First houseguests!

I forgot to mention that I had the pleasure of hosting my first house-guests this week. (Of course they had the lesser pleasure of sleeping on camp mats on my living room floor - sorry kids.) Rasa, her husband David and their little smiley elf of a son Sky came to visit as they were in town teaching flying lessons to the brave and adrenalin-seeking.

It was fabulous to catch up with Rasa and meet her beautiful family, and also to host people who are used to camping so that my house, such as it is, is a step up and not just terrifyingly primitive.

Thanks for the visit guys and if you ever need a sitter for Sky...

Ye of little faith.

I've been told that the first picture doesn't quite convey fixer-upper in the way I've verbally expressed it, so let me clarify. In case you're wondering, yes- that is the foundation slab you're looking at on the floor. Why bother with fancy over-priced flooring when you've got a perfectly good slab underneath? No one would ever notice that you cut a few corners. Note the previously-mentioned Eric, who was kind enough to help measure rooms, basking in the obvious luxury of it all.

What am I doing???

So - I have spent the last two hours trying to figure out what is going on with the economy and if this is, in fact, the worst time to buy a house. Or, for the sake of argument, if I'm secretly cashing in on something that everyone else is missing. Mostly I think we're just trying to reassure ourselves that the sky is not actually falling as fast as the stock market.

The bottom line is that I've fallen head-over-heels for a very ugly house. It's sea-foam green. That might make sense if the house were on Fire Island or in Boca Raton, or if I was 84. One of my friends tried to reassure me with "I like it, it's... beachy." Right - except that there's no ocean for 232 miles - I googled it. I don't think we have fair claim to "beachy." Aside from the sea-foam, it has popcorn ceilings with water stains, holes in the walls, an AC duct system that would do nicely in a 1974 double-wide and carpet that has been there since the dawn of time complete with wrinkles to prove it. The kitchen is an insane combo of white cupboards with forest green "trim" (read: faux-trim created with the clever, and somewhat obvious, application of paint), fake "wood" counters and peeling vinyl tile. Also a mysterious and inexplicable drop ceiling - only over the kitchen, and for no apparent reason.

I've fallen in love with this ugly house and really want to fix it up myself. To work on it with my own hands and turn it into something that I can love and something that shows a little bit of me. I work all day, but at the end of the day there isn't really anything physical to show for it, so perhaps this is compensation for the lack? All I know is that all of the logical arguments for why I shouldn't do this seem to be sliding away with alarming ease. All of those minor details like utter lack of construction ability and experience, no actual budget for it and the house itself being far too big, not to mention the sheer number of hours needed seem not to matter so much right now.

I'm assuming this is going to be a comedy of errors, and for that reason I'm just going ahead and setting up the blog so that we don't have to go back and write about everything in retrospect. I can just post it as it's happening - in it's full glory. Besides, if Jan and Marg can buy a fixer and do it themselves, then damn it I can too.