Chapter 3, In Which Vicki Engages in Someone Else's Home Repair

Talk about strange situations! After viewing the town house last night we discovered that a friend of ours was going to be doing the painting for the owners. The kitchen and bathrooms need to have the wallpaper stripped off first. I mentioned the fact that I love removing wallpaper, and after a bit of a chat it was arranged that we (William, Beth, and I) would show up in the morning and do it! :)

Danny came along for the ride, and was able to get job search work done from the back porch. The kids and I have worked at it steadily all day, but we are not done with the kitchen yet. The majority of it is covered with wallpaper that has been painted over. It is proving very tricky to get off. (Please - don't ever paint over wall paper!). One wall had just wall paper, (no paint over it) and that came off relatively easily.

It was strange to spend the day in a house that wasn't ours, but we might consider buying. It has always amazed me that one generally buys a house with less "trying on time" actually spent in it, than say a new car or suit. You visit it for a few minutes one afternoon, and place a bid for more than a quarter million that night... how crazy is that? This was an interesting opportunity to not only see the house for a long amount of time, but to use the sinks and toilets... even eat take-out food sitting on the floor in the living room. What would it be like if people were actually able to test drive houses for a day or two, like most people get to test drive cars before they buy them?

As far as this town house goes, we are under no illusions as to the fact that there are many things we would want to change. The lay out is great. It is big and airy just like I thought it would be. But it hasn't exactly been loved (overstatement!). Really, while it isn't old, it would require of me many of the things I was mentioning yesterday as dreams I have always had about fixing a place up. We would definately want to (or hope they would) rip out the kitchen and upstairs bathrooms' cabinets, and the tile in the master bathroom. The lay outs of these rooms are fine, but just very negleted. We would also want to not only replace all of the switch plates (which have, over the years, been painted, papered, and repainted), but the actual switches and outlets too. We would also be strongly motivated to get new faucets for all of the bathrooms. Given the opportunity, dispite all of that I think both of us would consider moving in here quite readily. It would double our floor space! It is big and filled with posibilites. And, it would be just two doors down from our friends. :) We don't even know yet what the owners have in their plans to do before they put it on the market. They are talking like they have things they want to fix up, currently we know about the carpet and the paint. Who knows what else they might have in mind.

Now we just need to wait and see what God wants us to do. Danny still needs to find a project, and we have no idea where that might be...