Goodbye Colorado. . .
Posted by Reagan on 13 Apr 2007 at 10:15 pm | Tagged as: General
How come you don’t realize how much you truly like a place until you decide to leave? I think it is just a combination of sadness of leaving the familiar and uncertainty about the future. This was our first home and we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it (literally!). Even though our leaving is the beginning of making our long time dreams a reality, we are sad to leave our comfy little home, our wonderful friends, and the neat little town of Loveland.
I say this now with much love in my heart for this place. Loveland has all of the trappings of a little city wanting to be bigger and doing a lot of things to the detriment of the true heart of the city. Many of these things are the reason we are leaving. We want a simpler place. However, despite it’s shortcomings and lack of vision sometimes, Loveland is a great little town. Not close enough to Denver to be a suburb. It still has it’s own identity and that’s what we love.
Our home here has been perfect. A little small sometimes, but we need that. It has allowed us to realize what we truly need in our lives. How different the necessary and unnecessary are. It has allowed us to follow our creative vision for a home. We carved out a little bit of sustainability in the city. This home has a heart that I will miss like a friend.
Our friends have been amazing. You can’t buy wonderful neighbors. We just got really lucky here. People you can count on to be there for you, whom you would do the same for. Some people we have known only for a short time, many I met and formed friendships with over coffee at Circle Moon. Maybe it was the caffeine that started them, but these friendships will last far longer than my relatively short time working there. I am so thankful for my time there and the people I met and experiences I gained because of it.
We had a party in our empty house tonight (our last night in Colorado). It was so much fun to spend time with our friends here. We didn’t have to worry about spilling anything on the furniture since most everything was loaded in the truck. No rugs to ruin. Just good friends, good burgers, and good beer. What a way to end our time here.
Time to move on. . . Experience new adventures and treasure the old. We’ll miss you all!!
This is somewhat of a crazy coincidence. I have recently decided to convert my old corn crib into my house, hoping that it will be an interesting and affordable solution for some years to come (I live in North East Illinois). I have just really started the process of researching the idea, to see if it is even possible and I came across your site. The corn crib you are planning on converting is EXACTLY the same as mine except mine is a little bigger at 29X40. The style and look is, however, identical. My floor plans are very similar to yours, except with the extra space I am putting both the bedrooms on the first floor and leaving the second floor virtually open. In any case I am running in the some headache problems.
Keeping the budget down is my ultimate goal, I would like to spend 40,000 and that includes a new foundation. Of course I am a farmer and have plenty of labor, equipment, and know how- so everything will be done by me and my friends. What seems like a fatal blow to the whole idea is heating/cooling, insulation, and ventilation. I’m not sure what to even use to insulate the house, because you cant really put insulation right against the roof and then hang sheet rock (the condensation would rot the structure and destroy the drywall and insulation thus destroying all the R value. I think spray foam insulation might be a solution- but I am skeptical about making the house air tight, doesn’t it seem like there would be a lot of moisture causing rotting problems?
You guys are a lot further along in the process it seems, though I plan on starting this project in July and finishing within the month. I would like to begin an email correspondence to see if you guys could help me figure out what to do in a could situations. I would really appreciate it. Thanks and good luck!
Reagan…
It touched my heart to read your words about saying goodbye to your house and moving on. I have moved so many times over the years and you brought tears to my eyes just reading your sweet reflections.
I wish you the best!
Melinda