On The Level: A House Becomes a Home

Houses are funny, as far as purchases go. Not like cars or boats and things that are generally mass produced and shipped wherever. Houses are built in a specific place, often for specific people. And it’s in that, that they are completely different from all those other things. Houses become homes.

Houses are as different as people. No matter how many times a particular model is built, one is never like any other. And I don’t just mean that no lot is ever quite is the same. Of course selections differ and the trees and how the sun hits a house will always vary. But in the sense that once you move in a house, it becomes your home. Unique to you and unlike any other.

That occurred to me as I waded through the learning curve of building a house for the first time. I, of course, was focused on the logistics of scheduling. How A comes before B, and so fourth. But once the house was complete and someone moved in, I thought about how that house is going to be the backdrop for moments in these people’s lives for years to come. Rooms won’t just be dimensions contributing to the total square footage anymore. They will become offices and baby rooms. From the moment the first piece of furniture goes through the front door, it ceases being a lot number on a neighborhood plat, and becomes where memories are made on graduation nights and anniversaries.

So I realized no matter how many times I run the same schedule on the same floor plan, to the people who move in, it is a house like no other. It’s their home, regardless of who else may eventually live there; they can always drive by and remember super bowl parties and family dinners. It became a more significant way to spend my day, not building a house for someone to buy, but a home for someone to live in.