By Keith Lyons
At my local second-hand charity shop, I came across an unframed art print. It was the sort of minimalist typography that often adorned walls in the 1990s and early 2000s. Sun-faded, it read: “A house is made with walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.”
The words stayed with me. I was beginning to think about leaving the family home and building a new house.
If everything goes to plan, by autumn next year, or spring in the Northern Hemisphere, I hope to be living in that new place. But little has gone to plan.
In 2020, as I helped my parents prepare their house for sale and their move to a retirement village, I realised that once it was sold, I would have nowhere to live. Then a real estate agent came to appraise the property and noticed earthquake damages that had not been detected or repaired.
The house might have to be sold as is, where is, with no assurance about its safety or condition. Its value, we learned from people who specialise in buying quake-damaged houses, was considerably less than its valuation.
So, I bought the house from my parents.
I spent the following years managing insurance and government agency claims, and organising repairs to the foundations and chimney, where the floors sloped away. The work gave me a new understanding of what a house is. Yes, it shelters us from rain, wind and sun. But it is more than a structure that keeps out the weather.
Home is a stronger word. Charles Dickens wrote that “home is a name, a word … stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration.” He was not describing walls and beams.
I moved into this house when I was eight. Over the years, as I have repaired and renovated it, ripping up carpet and linoleum to reveal honey-coloured hardwood floors. I have grown more attached to it.
Yet, I am also prepared to walk away and let someone else call it home.
In the back garden, which once homed our vegetable patch, I hope a smaller house will grow. At first, I imagined a two- or three-bedroom house. During the strange days of COVID-19, a family friend who was a builder showed me concept plans for something larger. But as inflation rose, so did the cost.
Since then, I have progressively reduced the size of the planned house. A smaller dwelling better suits my needs, and my budget. I have even considered building two small houses.
The process has made me think about what a house needs to do. For me, it should be a safe haven, a quiet retreat where an introvert can decompress and contemplate.
The challenge has been translating what I want into a tangible design. I have thought about daily routines, the movement of sun and shadow, warmth, flow and silence. Where will I sit? Where will I write, drink coffee, host friends, daydream, recharge?
Finding someone who understands that has been difficult. One builder showed me a standard plan, assuring me it was designed for maximum energy efficiency. It looked sterile and bleak. The windows were too small. Another claimed he could cut my power bill by 75 per cent, then conceded he could not when I told him what I currently paid. A local builder’s show home felt like somewhere I could visit but not live. The salesperson said they couldn’t build a house to the standard I required, with decent insulation and specs standard in most European countries. Another said he could build what I wanted, for 50 per cent more than I had budgeted.
So, I sit at my desk, an Ercol plank table my parents bought shortly after they married in the mid-1960s. I look out of the window at the back garden, designing and daydreaming that a new small house might one day grow where the rows of corn, peas and carrots once grew.
Perhaps a house is made with walls and beams. But a home is made in the living, the leaving, and the beginning again.
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless Journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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