before kids, we owned the city

Spring has sprung and we've bought the house next door. Contractors are hard at work fixing it up, bringing the electrical up to date, repairing the broken plumbing, adding insulation where there was none at all, and more. Right now, we're planning to remove the cement board siding and restore and paint the original wood siding underneath. Ironically, instead of ruining the house it's acted like armor all these years (it's been there since the 60s) and protected the wood. We haven't yet decided on colors, but right now the choices range from muted browns and beiges to "irresistible" pink. When it's done, the house will be good for another few decades at least and we'll have another nest egg.

This house project reminds me of when we bought and fixed up our house next door for the first time, back in 2010, in the midst of the Great Recession. While it now seems laughable that we fretted over whether that was a smart move, since our neighborhood is now expensive with a rehabbed home on our street recently selling for more than $600,000, at the time things were a lot more uncertain and wobblier. Here's a pic of the house we just bought and something I wrote from that era, more than a decade ago, when we first moved onto our street in Detroit Shoreway. Oh, I remember those days when we were living in the city with little kids and we felt like we were the only ones, when we felt lonely and special.