Moving isn’t just about a physical change of location. It often includes a change of lifestyle or embracing a new phase in life. This summer we didn’t just move from our home of 24 years; we also moved to a different lifestyle. We moved from our wonderful deep-rooted memories enmeshed in the large home where we raised our kids while balancing our busy careers to our current lifestyle as retired, empty nesters. It wasn’t just about the physical location; it was about shedding our old selves in order to embrace our new selves.

Our new home is smaller and much closer to town. It has an open floor plan to accommodate larger family gatherings. Instead of sitting up on a hill, it is tucked in the bay of a small lake. Instead of being up a long gravel driveway, it is on a paved (albeit busy) country road, just two minutes from town. It is also coming full circle for me. You see, I grew up on the very property where we built our new home. This was no ordinary move.

Settle in for a story

Over 65 years ago my grandpa acquired several acres of property through a bartering deal with a couple of widows, when times were tough and people worked with what they had available. My grandpa was a skilled carpenter, and these two widows needed a new roof put on their house. They did not have the money to pay him, but they did have some property that they would trade him for his skills. It was a lovely piece of ground on a small lake. My grandpa built a house on the hill and gave my parents the piece down by the water.

It was here, on a section of this property that my dad and grandpa built the beautiful, two-bedroom, one bath home that my five siblings and I grew up in. Back then money was tight, so they did the work themselves and bartered for jobs they could not do. They hauled logs from the hillside, which served as both the framing and exterior walls. They brought in a small mill to cut the knotty pine walls, trim and cupboards for the interior. They used layers of cardboard for insulation. My dad hauled rock to make the cement walks. It was a labor of love, done on a shoestring.

It was such a wonderful place to be a kid, with the lake in front of the house and the Portal to the magical forest behind it. We grew up playing king of the mountain on a large inner tube while balancing on the waves in the summer and skating on the lake under the moon in the winter. We invented our own games and made houses out of limbs and rocks. My siblings and I are still close. Perhaps because we shared such a small space growing up. We did not care because it was packed with love, security and warmth. Life was good.

Even my kids have great memories visiting my parents over the holidays and spending many a Christmas Eve in that little lake house, crowded in between their cousins eating from the huge buffet of food and opening gifts. This cozy knotty pine home was part of their history too.

Fast forward

Several years ago, my mom had some health issues, so she and my dad decided to move to a 55+ neighborhood in town. My 98-year-old dad still lives in their house in town. The little house on the lake sat vacant for a few years and then served as temporary housing for a couple of their grandkids. However, it was slowly deteriorating. It was weighing on my dad, so after my mom passed, he gifted the house and surrounding property to his children. Everyone was reluctant to take on the house. It was an archive of good memories, but very difficult to live in. And it needed a ton of work.

This all occurred during a time when Mr. U and I were considering downsizing and moving closer to town. I had a few “musts” for any future home we moved to. One being that it needed to have two bathrooms. (I know, first world problems. Or, more likely, it is from sharing one bathroom with seven other people all of those years growing up.) I also wanted a creative workspace/office. Lastly, we wanted enough room to entertain our large family, but not so big it was hard to maintain. We were supposed to be downsizing, after all. Then… the little lake house became an option.

Could we take on the house and the major project needed to renovate it? The property is beautiful, and my dad really wanted it to stay in the family. The timing was right for us, so we decided to tackle it. Our initial intent was to do a major remodel and add on. But as we started to explore the structure of the house, we realized that the log walls would not be able to continue to support it for long. The very logs that were holding the house up (and served as the framing and exterior walls) were rotting away, as was the wood under the eaves. And don’t even get me started on all of the codes and restrictions for a house that is tucked between the water and a county road.

We were stuck in a pickle. It would have been almost impossible to save the current structure, and yet, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to totally rebuild the house that held so many good memories. However, we could not live in it the way it was either. It was a heartbreaking decision. The worst part was that, to an outsider at a distance, it looked fine. Why would we take down a perfectly good house?

After many tears and discussions with family members, we decided it was time to let the house go and rebuild. As one of my brothers reminded me, it wasn’t the structure as much as the surrounding area and lake that held so many wonderful memories for us. And while my dad would have liked for the house to stay exactly the same, as he remembered it all of those years, he said it had served its purpose and gave us the green light to rebuild.

Building a shell for new memories

Once the difficult decision was made, it was easier to move forward with the build. However, either I had forgotten about the stress of building, or it is just that I am getting older, but it was not an easy project. It did not help that I wanted to retain some of the structure of the old house into the new one, such as building an accent wall with some of the beautiful old knotty pine paneling that my dad and grandpa milled and using an odd sized exterior door that my grandpa had salvaged and used in the log house. Thank goodness we had a very patient contractor.

Modern version of the old lake house

This fall we sold The House that Built a Family and moved into our “little lake house.” Now this shell is patiently waiting to be transformed from a house into a home. It is waiting for family gatherings, BBQ’s, grandchildren playing, and lots of cozy evenings tucked in by the fire. It takes a lot of living and building memories to transform a house into a home. So now we are in the process of building new memories on a solid foundation of love and a life lived well at this spot by the lake.

Final thoughts

What a gift to be back living on this little lake. Of course, in my naivety of the 1960’s I did not fully appreciate what we had… I do now. It was here that I first learned the importance of being surrounded by family and how being wrapped in love soothes the inevitable wounds of life. I learned how spending time in nature heals our souls. This very place shaped who I am. I will be forever grateful to my mom and dad for being able to grow up at this little lake and now returning to live out our retirement years here.

Cheers to the retirement years!