FINALLY Home Again...

Just over nine months ago, I posted a blog about the fire we had in our garage at our house, and now (just over nine months later), we are FINALLY back in our house!

Night of the fire...

In my wildest dreams, I NEVER would have guessed that we would be out of our house for the better part of 2012 while waiting for insurance to get settled and for the work to be done. There's still some work left to do, but it is mostly on the outside of the house and we were finally able to move back into our house at the end of October.



Front of the house after garage repaired.

It's taken until now to get unpacked and settled back in, and this weekend I am finally really enjoying being back home again! (I noticed I'm saying "finally" a lot in this post, but the word seems appropriate because it has been one heck of a long wait to FINALLY be back home!)




Inside of the garage after fire...

We love our neighborhood! We love our neighbors! We love our house! We love our backyard! So it is such a relief to be back! We moved to California 16 months ago, but we've only been in our house for less than 5 months of that time because of waiting to move in after first arriving in CA, and then because of waiting for repairs after the house fire. After everything we have been through, we are really going to appreciate every moment in our house and not take it for granted.


Inside of garage after repairs...

After living in a different neighborhood for the last nine months, we realize how much fate was on our side when we bought the house we did. The house that the insurance company rented for us while our house was being repaired was in a neighborhood with bigger houses, but smaller yards. In Califronia, the back yard is like an extension of the house and it's used year round, so I will give up space in the house in order to have a usable back yard any day!



Inside of garage after repairs
(with empty moving boxes stacked up for recycling)

The other neighborhood was also not nearly as friendly as this one. We've only lived in this neigborhood for five out of the last 16 months, but we have made GREAT friends, and all the neighbors say hi and wave when they see us. In the rental neighborhood, we rarely saw anyone, and we only spoke to one of our neighbors a couple times over the entire nine months. It felt like such a sterile neighborhood with no personality or warmth - only barking neighbor dogs and letters from the association because someone let their little dog poop on our front patch of grass while we were gone on vacation and we didn't pick it up fast enough!


Inside of house after smoke damage repaired...
 

Enough about the rental neighborhood - the only thing that matters now is that we are back home to a freshly painted house with brand new garage doors. We still have some work to do to make it completely home (pictures on the wall, etc), but I'm loving every moment here.