Don't Buy A House From Dick

So after the past few weeks I've been tempted to change the name of this blog to My Stupid Stupid House. As is with most projects, what was supposed to take a few days turned into 2 weeks due to the discovery of more "creative" DIY work done by the previous owner. For simplicity sake, let's call this previous owner Richard. I hear he likes to be called Dick so I'll refer to him as that from here on out.

So anyhow, I've fixed Dick's creativity and I've calmed down and am no longer bitter. In fact, I've come up with a list of presents I'm going to give him for Christmas:

1. A book on plumbing.

2. A book on electrical.

3. Audio books on plumbing & electrical in case Dick can't read (likely).

4. The complete Nickelback discography.

So there you go, people. Be the bigger person and forgive. It's much more pacifying than holding a grudge and bitterly ranting about it on the internet. 

P.S. I'll be posting pictures of Dick's work in the Thanks, Dick section that I'll create eventually.

First Post

My house was cool when I bought it but not my sort of cool. So of course I had to change everything. It's been a lot of work and it takes most all my time and money so therefore it is now stupid (even though I secretly love it). Everything I know I've learned from the internet or made up as I went along so I figured I should post my troubles & successes here in case someone can by chance benefit by them.

This is how it was when I bought it. Nice, but a little too grandmaish for me.

And this is what it turned into a few months later. I probably wouldn't have had it painted so soon but it was required to get my FHA loan (can't have peeling paint in older houses due to lead), plus I love brick houses with black trim. New windows are also shown in this picture. I had those done right away to take advantage of the $3,000 tax rebate which was about to expire (and the fact that 50% of the windows were painted shut). They're  double hung Pella aluminum clad wood windows. I'll rant (negatively) about those later.