And then we bought a house

Our friends have teased us for months about our saran-wrapped grandfather clock.

When we moved, well over a year ago, the movers quickly bound it in plastic to ensure its doors wouldn’t swing open as they hauled it from one home to the next.

Even after it was safely settled in its new location – my grandmother’s old house, our temporary home until we found a permanent one – we never unwrapped it. Because why bother unwrapping it when we were just going to move again? Why bother unpacking all the boxes? Why bother settling in when we’re hardly going to live here? Let’s just make do with the bare essentials and leave the rest ready for the next transition, right?

But the transition never came. The next move to the next home never happened, because we just couldn’t find another home to get excited about. All the dozens of houses we looked at never felt like the right fit. We became desperate for permanency. To be able to unpack the boxes, to settle in…to unwrap the clock. And in the meantime, we fell in love with our neighbors, our new friends, the location and our daughter’s school. We grew increasingly tired of being renters and not being able to leave our mark on the space we were living in.

So we bought the place. We bought my grandma’s house – the home we’ve been renting for over a year and never intended to live in for more than a few months.

We’re still not unpacking or settling in…yet. Instead we’re preparing for some pretty major renovations, like a new kitchen, new bathrooms, new plumbing (what’s here is no longer up to code), exterior painting and the list goes on and on and on.

When we moved out of our last house, one we spent 6 years gutting and rebuilding, I swore I’d never buy a fixer-upper again. Now I’ve realized it’s just kinda in my DNA. I don’t think I could buy a house without doing some kind of overhaul as a way to make it my own. And I’ve always had a soft spot for homes with good bones and a need for TLC. All I see is potential.

So, here we are. Home at last…in a home we’ve been living in all along. And while we’re holding off from unpacking, we did go ahead and cut the plastic wrap off the clock. Saran Wrap has never felt so symbolic.

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