And So It Begins

Sam and Ben made good progress today, unboarding most of the rest of the windows, ripping out the living room carpet and scraping off at least one layer of linoleum and tile in the main part of the house. They also painted part of the living room in colors we had considered the night before. It turns out that paint swatches do not necessarily translate well into bigger areas, so it's back to the drawing board on those. Who knew that two very different shades of green could both look like toothpaste when put up on a wall?

Unfortunately I couldn't take off work to pitch in, but the boys seem to be doing fine without me. Plus, Ben promises there's still lots of "fun stuff" left to be done over the weekend.

A lot of our new neighbors have been swinging by to see what's going on with the house. In fact, we met quite a few of them during inspections, before the house was even ours. From them, we got a little of the back story of the house: The previous owners lived there for over 40 years, and the husband/father made "improvements" to the house as time and money permitted. However, the family must have been borrowing against the house, as they faced foreclosure after the husband/father passed away last year. When they finally moved out, they could only find eight of their nine cats, which helps explain part of the house's stench. Our pest inspector confirmed this story when he found the remains of a cat under the porch; curiously, it seems that someone went and stole the cat's body sometime in the last few weeks. (Not that we're going to press charges or anything.)

After the family moved out, a vagrant friend of theirs decided to stay and conduct satanic rituals in the basement (as evidenced by the morbid Latin scrawlings adorning the basement walls). Eventually, he was evicted and the windows were boarded up, leaving the house -- dead cat, vomit-stained walls, oyster-filled sink and all -- to fester for months on end. We were the first happy house hunters to unlock that magic concoction.

Sam said he met a few more neighbors from the townhomes next door. It turns out that they actually built those townhomes, and had similar aspirations for our dear ole Bagley Project. Luckily, they weren't paying attention when our house went on the market. ... In any case, I think we're scoring plenty of points with the other neighbors just by promising not to tear the house down and build more townhomes.

Sadly, I have to push off posting pictures for another day. It's late again and, again, I have some work and sleep to catch up on. I would've checked in earlier, but just as I was coming home to my apartment my neighbor grabbed me to be an extra in his movie. I'm no actor, but it was pretty fun getting up into the camera like that. I'm sure I'll miss Fremont when I move, but I know Wallingford is full of characters and adventures as well.