In the beginning...

when we started to look for a house, we determined that we did not want a project. We had just finished doing fix-ups on our rental house to get it ready for sale and were in the midst of the fix-ups (including exterior paint and a new roof) on our primary residence to sell it. So we were ready to move into a house that didn’t need any work.

We tried. We really made an effort. We looked at a lot of very nice houses that didn’t need any work and rejected them all for one or more of location, price, style of neighborhood, inadequate floor plan, forty-foot retaining wall holding up the lot and needing too much work. Of course, we ended up settling on a house we really liked, in a neighborhood we liked, on a lot we liked, that was one huge project.

We now live on 3 acres of New Mexico desert, yet we are right on the edge of town. The house has rooms for each of us to have an office and has a magnificent big living room for entertaining and house concerts. At the moment the living room is our efficiency apartment, serving as living room, bedroom, offices and store room. The kitchen is still functional but soon to be torn apart to be worked on. One of the bathrooms is not getting touched in this pass, so we are using it (along with its closets).

This all really started the week of July 4th when our furniture was delivered from storage. Except for what we are using in the living room, everything is in the garage, storeroom or sun room, none of which are getting remodeled during the first phase of work. So the first few entries will be to catch up on the events to date.