It's more than a home too me now.

I didn't like you when I first saw you, you were old and had been neglected through no fault of the previous owner, but all the same a lot of work needed doing to you. We were expecting our first child when we moved in, you had been replummed and rewired, the old plastic ceiling tiles had been hacked off of the ceiling and plasterboards were put in your place.

The garden, once loved and cared for, a neatly trimmed lawn, flowers of all colours ran along the borders, the neighbours had shown us the photographs from many years ago, had become overgrown and run down. Trees sprouted from the lawn, bushes overgrown and twisting their branches around anything that stood in their way, the lawn overtaken by long grass and weeds.

It took three months before we could use it, hours of toil and sweat, digging here pulling up there, roots that ran deep underground, were pulled and cut. It took it's toll in the most devastating way. We lost our child and I blamed you, the house, I blamed you for the stress it caused us, the work that we needed to do. For a while I dreaded coming home, it wasn't home it was a ruin and it had taken away something precious from us.

It wasn't your fault though was it?, You didn't ask to be let to go to rack and ruin, all you wanted was for someone to take care of you and love you in the way you deserved and had been before. It took time but you finally started to shine, you finally became a place that I looked forward to coming back too. You finally started to feel like home.

A blessing repeated a further three times down the years happened the year after we moved in. I remember coming home and Sarah all excited the white stick in her hand, the line strong and blue, and I finally knew that you were waiting to hear the sound of laughter running through your walls once more. A house that had been neglected through circumstance was once again ready to welcome a family into it. You've seen the joy and the pain, the laughter and the tears, you've heard the words of spoken love and yet you will hold all that you've heard and not repeat a word.

It's time now to say goodbye, it's not your fault we've have just outgrown you, the sorrow I feel as I watch the board being hammered into the lawn in the front garden goes deep inside me. I want to stay, we all do, but we need more room, the kids need more space, but I will promise you this. I will make sure that the right people buy you, people that will love and cherish you and treat you with the respect and love that you so richly deserve. In return you will keep their secrets, as you have done ours. You have been a great home, one I shall always remember, I shall cherish the memories I have here, I just wanted to thank you for the years we've been here and for allowing me to call you my home.