We started a small home improvement project last weekend. That's a snake skin in the middle of the first picture. It was one of several found in the ceiling. One of dozens (with and without live snakes in them) we've found since moving in. The snakes moved out a couple years ago because we are way too noisy, but I am grateful for the snakes. If it hadn't been for the snakes I'm positive I would have had to clean buckets of mouse turds out of all the kitchen drawers when we moved in.
Fact of the matter is, the house was literally on the verge of being condemned right before we bought it. Dr. L, the guy in charge of condemning stuff in our township, told us so. The house and every building on the property was waist deep in junk. And the house itself was really gross.
By some miracle of hysterical blindness, I did not trouble my memory with the images of the blue toilet with no lid or the bright red extra shaggy shag carpet in the bedroom or the turquoise everything or the smell. Leave it to me and the husband to spend 95 % of our time out in the woods behind the house, oblivious to the hideousness we were trying to borrow money to buy. We fell in love with the woods and everything else was just gravy. Chunky, congealed, mystery meat gravy. But it was our gravy. OK, that's a little too close for comfort, so I'm going to move on.
The victory of winning our prize was tempered by the massive amounts of filthy hard work it was going to take to fix and clean everything. And we're still in the midst of it. Hence, our recent little project. We're replacing the disgusting busted ceiling & goonie busted flooring in the laundry mud foyer. It's the laundry room with the most used door in the house. So it's like my entry door. And mud. Because no one but me sees the logic in leaving your dirt outside.
It's a small step in my journey to an unembarrassing house, and I'm super excited that I might have new drywall up when I get home from work.
The only drawback to starting this project is that it's started that familiar trickle of money leaking from our house. First it's insulation, then it's drywall, then screws, oh, and now we need to build another corral for the steers & a creep feeder for the feeder calves, and so on. Then this pipe needs replaced and we might as well go ahead with working on the kitchen, hey, lets build a great big pond with fish and a fountain, and what about the yucky bathroom and before you know it we've got one hell of a flow of cash rushing out our doors.
We've done it every year though, and we've made definite progress. For example: No snakes in the house.
And we love our place. Be it ever so goonie, there's no place like home.
2 comments:
I never thought that I would agree with someone who said they were thankful that snakes lived in their walls. But now, after moving into a old shack in the woods, I wish I had a big fat snake hiding in my kitchen!
LOVE your blog!
Ah! I love it! A snake sisterhood!
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