When I met my now-husband and started coming to Germany regularly, one of my favorite places to go was his grandparent’s house. At first, it was for coffee and cake; later, it was about making sure the kids didn’t destroy their nice things with bouncy balls. But it was always welcoming— it was always our home away from home.
That was, until we had an opportunity to buy the house. When Dominik’s grandparents decided to move into a retirement home in 2020, we were living in Africa but were actually stuck back in America because of COVID travel restrictions after having our third child. And yet, we said yes to buying a house on a continent most of us had never even lived on.
The Expat’s Search for Roots
Why did we buy the house? I don’t know exactly. I wish I had recorded my thoughts five years ago, but here’s what I think in retrospect: sometimes the life of an expat removes you from a home base so much that even though you don’t know where “home” is supposed to be, you crave roots of some sort. I never grew up around family, so maybe this was also my way of moving towards that for our kids one day. Or maybe it was the sentimental part, knowing Oma and Opa built this house themselves and wanting to keep it in the family. Whatever it was that ultimately made us commit, I’m grateful to my younger self for making that choice.
I have always loved summers in Germany as a family. For us, our expat life has allowed us to spend long stretches of time back “home” every summer— a term for us that means splitting time between family and friends in the U.S. and in Germany. We decided that having a house in Germany would mean we always had a place to stay, and we thought we could always rent it out at some point if needed.
Renovating a Family Home
Since we bought it from family, the house came as-is, with all of the furniture and belongings that weren’t needed anymore. We have since been clearing out the house and renovating it slowly, taking on projects each year that were timed so we could work on the house over the summer. We tackled the messy parts in between so it was still livable while we were in town. This also meant numerous trips back from Tanzania for Dominik to complete tasks between the work we contracted out. It has been a lot. However, through all of this, we didn’t ever see ourselves living in the house full-time. Although in the last couple of years I started dreaming of how we could make that possible (my motivations for wanting that, and what ultimately tipped us over the edge are thoughts for another day).
Since we didn’t really intend to live here full-time, and the house was already set up as two apartments (upstairs and downstairs), we decided to do basic renovations upstairs first so that we could have someone move in. Then we focused on our downstairs home. Over the last five years, every room has been transformed— we started with moving the kitchen to the living room, freeing up a third bedroom. We peeled wallpaper and re-plastered walls, installed new floors, put in a new heating system, and even redid one bathroom and added another. Phew.
A Perfect Landing Spot
We didn’t have a specific timeline for finishing the renovations; it was just as time allowed. But it couldn’t have worked out more perfectly. We needed a place to land this year, and while a lot of life was chaotic in 2025, the decision to move here, for us, felt like it was always meant to be.
We haven’t lived in a non-rented house in seven years, so it’s back to the realities of homeownership. But overall, we are so glad to be local for a while to see through all of the small projects that remain— which do keep piling up!
A post about our renovation with before and after photos is coming soon! Subscribe to receive updates directly!
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