This House is not a Home

  Life in the military is filled with moving. In my 21 year (and counting) career, I’ve moved to 14 different houses. In the past two years, we’ve moved four times, and are prepping for a 5^th. Not all of these moves were initiated by the military, but the majority of them were influenced by it at one point or another.

The driveway is about a quarter
 of the house in Guam

   In all of these moves, I’ve lived in homes just about every shape and size. From a tiny 2 bedroom apartment to an almost tinier 3 bedroom “house” in Guam, to the giant house we currently dwell in. With all these places to live, I’ve learned quite a bit of what I do and don’t want in a home. The old saying is “home is where you hang your hat”, but I tend to disagree. Most things I want in a home are flexible, but there is one thing I long for. A place that is truly “home”.

   When you join the military, one of the first things they tell you is “I hope you like travel”. This is quite true. There are some minor exceptions, but you are virtually guaranteed to retire with several bases under your belt (seven for this Airman). This creates a bit of a nomadic nature for you and your families. It’s hard to put down roots when you know that you can be moving at any time. True, the military features some minimum time at each base, but once you pass that, moving orders can drop any day. This creates a whole multitude of challenges for military families, but I’m focusing on the place where you hang your hat.

   Some brave souls buy a home and gamble that they’ll be at the base long enough to not suffer a loss when they sell it, but most rent. Our family in particular has been to a lot of “overseas” locations (though still in the States; Alaska, Guam, and Hawaii), so we didn’t have many opportunities to buy a home. We considered in Hawaii, but thankfully we didn’t because it was just before the housing crash.

   When you rent a house, it already doesn’t quite feel like home because you can’t do a whole lot with it. Every ding and dent that adds character and history to an owned home just removes money from your security deposit. Even if you get the landlord’s blessing to paint and decorate, you’re hesitant because it hardly seems to be worth the effort if you’re going to move anyway. Many moves I’ve lefty many things packed because I didn’t want to bother.

   My current base is guaranteed to be my last due to my time in service, but I’m still renting. When I arrived, I wasn’t sure if we were going to stay in the area. Then I met my now wife, and we needed to move quickly to accommodate our suddenly bigger family. My job status was in limbo thanks to budget cuts, so we rented our current (huge) home. Unfortunately it hasn’t turned out so well.

Yes, they do test missiles here

   There is an awesome 80’s movie called “The Money Pit” starring Tom Hanks and Shelly Long. If they ever shot a sequel, they could use this one. The owners apparently were very interested in do-it-yourself projects. Unfortunately, they could have used some quality control. The toilet downstairs leaks (from the bottom). The garage door openers don’t work. The pretty fake stone on the steps of the stairs have claimed many toes in the middle of the night. The dishwasher is lopsided. The stone sink collapsed due to minimal support underneath. The granite island is not only too heavy for the original island base, it’s too big and consequently, the fridge can’t be removed. There are exposed seams and unfinished spots all over the house.  All the little quirks mentioned above are bearable things The overall house still looks nice. We haven’t been electrocuted (yet), and the roof has held up well to all the rain. Plus it has a pool!

   Thankfully, we didn’t buy it like the couple in the movie, but it has nearly broken us up at various points due to one very glaring fault.  It’s very noisy.

   With kids, you’d expect any house to be a little noisy; especially teenagers. This one, however, is far worse because of the construction. The front room acts as a funnel of sound into the main bedroom. The kitchen and den is directly underneath the main bedroom as well. In the den, the ceiling has speakers installed for surround sound. This seemed like an awesome feature when we moved in. The first time the kids watched something while we were upstairs, it was like the tv was in our room.

My Speaker solution

   I decided to see if I could use the existing wiring on the ceiling speakers and mount my own speakers on the wall so it wasn’t in direct contact with the ceiling. When I popped the first speaker off, I immediately saw the problem. There was no insulation between floors, so the space between floors was basically a giant speaker box. If we owned this house, I’d just put up insulation, but since it isn’t ours, I’m not spending my money to fix it.

   The lack of insulation also helps explain why it seems like everyone slams counter doors and dishes. Our theory was confirmed when we stayed at a small house in Los Angeles, and we couldn’t hear a thing when the kids were downstairs.

   Besides the noise, the house is just too darn big. I know that sounds like a nice problem to have, and it’s certainly better than being too small, but it has its drawbacks. One of the biggest is increased electricity cost, especially during the summer.

   Another drawback is that the larger the house, the more junk you accumulate. I always thought a larger house would appear cleaner, but that’s not the case. We have a huge bedroom, which again, I didn’t think would be a problem. We looked at another home with a much smaller bedroom, and it felt much cozier and comfortable. I do like having a large living room, but for the most part, bigger is not always better.

   So, armed with all this information we are preparing to search for a new house. We want to buy something and make it our own. We want a home. Hopefully we’ve learned enough lessons to find exactly what we want. Hopefully, this is our last move for a long time