staying out of their way, really), I learned:
1. The value of hard work. The satisfaction my mom and dad derived from taking something from ugly and broken to beautiful and functional was priceless.
2. That moving regularly is not that big of a deal, though I was thankful that I didn’t have to change schools every time.
3. That some families have to live in run down homes and apartments, which is much different than what my parents were doing—choosing to live in them temporarily to restore them for others to enjoy.
4. That habitable spaces come in all shapes, sizes and styles and that you can make pretty much anything work, at least for a while.
5. That a living space doesn’t define who you are. Building materials are just building materials and that the finished product is only an illusion of perfection. Knowing how the “guts” work makes me look at all home finishings in a different light: a sink is just a sink, a light fixture is just a light fixture and, soon after you’ve made the all-important purchasing decision, it just blends into the background.
6. Gratitude for all that homes do for us—you really get to be thankful when the basics are sometimes missing or offline (plumbing, heating, windows, electrical, open floors or roof, sewer connection, front steps, walls, cupboards and counters).
7. The value of self-sufficiency. A great deal of what they did in each home was a learning process and they were never afraid of trying to fix or build something and that the end result was always better than not having tried at all.
8. That very little thought seems to go into home design and layout and that there’s much room for improvement. One of the first things my parents worked on was usually redesigning the home’s floor plan to match the natural flow of daily life.
9. That making home improvements doesn’t require a loan. Pay-as-you-go is much more effective when you do things yourself in your spare time because you can only work so fast. Purchases always outpace progress.
10. That bigger and newer is not always better. In fact, it’s often worse. The home I liked the least was the last ones my parents built. This was not a flip. It was built from scratch and it was big, it was showy and it was worse than any place I’d ever lived, despite the fact that I had all the space a girl could ever hope for (large bedroom, my own bathroom and a walk-in closet).
As a result of learning the above, I truly believe that what matters far more than the look and features of the building that houses my family and friends at any given time is who I share the space with and what memories it can help me create.
It’s easier to build a house than it is to make a home but the latter is far more rewarding.
I very much agree with that statement about floor plans. Houses are SO NOT designed properly, especially here in England where on top of bad floor plans, you have cramped rooms, low ceilings, and lack of clever storage space.
Great to hear your thoughts on hard work and appreciation!
Cheers
Thanks for your comment M. Your statement about a lack of clever storage space really resonates with me, especially after reading Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up“.
Thanks for the great read. Why was the last house the worst house from your perspective?
I remember reading this comic book a while ago, in which the teenage daughter of a very rich couple ends up depressed because she feels the big house her parents bought made them lose their connection as a family. She looks back into the older days, when they where young and living in a tiny condo, where they would constantly be with each other (which she perceives as a great thing), mostly due to lack of space.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head (yes, pun intended). Any home that includes an intercom system is TOO big!!! My room was in the basement, my parents’ on the second floor. The entire basement was large enough to be a comfortable 2-bedroom apartment and it was designed to become just that when my parents retired. Over half the home was barely, if at all, used. It felt like a mansion, hardly a home. Thanks for the comment Stockbeard.
Thanks for the interesting post, F2P.
I’ve just counted and I’ve only had 8 different addresses, that’s from childhood to adulthood!
I grew up in a big family, where we all lived on top of each other. The house was always noisy, there were lots of arguments, it was hard to find anywhere quiet to think.
When I first left home, I finally realised that I actually like a lot of quiet time on my own. So I think in your place, I’d probably be fine with the big old house at the end!
Thanks for offering a different perspective Weenie. We were only three in the house, so I guess that would have been the big difference. Too much square footage per person.
Everything you have said is so right! Everyone must agree to you. The house should not be the important thing, it is the family. No matter how good the house is, if the family who is living inside it is not happy, then it is not good at all.