The New House
Yesterday at around 1:30 in the afternoon aatish2 and I became homeowners. We now own a condominium in a three family building in Somerville. The unit below us is now owned by the incomparable coraline and nacht_musik, the unit above by the marvelous beah and mrf_arch. We are next door to aerynne and ert and small R. The house is a 15 min. walk to Porter Square, a 20 min. walk to Davis, less than 5 min. from Arts at the Armory. The house was bought by a developer last year, gutted, and refurbished. Basically the only parts of the original building that remain are the foundation, the outside walls, and the back staircase. The only thing we are having done before moving in is painting, because we are excited to be able to put colors on our walls. miss_chance has been helping us figure out the paint colors and I can confidently say that the place is going to be even more stunning when we are done.
In short, it seems possible that I have died and gone to heaven.
I haven't been writing about this process as it happened because it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, completely crazy making and insane much of the time, and I was too exhausted by the process of surviving it to want to chronicle the journey. I have been told on good authority that it is always difficult to buy a house. That process is much more complicated when you have six adults trying to decide what they have to have, what they can live without, and what they feel comfortable doing with a large chunk of their life savings. The fact that we have gotten to the end of this process and we all still like each other and are excited to live together speaks volumes for the emotional maturity and problem solving skills of everyone involved. In fact, almost no part of this process went smoothly with the exception of the communication we had amongst ourselves.
Because this house is a joint endeavor there are ways in which the purchase of it means something more, or at least something different, then such a thing normally would -- and I think everybody recognizes that buying a house is a big deal no matter who you are and what your circumstances are. Although we all have separate spaces in the house there is also a large finished room in the basement that, while technically belonging to the first floor unit, is going to be used as shared common space. It will contain, eventually, a futon for guests, craft supplies, board games, comfy couches, a screen and a projector for movie nights, toys for small people, and many many books. We are all committed to making this, in the best case scenario, our forever home. We are committing to supporting each other through sickness and health, to cooking together regularly, to caring for children together. (This last is not an abstract idea, since beah is pregnant and due to give birth sometime around the beginning of July.) In short, we are committed to becoming even more like family to each other than we already are. This move, then, carries with it both a lot of the terror and the joy that I felt when Aatish and I got married, though the register and scale of those emotions is somewhat different.
We will all start to trickle in to the house over the next few weeks--mrf_arch and beah move this coming Tuesday, Tish and I the week after that, coraline and nacht_musik follow on May 30th. I still have a lot of packing to do, a lot of cleaning, and a lot of thinking about what this transition means to me. I am thrilled and relieved and also really, truly, deeply ready to be done with the move and not surrounded by boxes anymore. I think, though, that the worst of this is behind us and that the possibilities for awesomeness are unfurling before us, limitless as the horizon.
In short, it seems possible that I have died and gone to heaven.
I haven't been writing about this process as it happened because it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, completely crazy making and insane much of the time, and I was too exhausted by the process of surviving it to want to chronicle the journey. I have been told on good authority that it is always difficult to buy a house. That process is much more complicated when you have six adults trying to decide what they have to have, what they can live without, and what they feel comfortable doing with a large chunk of their life savings. The fact that we have gotten to the end of this process and we all still like each other and are excited to live together speaks volumes for the emotional maturity and problem solving skills of everyone involved. In fact, almost no part of this process went smoothly with the exception of the communication we had amongst ourselves.
Because this house is a joint endeavor there are ways in which the purchase of it means something more, or at least something different, then such a thing normally would -- and I think everybody recognizes that buying a house is a big deal no matter who you are and what your circumstances are. Although we all have separate spaces in the house there is also a large finished room in the basement that, while technically belonging to the first floor unit, is going to be used as shared common space. It will contain, eventually, a futon for guests, craft supplies, board games, comfy couches, a screen and a projector for movie nights, toys for small people, and many many books. We are all committed to making this, in the best case scenario, our forever home. We are committing to supporting each other through sickness and health, to cooking together regularly, to caring for children together. (This last is not an abstract idea, since beah is pregnant and due to give birth sometime around the beginning of July.) In short, we are committed to becoming even more like family to each other than we already are. This move, then, carries with it both a lot of the terror and the joy that I felt when Aatish and I got married, though the register and scale of those emotions is somewhat different.
We will all start to trickle in to the house over the next few weeks--mrf_arch and beah move this coming Tuesday, Tish and I the week after that, coraline and nacht_musik follow on May 30th. I still have a lot of packing to do, a lot of cleaning, and a lot of thinking about what this transition means to me. I am thrilled and relieved and also really, truly, deeply ready to be done with the move and not surrounded by boxes anymore. I think, though, that the worst of this is behind us and that the possibilities for awesomeness are unfurling before us, limitless as the horizon.