When it comes to getting married, there’s this image that our society fostered through our pop culture. One of the prototypes of getting married is the little house with the white picket fence. While few houses in modern suburbia make use of the white picket fence, the idea is still the same. For a married couple, choosing their first home together is a heady ambrosia of distilled dreams and fertile imagination.
Range of Dreams
When it comes to determining your price range, the area you live in and the amount you can afford will play the largest role. However, there is more to investing in a new home than just how much money it will cost you in the beginning, it’s the time, effort and love you will be pouring into it for years to come.
Granted, our society is so mobile that families are more likely to live in multiple homes throughout the life of their marriages. However, the first home you invest in together whether it is a tiny, efficiency apartment, a two bedroom condo, a three level townhouse or a newly built suburban single-family – that will be the place where the two of you will begin your married lives together.
The Wonder Years
When my husband and I were first married, we lived in a three level town house. As much as I hated the stairs in that place, it was our first home. During our time there, we began to modify it – making little personalized changes here and there. We painted the walls from white to a pearl ochre. We painted my daughter’s room a beautiful blue.
We retiled the kitchen with this great dark green marble. We replaced the sliding glass doors off the second floor kitchen with these great double French doors. We had a deck installed so that we could step out there to have morning brunches. We terraced the postage stamp of a backyard and improved the drainage.
We loved this house. We loved every painted wall, every new piece of tile and we loved the beautiful blue-gray carpeting we installed. We loved it because we did it together. It was the home we made from the house we built. When the time came that we sold that house, I remember crying – it was our first home together.
There will never be another house that we own that will be quite like that first home. Our marriage and our lives joined together in that home. We mingled our dreams, our ideas and even our personal styles and we developed our tastes as a couple. I still miss that home – though we are even now – doing the same to the house we moved into a year and half ago – stamping it with our identity as a couple – as a family – it is not the same as when we were forming that identity through the home we first built.
What was your first married home like?