Bless This Mess

Finding a house is like getting a dog.  Some people want to go to a breeder and select an adorable, unblemished pup with all his testes in tact.   Others want to visit the local shelter to fine some lonely, neglected adorably ugly old mutt that just needs a little bit of love and attention.  My wife and I found one that was hideous, unwanted, and needed to be put out of its misery.  I’m back to talking about houses, so don’t freak out.  But if you are looking for a dog, DM me.

As a growing family, despite all best efforts, we desperately needed more room.  We very nearly bought a beautiful colonial in an established neighborhood – only to back out at the last minute out of concern that we were over-extending ourselves financially.  If we could only have seen us now.  Anyway, back to the drawing board.  After weeks of yelling “don’t touch”to our kids in many strangers’ homes, we came across this mess of a home with a multitude of deal-breaker issues that should have made us turn and run:

• 1.75 stories.  You read that right.  I’m still confused about this one.  The ceilings were a towering 6.5 feet tall at the center and slanted down to a cozy 4 feet tall around the perimeter.  On the plus side, it did have a certain homey hobbitty appeal about it.
• Walk-through bedrooms.  You know what I like?  People walking through my bedroom to get to the bathroom at night to go pee.  Toddlers or in-laws, all are equally welcome to stroll through my bedroom at all ours of the night.  Fortunately, this house delivered.  Three bedrooms, with one nestled nicely between the other two so that no one would ever have to suffer the loneliness of privacy.
• Cooler-size Kitchen.  The owners legitimately removed the refrigerator when showing the house to make the spacious 10’x10’ kitchen look positively palatial.  And we bought the house, so they weren’t really wrong we’re they?
• To hell with permits.  Clearly nothing in this ramshackle shanty of a house was up to code.  Especially the unpermitted bedroom above the garage with a private staircase at a gentle 60-degree incline.  To slip here meant certain death.
• 3 staircases are better than one.  Any home can have a run-of-the-mill main staircase in the center.  But this house consistently defied expectations and logic.  Of course, it had the DIY unpermitted stairway of death.  Additionally, the bedrooms were laid out so thoughtfully that one would have to walk through not one, but two bedrooms to reach the master suite, were it not for a third private staircase.  This home was the absolute model of efficiency.

These were some of the house’s biggest selling features.  So, of course, we jumped on it immediately.  This actually is not sarcasm.  Sure, this house was a complete mess and the only people looking at it were us and contractors trying to value the land.  But, it was truly the worst house in a neighborhood that we should not have, by any other means, been able to afford.  While this wasn’t our first rodeo with a fixer upper, it was certainly the biggest and the first since my wife gifted me with three additional dependents.  But we are a couple with a shared vision and a severe masochistic streak.  This blog will detail the very long, excruciating (for me), and funny (for you) remodeling process.  We will take a house that was just too ugly to love and try not to hate it (or each other) after we sink our life savings and every waking hour into it.  Join us on the ride, won’t you?