In November 2015, my husband Gregg accepted a job at Fort Knox, Kentucky. It wasn’t an easy decision to move 120 miles from our home of seven years. Our son Scott celebrated his first birthday in that house and a few months later, Jeb came home from the hospital to that house. Kaylee started fifth grade right after we moved there, and we moved her into a college apartment as we left. Hallee the Homemaker was born there, and I took thousands of people a month on the journey of keeping that house a home and loving my family inside those walls.

Here is a Hallee the Homemaker post that gives you an idea of the love we put into the rooms of the house:

http://www.halleethehomemaker.com/2013/03/a-sweet-sixteen/

http://www.halleethehomemaker.com/2010/05/my-favorite-cleaning-day/

We met with a realtor to put it on the market. The home had already grown in its original value. The next morning, a woman whose son was in Taekwondo with our sons called and asked what we were going to do with the house. She said, “I could only dream of living in a house as nice as that. It’s literally my dream house.” I told Gregg about the conversation and he called her husband and asked what they could afford in rent. After a long conversation, they agreed that we’d rent it to them for what they could afford (at a loss to us) until they could purchase the home – and they’d focus on getting their credit and finances in a position to do so.

Fast forward six years. We finally said, “This is your last lease. It’s a two-year lease. We have to have a closing date by December 1, 2022, or you need to move out by December 31st.”

We thought they were buying it all the way until October, when he called and asked Gregg to pay the closing costs. To which Gregg said, “No. But if you’re out on the 31st and the house is clean, we’ll give you December’s rent back.”

Looking back now, we kind of chuckle at the conversation.

Ya’ll, this house was destroyed. DESTROYED.

I’d hate to see what they’d do to a house that wasn’t their “dream house.”

It was destroyed with an insidiousness that’s reserve for horror movies. Here’s a slide show of some of the damage:

When they weren’t out on January 2, I sat at the curb and called Gregg who couldn’t get away until the next day. “I can smell the house from here,” I told him. “I don’t even know what to do.” We basically told them that anything left would be thrown away and they needed to be gone by 5pm.

That evening, I was holding my breath and trying to do a walk-through to see where to start and Gregg called. I accidentally took a breath when I answered and had to run outside and throw up. I’ve never quite experienced such an overwhelming smell in my life.

It’s now February 11th. They’ve been gone for 5 weeks. The smell is almost gone because we’ve ripped up all of the floors and taken down quite a few walls. I’ve learned how to clean giant black swatches of fly poop (not kidding) and that when animal urine saturates wood floors it turns them black and you have to sand them down. We had to have plumbers come and fix the pipes that had been stripped of their copper, we had to have HVAC replace the furnace someone had set fire to, an electrician will need to figure out why a series of lights on the first floor don’t work at all and why the refrigerator outlet throws the breaker, and we’ve had a 30-foot dumpster dumped THREE TIMES and still have it outside of the house for more trash because we’re not finished with the yard. {deep breath} And the list goes on.

At first, we kind of just wandered in circles, with Vicks Vaporub under our masked noses, trying to figure out where to start. Now we have a plan.

The original, before I went there on January 2nd plan, was to spend the week cleaning and patching 8-years worth of a 5-children family holes in the walls. Maybe do some light landscaping. Then put the house on the market, sell it, pay off all of our remaining debt, and start our 5-year retirement plan.

Instead, we’re already well into the estimated $30,000 worth of damage repairs and we have no choice but to move back.

Why?

Because we can’t sell it for a loss and we can’t afford to continue to pay double the mortgage in rent in a home 120 miles away and continue to have the added expense to keep going there every weekend to fix it. So we’ve made the really, really hard decision to get it fixed up enough to a point where we can move into the basement (which is already demo’d down to studs and cement floor) and live there and fix a room at a time.

Was this our plan? Of course not. However, it is our reality.

We have a wonderful community we’ve spent 8 years building here. Our family has thrived living at Fort Knox. But we aren’t going to go into this decision kicking and screaming.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Rejoicing was hard at first, though we covered it all with prayer. We’ve been drawing plans, having long conversations (many of which involved wine and bourbon) and came to the decision that we’re going to make the house better than it was before, move walls, build rooms, landscape the way it should have been done the first time, and create a beautiful home.

It’s not where we planned to move next, but it’s where we’re going so we are counting our blessings. We have the ability and the tools to do what needs to be done. We both work jobs that allow us to live anywhere we want. We have the resources to do it (slowly). We will be local to our daughter and her husband – which is ultimately what we all wanted.

And I get to have a big office on the second floor of the house.

And chickens. Gregg’s already designed my coop.

Once we got over the initial shock and anger (though I’ll admit that I find that anger creeping in at unexpected times and I really really really hope I never have to see either one of those people ever again in my entire life), we are now looking forward to not only the project, but the final result.

And we will miss Fort Knox and the community we built desperately. But we are going back to a foundation of a community we had before and are looking forward to seeing what is next.