A house isn't just a house

It’s strange how we become so attached to the structures in which we live.

When you think about it from a purely objective standpoint, a house is just a configuration of wood, concrete, pipes, wires and plastic expertly assembled to shield us from the elements. Yet to most people, home really is where the heart is.

My wife and I bought our first home together in the summer of 2008 – an old four-level split in the middle of Red Deer’s Bower neighbourhood. The house was plenty big for the two of us and it needed some serious work, but it boasted a great back yard, big trees and green space across the street. As locations go, the Bower area is pretty tough to beat.

When we first moved in, many of our friends and family showed up with toolboxes and paintbrushes and worked like dogs to help us get settled and make the place our own.

Together we removed walls, replaced toilets, ripped out rugs, installed new light fixtures and did our best to modernize the house on a very tight budget. As long as I live, I’ll never forget doing dishes in the bathtub for a whole month while our kitchen was being remodelled. The early renovation process was well documented in past columns and blogs.

As any homeowner knows, the renovations never really end. Over the years, we’ve continued to tackle a few projects here and there, but there are a few rooms still in serious need of attention.

Now that we’ve added two rambunctious little toddlers to the mix, it’s become much harder to get things done around the house. If they’re not under foot, they’re stealing items from my toolbox and hiding them around the house. And or course all noisy work must come to a halt during naptime.

For these reasons (among others) we recently decided to look for a newer place that required a little less maintenance and attention. A few weeks ago we found the perfect place and put our old house up on the market – it sold in just a day.

While excited about the move, my wife and I both have these recurring moments of mourning when we think about leaving the house where we started our family and forged some of life’s most precious memories. Even as I write this column from my laptop at the kitchen table, I look around and damn near get misty eyed. It feels strange to think that in just a few weeks, another family will be making dinner in our kitchen or playing Hulk vs. Spiderman in our back yard.

Even though it shouldn’t matter to me at this point, I genuinely hope the next family cherishes this place as much as we have.

We will always be thankful for the time we shared in this old house, and while big life changes can be difficult to swallow, I have no doubt we’ll make plenty of new family memories in our new home.

Leo Paré is a former Red Deer Advocate editor. Email him at newsdeadline@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/LeoPare