Dream House to Dream Cottage

Mitch,

You were ready to let go of my dream house before I was. But in January 2021, I had this feeling that we needed to see if we could sell it. After Zach and Lexi were in their own places, it just felt like I was hoarding this beautiful home that could better serve a growing family. We didn’t need 2700 square feet and a huge yard anymore. I couldn’t keep up with the house or yard work with my fibromyalgia, and you were working so much. The house, I feel, was letting me know that it was grateful we had saved it from demolition, but the time had come to release it to the loving family that was just waiting for it to come up for sale.

On a whim…

I put our home up for sale on Facebook. We were both blown away when, within half an hour, we had sold it! It was definitely meant to be!

We looked at so many homes to find the right fit again, trying to downsize. And then, right before we found out you had cancer, a 930 square foot house needing a renovation went on the market. That would make three renovation projects in just eight years for us! We were not sure we wanted to take that on again, at least at this magnitude, so even though the price was really attractive, we walked away from it.

Everything became crystal clear…

Fast forward two weeks, and we find out you have cancer. I can still see us lying on the bed in the motel room holding each other, talking about what the future had in store for us now. Trying to figure out what that might even look like. All of a sudden, it became crystal clear that the house we walked away from, the smallest of all the houses we looked at, was the one meant for us—even with a renovation.

There were times I thought we made a mistake on this one. And then it started coming together. We had to change a lot of what we originally thought we were going to do, but in the end, it always turned out better than the plan we had in our heads originally. It turns out 930 square feet is all we needed! I love our little cottage!

This house represents so much gratitude, sacrifice, love, community service, and the coming together for one cause…

This time around the renovation was definitely different. You were not able to do all the wonderful “man power” things you did on the other two houses; instead it fell on me to figure it all out. Even the move fell fully on my shoulders. I would not have been able to do all of this, and take care of you, if I hadn’t been willing to ask for help. And boy, were we blessed with help from the community and family. This house represents so much gratitude, sacrifice, love, community service, and the coming together for one cause: to help you have a place to come home to in order to rest and work on fighting this devil we call cancer.

When I look into the future, I see this home sheltering me in my grief when you are gone from this world. It will be my safe haven, just as you have always been for me.

With all my love-

Nicole

PS  Remeber this day when we had all these wonderful people show up to help put in the steal beam?  It was a huge beam, the full length of the house!