My House Is a Very, Very Fine House

In May of 2005, my not quite yet wife and I bought our first home in Dayton, Maine. We had rented together for the previous five years and decided to buy a condo a couple of months before our wedding, which, based on the stress that accompanied each event, I would not recommend trying.

With the real estate market spiraling out of control, all the condos we looked at were way overpriced. Instead we stumbled across a small house for the same price as the condos in our area. Why was it so inexpensive? The house was built 30 years prior by my wife's great uncle, who, I should mention, had died some time earlier and no longer owned the house. No family deal for us. Rather, he was a man who stood approximately five feet tall and who built himself a one bedroom, one bathroom, 800 square foot house with 7 foot 4 inch ceilings that, I would presume, felt like a mansion to him.

The Little Mansion

Since we were looking at condos, the small size of the house wasn't a problem. And unlike a condo, the house came with land and a basement and it was very close to my wife's family, which was a big plus for her. A deal was finalized in May 2005. The house, while built well and in good physical shape (my wife's family is full of skilled craftsmen), had received a various, mismatched, and often head scratching set of renovations throughout the years. And that is where my home improvement story begins.

I'll be using this forum to document our home renovations, every step at a time. I want to remember all the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into this thing. Much more to come - good, bad, and painful.