The summer I turned 7, my family moved from small-town Upstate New York to Wilbraham, a small-town in Western Massachusetts. Picture quaint, 200-year-old homes, churches surrounded by old, stone walls and even a very old, red schoolhouse-turned abode. Everywhere you looked, the streets bubbled over with New England charm. But our new house? Not so much. It bubbled over with ick.

My mother and I made the trek across states together, leaving my father behind to cheer on my older brother, Dana, who was playing in a little league tournament. I hadn’t yet seen any photos of the new digs, but I’ve always thrived on change and the opportunity to meet new people. And, this time, we were moving to be closer to family. We’d be in the same town as both sets of grandparents and close to all sorts of cousins, aunts and uncles.

In fact, Wilbraham was the town where my parents met as high school students with backyards abutting one another. Back then, my dad wore his white-blonde hair in a 1970s swoop that cascaded in front of his eyes, suiting his shy personality. My mom, a petite brunette with a Farrah Fawcett ’do, was gregarious and often teacher’s pet. Come to think of it, a lot like me. It wasn’t until they both enrolled at Springfield College in the fall of 1974 that sparks flew.

All along the drive, I chattered away excitedly, driving Mom bonkers. The anticipation came to a jarring halt when we pulled into a driveway. This could not be it. I prayed that this was some kind of joke and, surely, Mom was about to shout, “Gotcha!” In front of me stood a dilapidated, brown 1964 Colonial with red shutters — the worst color combination known to man — and an attached two-car garage. The paint was blistered and peeling, rot everywhere. This was it? I wept.

When my brother arrived a week later, he had the same reaction. In fact, he packed a suitcase and said he was going to ride his bike back to New York and live with friends. I wondered how he’d manage the suitcase while pedaling, but I never witnessed that level of stunt mastery because he stayed.

Beyond the front door, the family room featured the inevitable ’60s faux-bois paneled walls and linoleum flooring that vaguely resembled bricks. The tacky residue left behind by a rug adhesive attracted the fur of our golden retriever, Butterscotch. In fact, every surface seemed sticky and dirty.

But it was as if Mom and Dad could see into a crystal ball, which magically showed them something I couldn’t see — the spark of potential underneath all that grime. They rolled up their sleeves and got to work. In sections, they replaced wooden siding along with rotten windows. They repainted the exterior a soft gray and gave it new barn-red shutters, a color combo that still remains in place today, according to my Google search, almost 40 years later. I recall many days spent outside, flipping over rocks in search of salamanders, while Dad sat atop the house with his cousins, hammering down a new roof.

Grampa, Dad’s dad, was a self-made entrepreneur who owned a wholesale hardware company, and thus understood the world of home renovation. He’d appear from time to time to “help” Dad with weekend warrior projects. But not until he’d sat on the porch munching on a donut and sipping coffee, followed by playing basketball with me and my brother in the driveway. And then, “Oh, would you look at that? I’ve got to go if I am going to make my tee time!” Maybe he took it too easy, but we all look back on those moments with laughter. Cancer took his life way too soon just a couple years later when he was just 59.

On weekends when repairs weren’t being made, Bob Vila’s voice rang through the kitchen while I ate my grilled peanut butter sandwich, This Old House playing on our wooden console television set in the nearby family room. YouTube and TikTok were still decades away from being created, kids. My parents had to learn about DIY through reading books and checking the Sunday paper’s TV schedule to make sure they didn’t miss their favorite DIY shows.

Mom, an avid gardener who knew just what would thrive where, planted flowers aplenty to create a lush and vibrant yard. Lilac bushes lined our white picket fence. Just outside the back door, an herb garden’s fragrance wafted through our kitchen window all summer long. We teasingly called it the “Herb”— with a hard “H” — garden, naming it after the endearing, out-of-shape man in one of Mom’s Jane Fonda exercise videos.

My parents poured everything — blood, sweat, tears and what little money they had — into making that hideous monstrosity a jewel of the neighborhood. As a 6-year-old, I hadn’t understood the possibility, but as a 46-year-old I’ve learned something about compromise and seeking out hidden potential.

Over the 21 years that my husband, Chris, and I have been married, we’ve bought a few well-worn homes. And every one, we’ve made our own with paint and — like my parents — blood, sweat, tears and all the money we could muster. When we arrived in Greensboro in January 2019, the 1960s Starmount Forest ranch home we moved into was far from a looker, but it ticked the boxes for a family of five. Though our new house was not nearly as neglected as my childhood home in New England, my own kids felt a little like I had the day I arrived in Wilbraham with my mom. The magic simply wasn’t there. But, thanks to my parents, I’ve realized that magic is something you create through a combination of creativity, hard work and collaboration that includes the kids. And as the months have turned into years, we’ve turned a house into a home, one that our two older kiddos will look forward to returning to next fall when they’re both away at college. That is, until they have their own fixer upper to make their own.