Why I Gave Up My Dream House

Hi Friend,

Have you been looking forward to spring as much as I have? We've had a tough winter this year in New England (good snow for skiers, though!), and I've been determined to slow down and take a break from all the construction and moving craziness. Is the new house we're living in much different from the last photos I posted over two months ago? Not really. But I have had more conversations with friends and more trips to coffee shops and have gotten back to journaling. :)

Our latest news is that we've decided to sell our dream house. Here's the back story. Three and a half years ago, in the midst of Covid craziness, we decided to embark on a big house project, our third renovation in the Berkshires. We found the house of my dreams only 20 minutes from us: a large Colonial built in 1780, sitting a on a 9-acre hill, with an attached greenhouse, a guest house, and a 3-acre buildable lot across the road. It had been sitting empty and was on the market for 4 years, and the owners finally dropped the price enough for us to even consider putting in an offer. And I had a vision for how the house should be, pulling the kitchen closer to the center of the home, opening up the south-facing room to bring in more light and creating better flow, converting a small, dark bedroom upstairs into a bathroom to make a master suite - all, of course, while trying to keep everything historic-looking.

This blue might have been a more historic choice, but I'd always dreamed of a white Colonial!

My white Colonial with dark green doors and attached barn.

To get southern light to the main living area, we replaced these doors with French doors.

Now the mudroom, living room, library, and kitchen flow together nicely. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

This front room was totally closed off to the rest of the house.

The view of this room is now visible from the main living area. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

This room off the side entrance was dark and awkward.

We added the center window that we took from the old laundry room, added paneling, installed bluestone with radiant, built closets and a bench to create a new mudroom / sitting room. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

We opened up another wall off the dark main living space to the three-season porch, which we turned into the new kitchen.

Nearly everything in this kitchen was bought used - cabinetry, appliances, lights, windows ... And now the main living area has western light, too. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

The prior kitchen in the very back of the house was small, dark and dated. We called it the employee break room!

We turned the old kitchen into a den / TV room. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

The old laundry / utility room became our new pantry. We took out this window and reused it in our new mudroom.

We reused the old porch doors to create an exterior entrance, added cabinetry, and an oak herringbone floor with radiant. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

We also created openings in the pantry to the new kitchen and the greenhouse. We turned the old dining room into a billiard room. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

The old main living room, a dark hole in the center of the house.

We painted the wide, dark wood-planked wall, installed lighting, a reclaimed mantel, and a new wood stove insert as a focal point. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

A bedroom upstairs was so dark and depressing, we decided to make half of it the master bath, and the other half the laundry room. We raised the ceiling, too.

One half of the old bedroom. The new master bath with radiant marble floors and lots of lighting. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

The other half of the old bedroom. Since most of the bedrooms are upstairs, it made sense to create a laundry room up there. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

Here's the old back bedroom upstairs. The whole back half of the upstairs had ceilings between 6'2" and 6'4". So raising the ceilings was one of the first projects we did.

We made the back bedroom a double-high space, and moved the attic stairs to create a lofted sleeping space. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

We loved living in the house in our previous town, but as the reality of an extra mortgage settled in, we decided to move into the construction site and rent out (and eventually sell) our house. And, of course, about a month after closing on the new house, we found out we were pregnant with Baby No. 6! We poured ourselves into the project for 18 months, and in the meantime, I gave birth to Anna in the bathroom downstairs, days after Jordan went back to college and Eden started college.

Boy, do I look tired! New baby, fewer helpers, and a big ol' house to finish!

This house is the finest we've ever owned. I marveled at the ultra-wide-plank floors, the large fireplaces, the wrought iron rim locks, thumb latches, and strap hinges, the heavy brass door knobs, the hand-planed doors. And then the land and the view - wow! I couldn't believe we owned it. The plan had always been to make it income-producing so that we could actually afford it, but we were determined to enjoy it in the meantime.

Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

We filled the home with the finest (mostly second-hand) treasures we could find: Christopher Peacock cabinetry, Perrin & Rowe kitchen faucet, French Morice stove, oak herringbone floor in the kitchen, Italian marble in the bathrooms upstairs, bluestone in the mudroom downstairs, all with radiant heat. We drove far and wide to acquire these things, and the carpenters, electrician, plumber, many of them our friends*, worked hard to match the original craftsmanship.

Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

The French brand Morice went out of business several years ago, but its quality is said to be on par with La Cornue. I love the heavy brass knobs and cast iron grates. Credit: Tricia McCormack Photography.

We also cleaned up and upgraded the guest house after the long-time tenant, a local carpenter, left. And then, without even taking a breath, the obvious next step was to build a house on that empty lot right across the road, right?! You know the rest of that story.

We always love spaces that have room for improvement!

Our carpenters turned a too-close peninsula into a just-rightly-spaced island and seamlessly patched the floor. We upgraded the appliances and lighting.

Well, sometimes to know what you actually want, you need to get what you think that you want. It was around the time that our college building crew left this past August that I realized that I wasn't having fun anymore. And I regretted having given up almost all of my friendships because I just had so much work to do. I had also stopped dreaming and feeling inspired, which is necessary for my soul! Inspiration is the fuel that gives me the energy for all the work, and I had just been running on fumes for quite some time. But, of course, at that point, we were in too deep to change course with a house 75% built. So Mickey and I took the time to discuss what we really wanted in life, what actually mattered, and what we were willing to give up to get it. (Thank you to our Lifeonaire group for helping us to keep asking these questions and to keep looking for solutions.) Newsflash to myself: I'm the mother of two small children again, and not only have I never had this many children before, I've never had this much to manage ever, even without children! I recently saw a quote from a designer that just about summed up my life: "Having it all is a lot to keep clean." Amen, sister! I want to spend more time living and less time maintaining. I didn't realize the house of my dreams would take so much of my time - or that having so much land would make me feel so isolated and disconnected from humanity.

So, bye, bye, big, fancy house. While our family is certainly big enough for you, we're not at the right stage for you. And while some people's idea of paradise is not seeing a living soul from your house, I remembered that I really like being around people, lots of people. So until we move back to a more populated place, we'll be moving to a smaller house on a busy road in our previous town, right around the corner from a sweet, little school with lots of families. After we finish our new house, of course! :D

Until next time!

xo,

P.S. The new house needs a stair rail. Which one do you like best: 1, 2, or 3?

1. Wooden spindles, posts, and handrail.

2. Metal horizontal bars, wooden posts and handrail.

3. Wooden rails, posts, and handrail.

P.P.S. If you'd like to see more photos of this house (or know someone who'd like to buy it!), you can see more here.

* Speaking of friends who worked on the house, we've been devastated this past week to have lost an incredibly talented family friend, only 20 years old, to a motorcycle accident. Edmund Kress spent hours of hard work on this house and our new house, he was an amazingly creative problem-solver, and he's been a good friend to our kids for years. We miss you and will always cherish our time with you, Edmund!

This photo was from the summer of 2023, when Edmund helped us build our fence and patio, working through the pouring rain, because we had such a tight deadline before renters showed up!