Asking For Advice? Plan to Listen
Open your mind and respect others’ time.
Once upon a time I fell in love with a house. I decided to buy it before even stepping in the front door… just because I peeked through the floor-to-ceiling window beside the front door, and saw all the elements of a house that make it a home. For me, anyway.
I saw brick, the back of the fireplace. I saw warm walls of red cedar boards in a vast open main room, and on the far wall, more floor to ceiling windows. In fact, when I stepped into the entrance way, I realized the entire wall was windows to the green and blooming backyard. I could immediately envision parties with live music. The kitchen was central, also open, and meant that cooking would place me — always — in the midst of my family. Yes, I loved the place instantly. A house, an investment, was beside the point. This was my place to grow family.
Then my father looked at it
A carpenter of so many decades. And he asked all those practical — boring — questions, and poked around the crawlspace, with its dirt floor and rusty pipes, and bridge missing under a span… yeah, right I had noticed the dip in the kitchen floor… but so what? “You can’t buy this place,” he said. “It’ll fall apart around your ears.”
