Ben Folds Five - "Do It Anyway" by Consequence of Sound

Ben Folds Five - "Do It Anyway" by Consequence of Sound

We Bought a House. Wait...What???

So. Yeah. We closed. A week ago now. Wooo! And yet...

Oddly, I have not been exactly prepared for the feelings that have come up with the acquisition of property. It seems that most people talk about house purchase in regard to how great it is. That buying a house means that you are somebody! Your life will be fairies and cupcakes from now on. But it's not. This is a big (BIG) thing. I've had an overwhelming sense of WTF all week.

And sure, we've all seen that 80's movie The Money Pit with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long about the couple who buy a beautiful fixer upper that turns out to be "a money pit" and proceeds to destroy their sanity and their relationship. I'm particularly fond of the scene where Mr. Hanks steps on a carpet and falls through a hole in the floor where he is reduced to having T-Rex arms, making paper airplanes out of dollar bills and waiting for hours for Shelley Long to return home.  But even though we have a major fixer upper as well, it's not that fact that has given me pause. I've been experiencing anxiety over what it all means.

I'd never thought of myself as the settling down type, either with marriage or home ownership. I gave over to the first but now there's a part of me that is looking back longingly at the fairly nomadic lifestyle I've had over the last 17 years. I've lived in Chicago, Lansing MI, Iowa City, Massachusetts, Cincinnati, and all over Colorado and owned a home in none of them until now. I've learned to rely on no one but myself. And as I write this from a hotel outside of Arvada, CO, there's part of me that is still very much nomad. But now I'm starting to feel like a bad parent. I'm away and shitty little house needs love--a love that I'm trying to give from a distance. But will I fail...

And then there's the slightly more obvious worry of M.O.N.E.Y. The little money we did have saved...is gone. Poof. Bye bye. Sure it's gone to a good cause, but damn. It's gone. Both RJ and I are freelancers. He in building and design, me in acting. We go job to job and sometimes--it's slow. Now, hopefully with some credit to both of our skills, we have been very lucky to not going very long without a job coming up. But now we have something we HAVE to be responsible for. No more can we be dependent on only one of us while the other looks for work. We are in a long term commitment with a house. That isn't liveable yet. And while it's nice to have a focused goal. (Holy Shit! It's like practice for a Kid! I KNEW this was worthwhile and meaningful.)
 
Worries aside, there are some wonderful things that have happened just in the week of signing the papers. We were able to get insurance on the house, which seemed a little daunting at first. Not everyone looks at that house in its present state and can visualize the end result. We still have trouble with that ourselves on occasion. But having insurance will make sure that the title goes through and the house is really ours.  Also, RJ plays poker every Friday night at the Tommyknocker Tavern in Creede. And right now, a crew is building a huge and crazy set for the movie The Lone Ranger just north of town. A couple of the builder guys have been playing poker with RJ. In all his redneck charm, he was able to secure a bunch of left over grade A lumber that would have gone to waste otherwise, saving us thousands of dollars in cost. Yay for shrewd poker networking.

Now, three full roll offs later, RJ can start securing the house. Gutting something takes away a lot of  support within a structure, so you have to go back in and make sure the house doesn't fall down. This takes some creativity and skill, both which RJ possesses, but the problem is finding time to do this work, since it's just him right now and he's got two other paying jobs with deadlines he needs to finish up. So, even though we'd like to start off with a bang, we'll have to settle for intermittent firecrackers.

And so, with anxieties, fears and all, we take a deep breath, close our eyes and "Do It Anyway"

Take a listen: Do It Anyway

Evolution of a Home

After months of no posting, probably due to the fact that I didn't know what this blog was to be about, it's finally found a path.  Today is a huge day in the lives of RJ and me. Possibly even bigger than our marriage last September. Today, we became home owners in Creede, CO. But this is not an ordinary story of home purchase. We don't fancy ourselves wealthy. We would actually classify ourselves as poor. And never really thought we would be able to buy a house. But we did.

But let me start by saying this house is a piece of shit. It is. Seriously, it's true. We hope to make it liveable in a year, but that may be a stretch. The great thing about it is that it's land in a place that has very limited land still available. And it has great fricking potential. It's got a new roof and foundation and I happen to be married to a man that does this sort of thing for a living, and even though he'll have to do all this work in his free time, he's very smooth at finding cheap or free materials.

But first, some background. I will attempt a short version of how we were even able to buy this house. In early November we were contacted by the owners who were looking to sell the property for cheap and quickly. A friend who worked for the owners said that we might be interested and it was something we could afford. The current tenant was in rehab once again and it was looking unlikely that he would be returning to the house. He was a severe alcoholic and hoarder and the house that once had promise was now just a receptacle for emotional garbage. RJ called me while I was doing The Road to Mecca up at the Arvada Center. At first I said no way! We can't afford to buy, blah blah blah. But RJ explained what a good deal it was and though it would be a lot of work, it was an offer we would probably never see again. We agreed to move forward. Our closing date was set for mid-December of 2011.

But...the tenant came back suddenly and the day before we were going to close, filed a lawsuit with the owners setting the whole process back several months. It was probably just an attempt to buy time to move his stuff out, but it stopped the whole process in its tracks. There was really no way for him to win, he had an agreement with the owners almost ten years before that required certain things of him that he failed to carry out. So March 23rd, a judge gave the tenant 30 days to find a buyer for the house or come up with the entire mortgage himself. He failed at this too. The lis pendens was lifted and today, May 7th, 2012, we closed on the house.

In the two weeks before the closing, RJ couldn't help himself and set out to clean up and gut the house.  He enjoyed this immensely (in his way) and I was glad I was up in Denver and avoided it all.

This afternoon, we gathered some friends for a ceremonial smudging of the house. It was great fun and quite smelly. RJ christened the house with Coors beer and set off fireworks in the front yard. The photos I'm including are Day One: the day we made the house ours. It's a piece of shit, but it's our piece of shit and it will be glorious. This blog will detail all the steps of this process.

Here we go...