If you had asked me years ago to describe my dream home, I probably would have talked about square footage, a nice porch, maybe a little land, and a house that didn’t actively try to collapse in on itself.
That last part turns out to be more important than I once realized.
The house I owned in Georgia was… let’s call it aspirational. On paper, it checked a lot of boxes. In reality, it was a master class in how not to reassemble a house after moving it. Our seller—who was also a foundation contractor, which should have been reassuring—either encouraged corner-cutting or perfected the art of not noticing it. For nearly twenty years, we lived with the consequences.
Take the back porch. It had no meaningful support underneath it. Our little dog could walk across it and the whole thing would bounce like a cheap trampoline. That was our first clue.
Then there was the roof, which sagged in places and eventually needed reinforcement. The house itself sagged too—right in the middle—because the point where the home had been cut in half for transport was “supported” by what can only be described as a two-by-four and a prayer. Actually, not even a prayer. Just a cinder block.
We also noticed that trees near the house never did very well. They struggled, stunted and sickly, like they were planted in cursed ground. Turns out… they were.
Years later, when we had to stabilize the foundation with helical piers, the contractor discovered why the north end of the house was slowly sinking into the earth. The previous crew had buried everything under the house—construction refuse, debris, and, for reasons known only to chaos, a rusted car. Ten feet below our living room. So yes, the house was literally settling on trash.
That wasn’t even the most stressful surprise.
At one point, we were sued by a neighbor because their sewer tap had mysteriously disappeared. Investigation revealed that it had been sawed off and replaced with ours. Their driveway had already been paved before the county approved the sewer connection, and someone decided the simplest solution was to steal the neighbor’s line. No one lived there yet, so… problem solved? Except for the lawsuit. Minor detail.
Then came the floors.
When we tried to install laminate flooring, we learned the existing floor was too unstable. That led to the discovery that the joists were spaced too far apart, and the original “solution” was to drill holes through the floor, drive wooden dowels into them, and cement the whole mess together—essentially pegging the floor into submission. We felt those dowels under our feet for twenty years and just accepted them as part of life.
But wait. There’s more.
When the subfloor was finally pulled up, the installers discovered that the seam under the house—the massive cut from when it was moved—had never been sealed. A twelve-foot-long, three-inch-wide opening ran beneath our living room. Every rodent within a generous radius had apparently taken that as a personal invitation. The flooring crew had to wear breathing apparatus to clean out decades of rat nests.
At this point, you might reasonably assume I hated that house.
I didn’t.
Somehow, improbably, I came to love it. It was flawed, infuriating, occasionally horrifying—but it was my house. By the time I left it, it was finally stable, finally safe, finally right. Walking away from it during my divorce hurt far more than I expected. There was real grief there.
Today, I live in a condo. I don’t love the place. Not even a little. It’s fine. Functional. Entirely unremarkable. No bouncing porches, no buried cars—so, improvement.
But what makes it home has nothing to do with that.
I love who I’m there with.
The feeling of home we’ve built together matters more than square footage or craftsmanship ever could. It’s peace. It’s laughter. It’s knowing that no matter how imperfect the structure is, the foundation is solid.
So if I’m honest about my dream home, it’s not a house at all.
It’s a place where the floor doesn’t sag—but even more importantly, neither do the people living there.
Reflection copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.
