An update on our home

Oh hi! Remember me? It’s been six long months since my last post. I’ve been stuck in a stagnant season, biding time until a clear path forward presented itself. As a career-long content creator, I’ve been trained to seek and share stories as I see them. But the truth is that I’ve needed time to heal and to wait for the sting of disappointment to solidify into some sort of wisdom.

Back in late December, nearly 7 months after purchasing this 120-year-old Victorian, our contractors presented us with a revised renovation estimate still so astronomically high (more than twice the cost of the actual home itself) it felt financially unwise to proceed. We were crushed, and I personally felt like I’d been led on and set up to fail from the start. 

My gut had tried to warn me about this house, but it honestly felt easier to maintain momentum than to confront my inner truth (flip back a few posts to see the piss-poor job I did of convincing myself). It felt too hard to say no to my husband, to our real estate agent, to a home we could *surely* make work. The market was insane, so houses were hard to come by. Plus, no risk, no reward….right?!

My husband Andrew—the one of us with dreams can veer into (self-confessed) delusional territory—had seen this house as a shining, career-accelerating opportunity for me. And truthfully, so did I. I also know he feels a bit guilty. Over the past decade, I’ve shed jobs and cities to further his medical career, bending and arcing and pivoting my professional life so he could maintain his steady, all-consuming course straight ahead. And then you add in kids. This is, of course, a common experience among life partners. It’s very hard.

When I launched my business five years ago, a designer friend told me that the best way to build my portfolio was to design and photograph my own home. But that wasn’t something we could afford to do as a new business owner and medical resident. And so I started making design plans for other people’s homes, working with tight budgets on small projects with creative limitations. This home would’ve given me the hands-on experience I felt I needed to finally feel less imposter, more legitimate.

What no one could control was the fact that home renovations costs are up 35% and supply chain woes remain. And then sometimes you trust professionals to help you make wise decisions are maybe not so wise. You lose a year of mortgage payments and tens of thousands of dollars in contractors fees (before demo even begins) because sometimes you *just do.* We were desperate to create a home for ourselves here in Winston-Salem. We had hoped that being surrounded by our belongings would make us feel like we belonged here, in a new city, in the midst of a global pandemic.

Fresh off the sting of disappointment, I sought out new experts—a therapist, a new real estate agent—to help us start again. I slid into a smaller life, which is always a struggle for me. The last time this happened I was biding time between pregnancy losses, feeling alone in my experience but equally aware of my privilege in the world. Publicly complaining about this thwarted renovation in the midst of Covid and the war in Ukraine and gut-wrenching school shootings felt impossibly out of touch, and so the days became a monochromatic haze of agonizing over toddler shoes and feeling overwhelmed by yogurt choices in the grocery store. I stopped listening to business podcasts about how to grow my personal brand and let the self-help books gather dust in our apartment that I resent 75% of the time. I worked hard to soak up the simple joys throughout a day with my daughters, watching my toddler learn to twirl and jump and my five-year-old lip sync her favorite Joan Jett song from memory. Conversations with old friends, moseying through a thrift store, and snuggling with my dog all helped.

Not restoring a home in the outside world forced me to restore my home within. 

Each week on my therapist’s couch, I unpacked decades of hustle culture bullshit, closing my eyes to picture what 27-year-old Jourdan, a young magazine editor fueled on lattes and ambition, would think of this jagged career. But also, I imagined what 77-year-old Jourdan will think about how I’ve learned to be more gentle with myself and embrace the unknown a *smidge* better. Maybe?

The story I’d been telling myself—about how I’d failed, how I was “behind” where I wanted to be professionally, how my peers were renovating entire homes before I’d even done a single demo—wasn’t helping anything. And it wasn’t a story I wanted my girls to remember about this time either.

After halting renovation plans, we decided to sell the house. As a duplex with no central air and a funky layout, it just wasn’t right for our family. But I was honestly too devastated to visit the property, so we outsourced painters, lawn maintenance, and a cleaning crew. We listed it in March for the exact price that we purchased it for a year ago. And while we had plenty of showings, we only received one offer, 40k below our asking price. Given that renters lived there when we purchased it, we’re not sure why people weren’t as interested this year. Maybe investors are more risk-averse because of the economy and they might’ve been worried about why were selling just a year later. I also think most people just can’t see the house the way we do.

As much as we wanted to be done with this house, it wasn’t ready to be done with us.

After crunching numbers, it became clear we could and should keep it as an investment. It just needed a proper Sprucing. And so here we are, a year after buying it, never having eaten a meal here (not counting takeout on the porch), but still pouring in our blood, sweat and tears to properly prepare it for renters. We’re doing all of the work ourselves to save costs, touching every single surface from floorboards to ceiling fixtures. We’ve replaced rotting subfloor and patched holes left from decades of not being properly cared for. Of course each time we find something, our finish line moves back. And the more we find, the more frustrated I get. I’m reminded of the decade I spent living in New York City and Chicago apartments that were falling apart. Access to a safe, clean, well-maintained home is a human right, and these renters deserve better and this house deserves better.

Of course there’s no way we could’ve taken on a full-house renovation without some help. Thank God for my in-laws, who show their love through acts of manual labor. They’ve visited us twice in the past three months, and will be back in town in two weeks to finish up. We hope to have renters by July or August.

So what’s next? We’ve been looking for a home since the start of 2022. It’s been very very slow going. We lost out on a perfectly funky and dated-in-a-good-way home in late April that I really really loved to an all-cash offer. It’s not lost on me that we sold our house in Durham to an all-cash offer, so I guess karma is a bitch. But surely our time is coming. Something just has to work out.

I can honestly say that I’ve mourned what could have been, and am finding comfort in putting this experience behind us soon. I would have done a million things differently, but I’m also feeling gratitude for passing seasons and the space I’ve had to process and grow.

Thanks for being here, and I look forward to reconnecting. I’ve missed y’all.