Choosing a new home can be an exercise fraught with frustration, but sometimes, tick-by-tick on your checklist, the right home chooses you
For my younger daughter, it was love at first sight, and she couldn’t contain her excitement. I, however, was going to take some convincing.
But the houses we could afford were not plentiful, to put it mildly, so I agreed to go and look at what seemed like a very bland little house to me, if the photograph in the newspaper was anything to go by.
Half face brick, half paint, an unassuming façade and nothing that really distinguished it, it nevertheless checked the boxes of my house shopping list, which was short: three bedrooms, well-maintained, affordable bond, two bathrooms if possible, an outbuilding I could use as an office, and an enclosed garden to house my dogs.
We parked over the road on show day and the gate slid open. And as I walked through the house, I literally had to stop myself from staring, slack-jawed, at what appeared to be the perfect house for us.
I mentally ticked off the things on my list. All present and correct, with shiny parquet floors and built-in-cupboards in all the bedrooms. There was only one bathroom, but it was roomy, with both a bath and a shower.
I hated the tiles in the kitchen and bathroom, but otherwise I could not have ordered a more perfect house if I’d designed it myself. There was even a small swimming pool in the backyard.
I was so gobsmacked, I drove off to fetch my other daughter from her boyfriend’s house, and brought her back to view it the same afternoon. She agreed. One afternoon of serious house hunting, and it seemed we had found our house.
I’ll be honest – I didn’t fall in love with it. My view was far more pragmatic. We were going through a tough time and we needed a home. This one ticked enough boxes, and several months later, we were finally able to move in.
As I write these words, it is exactly three years since we moved in, and every day I fall in love with my little house even more. At least three or four times a week I utter a silent ‘thank you’ as I walk up the front stairs, grateful for this place that arrived ‒ seemingly by magic ‒ when I was burnt out, worn out, stressed out and going through emotional hell.
It has needed some things fixing over the years – more than I expected – but none of it has been serious. And while it doesn’t look the way I want it to yet, I’m getting there. Slowly, but surely, we have put our own stamp on it, and I’d venture to say it’s the happiest place I’ve lived in since I’ve been an adult.
On a purely practical note, the beauty of a small house is that the maintenance bills are smaller – because there are a few hundred metres of guttering instead of kilometres. Or you can spend R500 at the garden centre and be able to see the difference.
I still really hate the tiles, especially in the kitchen, where the previous owners, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to put floor tiles on the wall.
My kitchen and bathroom are an ode to beige. But with time and patience and a bit of saving, I will get to those renovations.
In the meantime I’m having an absolute ball painting here, and planting there, and creating nooks of calm and relaxation where our little family can gather to connect.
Like Hazel Grace Lancaster in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.” And now I can’t imagine ever wanting to live anywhere else.
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