New Year, New Home

If you’ve been listening to the podcast or following me on any of the social medias, you would know that right around Christmastime we purchased our first, and hopefully only, new home. If you’ve ever purchased a home, you will know how much that whole process SUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKSSSSSSSSSS!!! That’s not even counting the whole packing up everything, moving, unpacking, and cleaning the old house out with the miniscule hope of getting back any part of your deposit. There’s just so many different verifications and meetings and reverifications and documents and reverifications and processes and reverifications followed by a marathon session of signing so many documents that you start forgetting how to actually spell your name. Have I mentioned it sucks? Just checking… But we did it, and in mid December we moved in to our brand new, never before lived in, home in a gorgeous neighborhood.

New Home, New Stuff…

Over the last 10 years, we’ve moved a few times. And each new house was completely different than the previous one. In nearly every case, that’s meant that we’ve had to get some piece of new furniture to accommodate the new home. Sometimes it’s meant getting a new sofa because the old sectional is too long (or covered in dog hair.) Another time we had to get a new dining table because the old one just wasn’t big enough for our growing family.

But this time we went for broke. We scrapped nearly all of our major furniture when we left the old house: couch, dining set, desk, entertainment center (finally,) and even all of our bedside tables. All of it was hauled away so we could purchase new everything for our new home. We got a new, smaller, entertainment center. We purchased a “sactional” sofa from Lovesac. The boys got all new dressers. As of this writing, we’re still waiting on our new dining set to arrive. The only things we didn’t replace were the beds.

The thing is, the new house is bigger than the old one. So we didn’t just have to replace the things we threw out, we also had to purchase new furniture for new spaces. The new house has, what the realtor called, a “teen room” I called it a “common room” and my wife has dubbed the “study.” Simply put there’s an open area between the boys’ bedrooms. In the demo home, this room contained wall mounted desks and bookshelves. And with 4 boys, we thought that was a perfect idea, so we found those desks and bookshelves and did the same thing. Unfortunately, that also meant that we would have to assemble 4 desks and 2 bookshelves and mount them to the walls. Plus hang a TV and floating entertainment center. Now, I will admit, it looks amazing, but holy crap was that a lot of work. My fingers are still sore from all of the little screws.

New Home, New Office…

I have to admit that one of my favorite parts of our new home is the fact that I now have my own office. Not only do I have my own office, but it’s in a completely separate area of the house from everything else. Now I don’t have to worry about bothering anybody if I decide to get some recording or editing done late at night. Now I have a much larger desk that holds all of my recording equipment. I have room to hang all of my guitars on the walls. And I have a closet space that I can use as a sound booth for voiceover recording. Bonus points, the boys aren’t allowed in my office without permission.

New Home, new Perspective

So yes, the process you have to go through to buy a new home sucks. Like, really sucks. Like, I never want to go through this again, sucks. But for all of the hassle that it was, I’m so happy that we did it. We started 2020, the new decade, with a brand new home for our family. We have finally found a place that is really ours and that we can do whatever we want with. We can raise our boys here. I can grow my business here. Maybe we can eventually even make friends with some of the neighbors. (I said maybe.) I’m not about to get all “new year new me” on you. I hate that shit. But we started off 2020 with a whole lot of great new stuff in our life, and I’m not about to waste it.