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April 27, 2006
our house
by sven at 1:42 pm
The house is really ours!
Today we went in to the title company and I wrote my signature (or initials) sixty-two times. ...Yes, we counted. :-D
Officially, the sale will be recorded on May 1st. We actually could have signed a few days earlier -- but wanted to hold off... May 1st makes for a more memorable day, in terms of looking back. (And it's my unbirthday.)
I know you're going to ask: "How does it feel?"
It feels... Kinda unreal. Having been living in the house already, not much is actually changing. Going into all of this I realized that we're missing a lot of the usual rituals: searching high and low for a house, packing and moving all the stuff, getting the house key. In some ways this has been a lot more like refinancing. After all this work, the only thing that's tangibly different is that I have a six inch stack of papers beside my desk.
Oh, but I'm not really that jaded! There's also a sense of elation. And: "Wow, really?" ...Pinching ourselves to see if we're dreaming might not be a bad image here.
Part of me feels like I'm becoming the groundskeeper at a school. It's now my job to make sure that this place -- this living architecture and soil -- is maintained. So I feel like I'm taking on new "responsibility"... Not in the sense that I'm any more "adult" than I've ever been -- but as if there's maybe a new kitten in the household for us to take care of. (Um, a 50,000 pound baby kitten...)
This past week I created wooden boxes for raised-bed gardens in the backyard. The house itself may be the same... But in the backyard -- here's an area where it feels like we're just beginning to move in. And when we ultimately paint the house -- then I think we'll feel like we're making our mark, making this place ours.
Planting our new garden: nice metaphor, don'tcha think?
posted by sven | April 27, 2006 1:42 PM | comments (6) | categories: studio space
Comments
a 50,000 pound baby kitten indeed! PURRRRRR PURRRRRRRR! :D
and just to be clear for those who haven't actually been here, we bought a duplex: the other side is our studio with an entirely separate address. you can see it on the (left side) [edit: RIGHT SIDE!] of the house when it drops from two stories to one story. (a better picture of the studio is here: http://www.scarletstarstudios.com/studio.html)
it still feels like we're renting; landscaping and painting will make it more real for me because we have such a suburban zombie house (there's a reason we shot the unconscious collective film "suburban hell" here!).
Posted by: gl. at April 27, 2006 3:18 PM
This is great, congratulations to both of you! The heart of your home will show through in no time now. Putting down roots, space to grow. This is good.
Posted by: shelley Noble at April 28, 2006 9:35 PM
A duplex?! Wow, that would be like a dream come true for me! Awesome setup! Congrats to you both...
Posted by: ubatuber at April 29, 2006 10:51 AM
Congrats on the house. I hadn't thought about the potential of a duplex for a home and studio arrangement. That is a good idea.
Posted by: DG at April 29, 2006 7:57 PM
yeah, it's pretty awesome. the studio side of the duplex is what they call a "mother-in-law unit," which means a 1-bedroom, 1 bath apartment attached to the house. we use the living room for class & workshop space, the dining area has my calligraphy table & light table in it, the kitchen holds art supplies, the bathroom holds more supplies, and the bedroom is sven's own lab for animation & building stuff, which is great because we can close that door -- so not only is it not taking over our living space in the house, it's not taking over my art or teaching spaces. (btw, having regular classes & events is one of the major reasons the studio stays relatively tidy ;).
we made some modifcations to the studio even before we bought it: we took the doors off the kitchen cabinets and packed them w/ art supplies (my letterpress typecases live in the oven). sven took out the stacked washer/dryer to build flatfiles (http://www.scarletstarstudios.com/blog/archives/2005/02/newflatfiles_1.html). if we could find a bed/couch combo that folded away into a tiny square, it would be a great guest space, too. but it's hard to find a piece of furniture that works here, because the main area needs to remain fairly empty for events.
Posted by: gl. at April 29, 2006 9:13 PM
Thank you Shelly, Jeffrey, DG!
It's still sinking in... This place is ours?!
I managed to slip on the stairs today, smashing my elbow against the wall, leaving a dent in the drywall. Yay! This is a good thing!
--I was sure that I was going to accidentally burn the place down before all the paperwork went through -- just because it would be ironic. ...A dent in the wall? That's a much more gentle "first damage to the thing I just bought" experience! :-D
Posted by: sven at April 29, 2006 11:45 PM