Column: Nothing beats your own home, sweet home

Apr. 23—I don't know how they do it.

Those people who have to move every couple of years. Military folks. Job hoppers. Corporate ladder climbers.

My wife and I just moved into our fourth house. We've been married for three decades, and we've been blessed to have our own home for most of those years. The exceptions were a few months when we stayed in an apartment while we built a new home in 2006.

A decade later, we decided to "downsize" and move closer to downtown Aiken. The only problem was that the new place was a similar-sized house but we doubled the size of the yard. For that move, we stayed 75 days with her parents in North Augusta. (Yes, I counted the days.)

The Aiken Estates home was great, and we checked off many of our wishes. But the house had some issues, and we couldn't afford to address them all. Still, we thought we were set for a while.

My sister has been flipping houses for a few years, and she had always vowed to find us our "dream" home. A couple of years ago, she was flipping a house in what an Aiken Realtor would call a "desirable Midtown location." It was near the horse district, my golf course, our church and not far from work.

It didn't have the open concept my wife desired, but we agreed the location was hard to beat. We would meet my sister at the house and helped walk her dogs around the area as COVID-19 started to set in during the spring of 2020.

We would see empty houses and wonder what was going on. We actually contacted an attorney friend who lived in the neighborhood about one house, but his report on the owners was not encouraging. So we kept walking, all the while keeping a sharp eye out for a potential house.

We later found another house that was coming onto the market, but my sister could not come to terms on what the owner wanted for the property.

About this time the real estate market really began to boom. During Masters Week of 2021, we received a tip that a house on our walking route might be coming up for sale. I contacted my attorney friend again, and he put us in touch with the owners.

The third time was the charm! Within a few weeks, my sister had completed the purchase of the property and we were ready to go. But first, we had to sell our house.

That didn't turn out to be much of a problem. We received a generous offer, and we completed the sale late in the summer with an agreement that we would rent the house for a few months until our renovations were complete.

But those didn't start on time, and by late 2021 we came to the realization that we would be staying at my wife's childhood home once again. The movers came on Dec. 27, and after a brief vacation we were back in North Augusta.

The creaky mattress, living out of boxes and that 30-minute commute to Aiken made me feel like it was 2016 all over again. But we were grateful that we had a place — rent free — to stay. And we developed new routines and adapted to life without our favorite satellite TV provider.

We hoped to move into our own "desirable Midtown location" before Masters Week, but that wasn't the case. Supply chain issues held up the renovations, and on a long ride home from a work trip to Charleston I gently suggested that we needed to bite the bullet and postpone the move until after my busiest week of the year.

We stayed in North Augusta for 105 days — yes, I counted again — but it wasn't that bad.

While "moving day" at the Masters saw Scottie Scheffler and Cam Smith separate themselves from the pack on April 9, our moving day came four days later on April 13. All of the big furniture from our storage unit was delivered, and we are slowly unpacking boxes and figuring out how everything works.

We still have plenty of boxes in North Augusta and at another storage unit, but at last we are in our home, sweet home.

Thanks for reading.