Only We Would Buy this House! Um, Perhaps that's Something We Should Have Thought of Before We Bought this House
In Labor of Love I share the glorious joy associated with the activity they call DIY renovation. And by "glorious joy" I mean the head scratching, brain throbbing, 'when the hell will this project ever end', 'how bad would a foreclosure really look anyway' type of half decade that only two newbie flippers could ever experience.
The basic gist is this - don't try to renovate a charming house in a bad area of town, hundreds of miles from your home, with the only money you have as a newly married couple or you too will learn just what it's like to complete the renovation of an 1850's farmhouse in the ghetto and not get rid of it until well after the market downturn has bled you dry to the point of eating tuna from a pouch every day. You too can have a vacation home in the ghetto! And that doesn't even begin to describe the termites, cracks in the foundation, or crack heads in the field next door.
When we finished dodging gunfire, the entire project was quite a laughable time. And by "laughable" I mean hysterically cackling while rocking back and forth in a dark corner under the warmth of our electric bill. That thing was thick enough to quilt an army and was a better heat source than the electric baseboard units we actually installed to provide "heat". Air quotes signify sarcasm and/or January in western, Massachusetts.
These chapters are the first draft from my upcoming memoir of the same name: Labor of Love. The planned release is Spring of 2013 for eBook. Chapters will be edited but this should give you an early inside peek into why I'm so jaded that I will never hold a single credit card in my name again. And why, sometimes, walking away is your only option for survival.
Chapters
One: Down the Rabbit Hole
Two: Peeling Off Layers
Three: A Pirate's Life for Me
Four: Materials Witness
Five: Leaving on a Jet Plane and When You Get Back, Get Out
Six: Uplifting Can Be Heavy
Seven: Race into the Nothingness!