In the beginning...

Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.  

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Welcome to our house.  

It's been about two months since our offer was accepted, and while we're still eight days away from closing, we're cautiously optimistic that this is actually going to happen.  We've made a lot of sacrifices to get to this point, not the least of which was moving several thousand miles away from our loved ones  in order to take the jobs that paid the money that knocked out the debt that made it possible for us to buy our first home.

The following is a list of some of the smaller things we've* given up in order to become first-time homeowners:

all fashion magazine subscriptions [sigh-- I miss you, Vogue]

  vacations

 NARS blush, Stila eye shadow, BeneFit mascara, etc.

new clothes not from Target

shoes that do not look like they've been eaten by a pack of wild dogs

eating meat

delicious-smelling body wash from Philosophy, even when purchased at TJ Maxx for $12

dyeing my hair

 a fancy Caribbean honeymoon

anything fancy, really

sunshine**

So at this point I'm basically a pasty-white vampire with prematurely gray hair, cheap drugstore makeup, ill-fitting clothes, and very little iron in my blood.  But I have a house.

It's just a little guy-- at 1350 square feet it's the smallest house in the best neighborhood in town-- and it needs a lot*** of work.  It was previously being rented by a teenaged boy who had thoughtfully decorated it with hatchets, shotguns, snakeskins tacked up via push-pin, raccoon skins, and plenty of greasy handprints on the plaster walls, etc.  And in the only bathroom he graciously provided for his guests a wide variety of Hustler magazines and empty beer bottles.  And this:  

Thanks, man! 

Today we got to go into the house  to see it for the first time since the tenant's stuff (except the mold pile on top of the faucet, ahem) is finally out-- albeit only because we had to meet the rodent exterminator so he could get started on our potential rat problem.  Yeah.  Well, you try buying a house in a very expensive college town.  And after all this, you're probably wondering we didn't run screaming from this broken-down hell hole when we saw it on day one.

Here you go:

The place has gorgeous bones.  Two big bedrooms with large closets, coved ceilings, pretty wood flooring, brick fireplace, huge yard, walking distance to both of our offices on the university campus.  And it also has the world's ugliest bathroom.  Its kitchen is a mandatory gut, and the converted garage (advertised as a much sought-after third bedroom, though I wouldn't ask my worst enemy to sleep there right now) looks like something you'd only see in a horror movie.  Of course, we're going to change all that.

And that's what we'll be doing here-- updating about our updates. 

*I've

 ** this is because we live in the Pacific Northwest, not because sunshine was too expensive for us.

***understatement