Selling our Forever Home

This post was drafted back at the very end of March, during our final week at our old home and am just getting around to sharing it now. Enjoy.

As I sit here and type this, I can feel that first taste of Spring in North Carolina. The wind chime in my favorite crepe myrtle is twinkling just a bit and the day is warm enough that the porch door is open. The Bradford pears and Jane magnolias have just finished blooming in our front yard – just as they were the day we first saw this house six years ago – and I know their blooms will soon be replaced by fresh, green leaves and that spring is right around the corner. It’s my favorite time of year in our house.

It looks much like it did that first day Corey and I saw it, back in 2016 when Madeline was just six weeks old. The moment we saw it (at the time still in all its 1990’s glory, we looked at each other and knew instantly that this was it. After looking for nearly a year, this was the house. The one where we would grow our family. Our first long term home. Our “forever” home.

I think our realtor may have thought we were a little bit crazy. There was old polished brass everywhere, florals and dated wallpaper all around. The landscaping in the yard was overgrown. But the bones were there and I knew it was home. And a really fun project, too.

Oh the memories this house has held. It has held all of our family’s happiest memories. Both of my children’s first steps, every Christmas and holiday they have celebrated, and so many parties and get togethers with close friends. It’s truly a piece of my heart and I think it will always be my favorite house.

When we saw it, it felt like my Pinterest board had come to life with its tall built ins (my favorite feature) and older house charm. We have had a ton of fun updating this house and poured so much love into it. From our screened in porch addition to our kitchen refresh, we tackled countless projects to make it ours. It really was love at first sight from the moment we saw it and we have loved it every day since.

Well, except for a select few like when yellow jackets built a nest in Madeline’s wall and came pouring out or when the main water line burst on the Fourth of July.

Now, it’s time for a new family to love it.

Typing that sentence gives me alllll the feelings. Not only have we loved this house tremendously, but our neighborhood is wonderful and this community has been a rock for our family during some of our more challenging times during the last six years. Nearly all of my closest friends live within eight minutes of me now, with many of them being just around the corner. Our time here has been so special and closing this chapter of my life has not been easy. In fact, I think it may have been the hardest decision I have ever had to make!

Let’s pause for a few photos. How we loved this house!

Coming to the conclusion to move was a hard one and something we wrestled with for the better part of a year. One of the things we loved most about this house was that it was in the city but felt not. It had a large yard and a close knit neighborhood centered around a pool and tennis club. Yet, I could pop the kids in the stroller and walk to the store. It felt like the best of everything.

Corey left his corporate job back right before the beginning of the pandemic and took a leap of faith to start his own firm with a former colleague. It has gone so well but he went from traveling four days a week for years to working from his home office full-time. We tried his office downstairs then upstairs then downstairs again with a few renovations. It never really was conducive to his type of business – we needed to add a real office. We thought we would do this in the form of a detached garage with office space overhead eventually and just rent an office space in town in the mean time.

Then Madeline started Kindergarten and it was not what we hoped. At all. I have worked in so many different kinds of schools and I knew what I wanted for her but we were not getting it in our neighborhood school. I won’t go into too many details here but I knew that this would not work long term for our family. We explored lots of options from charters/magnets to all of the private schools in town. As we went through rounds of academic testing, psychological testing, interviews for Madeline, interviews for our family, nothing ever felt right. Charlotte has some incredible private schools but we were fighting hard to try to win a spot for her, asking friends to write letters of recommendation, and praying for the right space to be open for her in the fall. Yet through all these hoops we were jumping through, I never felt at peace with any of our options. I worried about the long drives across town, if she would grow up feeling like she needed to “keep up with the Joneses.” I felt frustrated by large class sizes at some schools coupled with large tuition payments. Schools that seemed like they would be a better fit for Madeline didn’t feel like they would be a good fit for Connor later on or vice versa. I reached out to dozens of parents to ask them about school culture, stress and demands put on students, etc. My pro/con list for each seemed so long and Corey and I both felt like things were not adding up.

It felt as if we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. As we thought about what we should do for school and for Corey’s office situation, Corey and I had to sit down and really think about what we wanted for the next fifteen years of our life (until Connor would graduate high school basically). What we loved most about this house was the people. Our neighbors are really the best. They’re the thing that made our house feel most like a home – having friends that have become as close as family all around us.