Our 5 Year Homeownership Anniversary

HomeThis week marks a happy milestone for Kyle and me, our 5 year anniversary of homeownership.

If you asked me 6 years ago, “will you own a home and work in Hartford, CT?” I would have given you a resounding “No!” After graduate school, I thought we most likely would move back to the Boston area. Homeownership would have been at least a few years out at that point, given that housing prices in Boston were skyrocketing and we were carrying plenty of education debt.

But instead a job opportunity came up in CT and we were on our way to Hartford. We ended up with our house on somewhat of a fluke. I randomly added 2 Hartford houses to our search of Wethersfield, West Hartford, and Glastonbury. The rest is history.

We really do love our neighborhood in the West End of Hartford. One of the most amusing things about our home is that no one really refers to it as the Bergquist house. Whenever I meet a West Ender and they ask me where I live, I usually get “Oh, you live in the King house…Kaye house…Jones house.” You see, it is not our house. Our neighbors still see it as the house of some previous owner with which they had a relationship, typically their children grew up together. *Sigh* Hopefully some day it will become the Bergquist house. I guess that can only happen with time.

Looking back, the time has flown by. And after mentally going through a list of all of the work we’ve done to our house, I can see why. Here are some of the projects we’ve undertaken in those 5 years…

– Side porch repair.
– Porch and kitchen roofs repair.
– Slate repair on our main roof.
– Exterior paint job.
– Two chimneys rebuilt.
– New gutters and snow stops.
– Upgrading our electrical system.
– Asbestos removal from basement pipes.
– Tree maintenance.
– Various landscaping projects.
– Fireplace insert installed.
– Interior painting of all but 3 rooms.
– Carpet removal to expose hardwood floors.

As you can see from the list, most of what we’ve done has not been your typical HGTV remodel. We’ve spent quite a bit of time and money trying to get our house back on a good maintenance track and left the pretty HGTV projects for last. Our bathrooms were already in good shape, so that made things much easier. Our kitchen, well, that’s part of the next 5 year plan.

Right now, we feel pretty good about our house. We’ll be undertaking an insulation project this year and some more gardening work. We have definitely made it our “home” even though our neighbors still see it as someone else’s house. Just give us a few more years… 🙂