the house that kim built

My siblings and I fondly refer to our first childhood home as “The Green House.” It had a super long, perfect-for-relay-racing hallway, a huge front porch, and lots of green...everywhere. This is how we remember it. But it didn’t start out this way. 

The Green House began its life as a tiny, 2 bed 1 bath pier-and-beam covered in beige. The Beige House. This was by no means my mom’s dream home. But it had a backyard big enough for a swingset. It worked. We lived there until I started middle school and my parents built their 4 bed 2 bath 2 car garage on slab foundation. As a kid, this was just the order of life. But as an aspiring adult, I’m curious: How did mom and dad get from Green House to Dream House? How did they save enough that quickly?

The answer: they didn’t. Saving money was hard with three active kids and mom knew she didn’t have much time before we outgrew our current home. But while saving for the dream home seemed out of reach, saving for a second bathroom or new carpet was much more feasible. 

My parents (with the physical assistance of grandparents who knew how to wield a hammer) began making small, but substantial improvements to our tiny pier-and-beam home. It was a slow process, but over time they added three bedrooms, a huge bathroom, and a front porch that ran the length of the house. They painted the front porch green and added two porch swings which for a long time were my absolute favorite place on earth. They ripped up the old carpet and added new carpet. Also green. They turned our tiny beige house into a beautiful, spacious enough home that was distinctly ours. I loved it. I still do. 

When all was said and done, once sold, our Green House turned a big enough profit to finally build The Dream House, which is now referred to simply as The Big House. 

Sometimes you can’t get where you want to go right away. There might be detours or red-lights that seem to never change to mom’s favorite shade of green. But there are always things to be done in the interim. Life to be lived. Challenges to be faced. You might already have the answers. Pull your resources. Work with what you’ve got. Break your big goal into smaller, more easily achieved milestones. Build on that. 

A few years ago, my siblings and I realized for the first time how weird it was to have green carpet. When we asked mom why, with misty eyes and a southern accent she said “Because it was beautiful.” She’s not wrong. 

Joy grows where you plant it and the yield is ten-fold.