So... "What in the he*! are you talking about?" you may be asking.Well, here's what happened:
About 3.5 years ago, in the summer of 2004, during the rapidly-escalating house-price surge, I decided what better time to take the plunge and stop paying rent (even though I loved my apartment, and my landlord, Ron) and look at some of these over-priced houses.

Now, I hadn't really put much away, and my salary at MBA's-R-Us doesn't come even vaguely close to those of the graduates we churn out. So, I knew I'd be in for a tough time finding a property I could afford, and which gave me some "warm and fuzzies" (old, creaky, off angles, nice woodwork... all that appeals to me). But I also knew if I waited much longer, rising interest rates would lock me out of any option... Rising prices, rising rates...

Hmmm... Seeing what's going on now, of course I should have (a) waited, and (b) bought into one of the low, teaser interest rate mortgages that were being highlighted back then. (Hindsight is fabulous.) But, no - I decided that I would go with a 30-year fixed option, never dreaming that there'd be some bailout scheme that would help all those other people who were less responsible. Okay... SOME of those people were absolutely lied to and defrauded in their mortgage options, but many were like me, except that they didn't think about the effects of those low-rate mortgages down the line. Burns my butt to think I could have been paying at a much lower rate these past three years, with the possibility that I'd get help and support to keep it that way... But I digress.
(Which I do a lot, so you gotta stay with me and all my punctuation. Mmmmm - - semi-colons!)

So, in the summer of ’04, I started looking. At two-family homes. Knowing I’d need to pay the extra for the house, but it would give me the extra income (through renting one apartment) that I’d need to afford any mortgage. And… First house, bam. Homerun. I was walking in my neighborhood late one night, and there it was - - a “For sale” sign on one of the worst-looking houses on a not-bad street. (That’s another plus, as far as I’m concerned.) Called my wonderful Realtor (yes, that’s with a capital R) Nancy Evans (email her at http://www.uniqueantiquehomes.com/ if you’re looking to buy or sell - - Or to have that capital R explained), we went and saw it the next day. I fell in love with the ornate doorknobs, and the old doors and stuff – and particularly with the HUGE empty unfinished attic, that I immediately envisioned turning into an artist’s loft for me, or a third apartment.

That’s how I was infected by the renovation bug. It was all innocent enough to start with. Wrote out an offer that day with Nancy, and spent a couple of hours crafting a really nice letter (if I do say so myself) to the long-time homeowners, gushing over the house, and explaining that my relatively low offer was not meant to insult, but was all I could afford, but that I felt so completely at home in the place… blah, blah. All in the hope that it would help sway them. And the price was just around $300k. Reasonable, in my part of the Northeast. For a two-family. With a rental income each month, I knew I could swing it, live there, and work on the place…

In the time it took me to draft that letter, they accepted another offer. Well, many houses later, I finally realized that apparently the renovation bug had really gotten up my butt. No other house would do, unless it had enough unused space to gut and make into a stand-alone new apartment.

And finally, a few months and many viewings (Nancy is a VERY patient Realtor) later, I found it. A great big ol’ two-family, with a four-room finished, but unused (or so I thought), third-floor attic space. In the attic, each room had a light bulb fixture hanging from the ceiling, and two of the rooms each had an old steam radiator. Solid fir flooring, plastered walls (with a bunch of settling cracks), so – finished. But it would take demolition, framing, new walls, a second staircase, plumbing, heat, electricity, a kitchen, and a bath to make it into a real apartment.

Well, the spirits in the house felt right… I was home. And thus it began... Time suck, money pit, hobby, life's work, overengineered behemoth. call it what you like.