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...