spooks, construction and vacation...

spooks...

A few months ago I shared a story with all of you about a house that Mr. Kaos and I toured in our search for this home. It was a favorite post of mine and all true so naturally when I saw Jo Beaufoix answer the question 'Do you believe in ghosts?' which was asked by David McMahon I chimed in by sending her the link about the somewhat unnerving experience I had there.



Since a few people have popped through from Jo's blog and from David's I thought I would ask all of you to read this post today and share your thoughts if you haven't already. It's an interesting thread David has started and I'll be following along with his blog, it seems as though he asks a new question each week. You can bet I'll be answering them here and there.




construction...


Not the hammering, nailing, wrench using kind. The type type clicky type kind. I had to fix a few problems here on Mommified Me last night. I think everything is up and running but this morning we had a fun little adventure in missing header land. If any of you notice anything is askew or if you are missing from my "Alphabetical Blog Love" list just let me know...




construction and vacation...

And this time I do mean the hammering, nailing, wrench using kind. We are trying to make a surge on some of the work to be done in the bathroom this weekend. Now that Mr, er, Captain Kaos has gotten the plumbing well in hand (ooohhh that sounds quite naughty doesn't it?) we can press forth with the bathroom work. Because it has only taken what, 16 years so far?



Because of this I will be taking a little mini vacation from blogland. I will be setting old posts I am fond of for you to read Saturday, Sunday and Monday...



Back to CamiKaos live on Tuesday morning... I'll miss you...

a house we didn't buy...

Years ago when we were still living in Suburbia and K was just a wee little thing we spent a great deal of our spare time looking at houses. We knew where we wanted to live and we knew what we needed in a home. We were also painfully aware of what we had to spend to get what we wanted where we wanted it. Basically we needed to find something under priced or needing work. Probably both.

One day we toured a house with our ever patient realtor. It was on a busier street than we would have liked and it only had one bathroom but it was good sized and had a lot of potential.

It needed work. A lot of work. But I liked it, we considered it for a few moments as we walked through the downstairs. We saw the tiny only bathroom and the crumbling but large kitchen and the 2 main floor bedrooms and we were thinking "Hey, this is pretty okay"

But halfway up the staircase carrying a one year old K in my arms I got a chill and she began to whimper. She was a fussy kid (still is) so we thought little of it, I was more concerned with how uncomfortable I'd suddenly become. We passed by a small room to head into the large master. I wanted to leave, I didn't want that house, It was done for me.

Mr. Kaos wanted to press on though so we went into the dimly lit master. If I hadn't gotten a serious case of the heebie jeebies I might still have been considering it as a home. Our realtor lead as to a walk in closet door and I wanted to scramble but I still pressed on. The closet was a nice size, but on its back wall was another door. It lead into the little room we had passed when we first came upstairs.

I didn't even have to step into the room to feel the grief that wafted from the open door. I peeked through holding my breath and gripping K more tightly. She started to whimper as I looked at the one small window with dingy curtains, they were once white with primary colored circus characters... once.

That very moment I was so terrified for my child that I walked out of the little room down the stairs and through the front door. I waited there until Mr. Kaos and the realtor were done. I did my best to push everything about that house from my mind.

A year later we were still looking for houses and having seen more than I can recall we finally found the very home I'm sitting in. But it didn't go smoothly and after learning that they had accepted another offer we continued to look in the neighborhood. It was a Sunday, just days after we'd made the offer on our current home, that we walked around the neighborhood with a 2 year old K checking out open houses.

We saw a sign for one on a street that was a little busier than we would like, but it was close enough to our price range and had 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms so we took a look. It was lovely, someone had come in and done a tremendous job remodeling this house, it would be a good family home for someone. Something in me said maybe not us, though I loved the large kitchen and the two nice main floor bedrooms...

We started up the stairs and a chill ran over me but I was too busy helping little K up the stairs as she babbled and played to pay it much mind. We walked straight through to a lovely, if a little dim, master suite and I was suddenly reminded of something, though what I couldn't be sure. We headed back towards the newly added master bath and I stopped dead in my tracks as I realized where I was... at that very moment K whispered in my ear:

"Mama, what happened to that baby?"

I walked back through the bedroom down the stairs and out to the front porch with my baby in my arms. I sat there breathing slowly, calming myself. K asked about "that baby" once again and all I could say was that I didn't know, but that everyone was very sad. She agreed and curled up in my lap with her baby doll and looked at the sun in the trees.

When Mr. Kaos came outside he hugged us tightly and said "I wondered when you'd realize it was the same house, I figured it out in the kitchen". I shot him my best wounded withering glare and we headed down the street for some lunch in what we hoped would one day be our neighborhood.

Well people, I'm not one for ghost stories... but that's mine.

our house...

Spring isn't here but as the tiny clumps of snow that are left from last week melt away I'm all excited to get on the spring cleaning... that doesn't so much mean the actual cleaning part, more the organizing, moving around, making things work for us part.

Living in an old house things get dirty easily but I become easily distracted by the bigger projects that need to get done. Sometimes you have to get creative. It's strange to me to think how differently we live now from the 1920's. Who would think that the entire format of home building could change in 80 years.

We need so many rooms now that we didn't before. Looking at most of the houses in our community people only needed one tiny bathroom in the 1920's... that's just crazy right? We need a family room for our TV's, DVD's, stereos... we need an office for our computer, printer, scanner, charging stations, we need a kitchen big enough to cook a gourmet meal for 12, we need a quiet place to call our own... So we get creative, we move things, organize things, re purpose things until they work for us.

You see even with out the above mentioned monster kitchen this house is my home. Would I be happier with a kitchen 4 times the size I have (I swear it is really really tiny)... maybe.

But when we found our house it was a little bit of a miracle. We'd been looking in the neighborhood for about a year. Feeding our fantastic realtor, Chrissy, all sorts of information as we discovered it. The more houses we looked at the more we knew what we wanted but we just hadn't hit the right note yet... we kept looking and looking until one day she called to tell me she may have found the one. We weren't able to make it into town to check it out until that evening so she went to the house and walked through it on the phone with me. She told me it was the one, she knew it, she described to me all the little details she saw as she strolled through the house and over the phone I slowly fell in love with it. Mike having seen way too many houses and being a bit of a pessimist in general begrudgingly drove into Portland at 6pm knowing we were wasting our time but when we pulled up to the house we both stopped breathing a moment. He looked into the back seat at K and then at me and said "if it isn't falling apart inside we're buying it" I nodded.

About 3 months earlier while I was down the street getting my hair done Mike took K for a walk to a friends house. On their way they walked past this house. Our house. It badly needed a paint job , a new fence and landscaping. It looked like no one had loved it in a long time... but there it was with a for rent sign and Mike and K stared at it for a long moment and Mike said "It's too bad we can't buy that one"...

I heard about the house that day over lunch but I never laid eyes on it until the very moment at 6pm we sat in our car in front of it. By then we were in a rush. We already knew there was an offer being made, our only hope was that our agent had been able to stall the sellers agent long enough so she could present our offer at the same time.

We went inside and looked around. It smelled like old house, dogs, cigarettes and stale drink. The walls had paper peeling from them and large air bubbles beneath too many layers of paint and wallpaper. It was dirty, it was dark and it was a little sad. There were so many things that were just not right and each one made us love the house more. We wanted to make the house as beautiful as we imagined it had been...

Even as we walked through our house other potential buyers showed up. A few with their agents, one who was driving by trying to get a hold of their agent so she and her partner could get a better look and make an offer.
Sadly the sellers agent wasn't patient. She presented the 1st offer she got and didn't mention that there were more forthcoming.

We headed over to the real estate office any way hoping that if we put in a back up offer we may just get lucky. We weren't the only ones to do it but thankfully we were the first.

Obviously you know we got the house, I mean it is the one we are living in raising our child and cats in... our home.

It was 3 weeks before we heard another word on the matter. We'd looked at a couple of houses since but nothing compared to this one. We were on our way to set up K's 2nd birthday party when my cell phone rang. Chrissy said a few things, uttered a few words of caution then said "They want to know if you still want the house".

There was no discussion. Only yes, yes please let us know what we need to do. There were more bumps in the road along the way before we finally got the keys nearly 2 months later. From there our last 3 years in the house have been a string of do it our self projects, contractors, paint, spackle, furniture and dreams... We're not nearly done. Who knows if we ever will be or if we will slowly work on the house into our golden years...

The point? I know I had one... it may have changed somewhere in the writing...

I think the point has become that when a house is really a home it becomes a part of your family and you want to do everything you can to make sure it is the best home it can be...

Or that I need to clean my house so poor Mike doesn't go any more insane than he already is...