No Place Like Home

Has anyone else watched the show Moving Up? If you haven't, you should try to catch at least one episode. I am a big fan of TLC's weekend lineup of home flipping/home improvement shows. This is mainly because I love to get new ideas and see what other people's houses look like. (Yes, I am one of those people who might show up at an open house just to see what it looks like.)

Anyway, to give a summary of the show, people sell their house, the new owners come in and make changes and then the former owners get to come in and see the changes, and they usually have a LOT of comments. Generally, and probably much to the producer's prodding, the one thing that the former owners do NOT want changed is the one thing the new owners can't wait to make a drastic change to.

Not too long ago, I somewhat had this opportunity. Our home before this one, which was the first home we had bought, was a home that we were in love with. We loved the layout, we felt very comfortable in it, and it was hard to part with it. Flash forward about one year, and our house is back on the market (not sure what happened with the people who bought it...they seemed to love it too). I got on the realtor's website and was estatic to see that there was a virtual tour available. As I looked through the tour, I immediately began to have those emotions of "What did you do to Zach's room?" and "Why would you put that furniture in the den?".

But then I had to step back and realize that when we moved here, we made some rather drastic changes. We painted, of course, but we also demolished the huge landscaped mound! I have no idea what the former owners think about that. But then at the end of the day, you have to emotionally detach yourself from a house that you USED to own and realize that it is no longer a part of you and therefore will no longer reflect you. What I have learned is that until you make it your own, and therefore remove some of the former owner's touches, it will never feel like your home. There are definitely some changes that were made by past owners that we kept and love, but there were others that didn't fit us, so we changed them.

All in all, it is amazing to see how emotionally attached we can be to our houses. But then again, without those attachments, we would never quite feel that we had a place to relax and be comfortable. There is definitely no place like home....