Can We See the Potential?

Corner of brick patio, once broken concrete, gravel and dirt.

What Potential?

Years ago, when we were looking for a larger house to buy, one in the country away from city traffic and sounds, my husband led us on a search for property that had what he called potential.

Potential? I was looking for a house we could call home, on property we could enjoy. Room for a garden, play equipment for our three small girls, safe roads to run, skate and bike on. And a neighborhood safe enough to leave the back door open if we wished.

We had such a place already, in town. After a year of scrubbing and tearing out and rebuilding a neglected – and therefore affordable — property, we had a home we loved. But it was small, and it was in town.

Look for Potential

My husband, however, wasn’t interested in a home already-made. He wanted one we could turn into a home — again.

So we hunted. And we found a corner, half-acre property on a small four-street residential allotment abutting hilly farmland, in a township mostly farmland.

Perfect location.

The house, however, was a disaster. As we approached it from the back, on the property’s side road, we saw…

Behind the house, concrete rose and fell, cracked and bumpy and chipped with institution-green paint. A canopy of corrugated plastic – also green – covered the patio, held up by skinny wooden posts at intervals running its length and width.

Red slate tiles covered the house – except where they didn’t anymore…

A garage, some distance away, leaned toward the house, just enough to look funny.

And that was just the outside.

Inside, walls had holes, and most of the woodwork was scratched bare. Walls in two of the bedrooms had never been painted, just white-washed, slap-dash. The carpet and wooden floors reeked of cat urine. Cat and dog dishes sat here and there about the kitchen floor, dried food still in them, though the tenants were long-gone. (The property owners lived in another state, across the country.)

An efficiency apartment had been built onto one end of an otherwise very small house, extending the space if opened up, but quite tight if not.

I had zero interest in the property, from the drive up, to and including the tour of. I couldn’t escape quickly enough.

Pursue Potential

Two days later, though, when my dear husband told me the owners of the red house had accepted our offer, I sat dumb-struck, my mouth hanging wide-open. There just were no words!

It has great potential, he said.

There was that word again. I saw no potential, but he saw what we could do.

After all, he said, we had already taken one run-down, holes-in-the-walls house with backed-up debris in the basement from flooding, and scrubbed and rebuilt and decorated it into a beautiful though small home in town. One we could turn over and realize a nice profit. We could do it again, he said. This time in the country, where we wanted to settle and raise our kids.

Reach Potential by Planning and Doing

Sweat equity is not difficult to build into a property when you have youth, energy, a dream – and a husband with building skills and desire to do the job. We had all that…

So we went to work. Working side by side, we tore down and rebuilt or refinished, added to, rearranged the inside and outside walls, put in all new windows and roof and siding, painted and wall-papered and made draperies – until the house no longer resembled the mess we moved into. We made it home…

The Real Challenge Isn’t the Work Itself

Work has never bothered me. The real challenge is, can and do I see the potential? In a project? In my own abilities? In a co-worker’s? In a new career, or just a career change? In new relationships?

If I can’t see potential, there is nowhere to go. But if I can, there is nowhere I cannot go!

That house was a great life lesson for me. One I’ve never forgotten. I fought it, trusted my husband in spite of it all, worked as hard as I’ve ever worked, and enjoyed the results for many years.

The most exciting thing about it is, everyday has potential, for all of us. All we have to do is anticipate it and go with it.

Can we see it to embrace it? I’d like to think yes. What about you?

Tagged as: potential, pursuing potential, seeing potential