Houses here! Git yer houses here!

Hello and welcome! I have decided to start another blog, dedicated to what I'm sure will become an epic and sordid battle between me and a grumpy old house bent on my destruction. I just bought it from an owner who clearly spent lots of time, effort, and money ignoring it as much as they possibly could. Here is the house in question:

It's a stately old craftsman in northeast Portland, Oregon. It was built in 1911, and to get you all in the historical mood, I slavishly researched the year 1911 by typing it into Google. Here are the highlights: The Mona Lisa was stolen, the first airmail happened, Pancho Villa was marauding through northern Mexico, and (my personal favorite) the Indianopolis 500 was run for the first time at an average speed of 74 miles an hour. I think if Pancho Villa wasn't busy having his way with the Mexican army, he would have beaten 74 mph on a burro.

The speed of Pancho's burro is neither here nor there, however. What is definitely here is a big old house that needs one megashitton of work. The work will come later, though. First, a tour! The house is a giant cube, equally divided with four rooms on each floor. First, the downstairs! Here is the kitchen.

The dining room! I apologize for the blurry photo, but the previous owner didn't believe in functioning light bulbs (or light fixtures).

The living room!

The stairs and toilet paper

Upstairs

Blue room

Orange room

Trash room

Our bedroom!

The really nasty bathroom

That's the house. We are now in the throes of moving in, so I should probably go scrub something and do some organizing. Now that you are introduced to the house, we will get down to the good stuff. The next episode: an accounting of the things to be done, and I do battle in the shit fields.