(Best informercial voice.)

“Are you indecisive? Do you enjoy agonizing over decisions that will result in enjoyment/repulsion by someone you don’t even know? Will 24/7 discussions about tile choices, countertop colors, paint swatches, carpet pile and paint primer light your fire? Do you enjoy adding monumental amounts of stress to your marriage? Does executing dirty, grueling, exhausting work seem like how you want to spend your life? Do you envision a Walton Family experience while demolishing a home down to the studs but you’re ok with the reality of constantly yelling at your kids to stop touching stuff?

Then flipping a home might be for you!”

There are times in life where you enter a season knowing full well, no matter how diligently you’ve prepared, you’re still unprepared. Despite planning or budgeting or making pro/con lists ad naseum, regardless of depth of introspection and outward preparation, you are naively unprepared. I can think of three such seasons.

Marriage.

Parenthood.

Home renovation.

Having endured all three (and lived to tell about it in written detail on this site), the next natural step seemed to be “flipping” a home. Because why wouldn’t two people with four kids, multiple activities and a steady level of chaos NOT want to take on the albatross of the neighborhood? Especially when their own home could use six to eight years of concentrated deep cleaning?

In the midst of a global pandemic, no less.

The list is too long and would need it’s own blog post. Suffice it to say, we ignored reason and logic and opted for the flip versus reduced chaos. Cause why not?

Matt has a background in home building. I have a background in driving Matt crazy and making him explain his every decision. So it was a natural match made in renovating heaven.

As with every home renovation since the beginning of time, this project became more than we expected. MUCH more. Fortunately, before we bought the home we prepared for greater invasiveness than we believed would be needed. And then added in another layer of prep in case that invasiveness became even more invasive. Thank goodness for foresight.

Because the invasiveness level increased exponentially.

Imagine hoping for a facelift with a side of liposuction and ending up with a labotomy and complete organ transplant. Thank goodness for a fabulous skeleton. I can list on one finger the areas of the home we didn’t renovate, update, modernize.

We had help from friends and local business owners who are also friends. We have fathers who are familiar with ‘home labotomies and organ transplants’ and served as a great resource as we made big decisions. We have mothers who watched kids when keeping them at the flip house would’ve resulted in massive reversal of progress.

And likely would’ve involved the fire department.

Matt and I learned things about each other we hadn’t uncovered in two decades of being together. Some good, some not. Providing for future plans to do some minor updating on another important project. Us.

At the end of the day, we’re still happily married, the kids are still speaking to us and our parents haven’t disowned us. The icing on this cake is a buyer who is more excited about occupying our labor of love than we could have hoped for.

After months and months of arduous work, people have asked if we’ll do it again. The answer always a quick and emphatic, “No!” I would insist we are being truthful except Matt and I caught each other checking the most recent real estate listings just last night…….

Who wants peace and calm anyway, right?!