The one, singular thing that I did while my husband was gone this past week was to take this wall, above, and turn it from white, pockmarked craziness into a slightly-khaki-tannish bit of loveliness.  That strip at the left, was my test, checking to make sure it wasn’t going to go orange on me, which it didn’t.  In fact, it ended up looking vaguely wonderful:

Granted, there are three more walls to do now, but this one, with the least amount of crap to move out of the way — it’s done.  And it’s not even remotely perfect, nor do I have the curtains sewn for the humongous window yet, but I’m still pleased as punch every time I look at it, and that’s worth it for me.

I think now is as good of a time as any to tell you all about this house, and why it presents such unique challenges, both in decorating and keeping it clean.  Make a cup of coffee or two and have a seat.  It takes some explainin’.

See, we don’t own this house.  We also don’t rent it.

No, we’re not squatters.  Though it feels that way sometimes.

J’s job is for his parents.  They own several businesses, for one of which he works.  The shop is connected to this monstrosity of a house, which his father built with his own two hands.  That part, the “own two hands” part, is fairly self-evident, by the way half of it’s not even remotely done, despite the fact that they lived here as a family for almost seven years.  His father is notorious for having resentments attached to good intentions — he meant to get back to whatever it is, but ended up being angry when anyone mentioned it, so nobody did.  And as a result, there are only two working lights in the ceiling of my studio (which used to be the kids’ playroom).  The bathroom lighting upstairs didn’t work.  Large portions of the infrastructure were salvaged (because his father is also notoriously cheap on things that he really shouldn’t be — like heating and electrical work.  Yipes.).  There’s no insurance on the house or its contents, because it’s so badly made that insurance companies won’t touch it with a ten-foot-pole.

It is, for the most part, an industrial building, also.  To see it from the outside, you’d never know that people live here.  The grounds, because of his father’s hoarding problem, look like a junkyard.  So when I tell people I live in a junkyard, I’m only half-kidding.  I’ll get pictures.  It’s kind of scary.

Before we moved in — they gave it to us to use, citing it as “company housing”, which amuses me on a lot of different levels — the house had stood largely un-manned for nearly twenty years.  And it showed.  I’ve mentioned the in-laws’ hoarding problems before, but seriously?  This entire house, which is almost five THOUSAND square feet (seriously), was entirely filled with boxes of trash.  The garage and most of the closets still *are*, in fact.  We rented a 25′ dumpster when his mother and I were trying to clean out all the stuff that they’d “stored” here, and we filled it three times.   Things like four or five old, broken television sets, a broken laserdisk player, old and broken furniture, two couches where an entire legion of mice had lived in the twenty years of vacancy….  it was unhealthy, to say the least, and downright scary.

In the nearly three years we’ve been here,  his parents have touched nothing that they left in our closets and garage.  (Which is, I kid you not, FULL.  FULL OF THEIR STUFF.)  They have added to it several times, but have never touched a single thing they left here. And a few times, they’ve even discussed charging us rent when the propane bills were too high.  (Understand, because of the salvaged furnace, which is an industrial-grade furnace that the FIL took from a demolished building, with a “last inspected”date of 1952, we don’t control how much heat it puts out.  We often joke that we have two settings — Arctic or Hellfire.  There’s no inbetween.)  When we mentioned having the building inspector come look at it to be rental-friendly, they backed off quickly.  (It’s never been inspected.)

No less than three times per year, on average, they tell us they are selling the shop and that we have to move.  This is roughly around the time I get fired up to do something with the place.  We painted the kitchen, for instance, and the next day, the shop was closing and omgwhereareyougoingtolivenow?!?  I think they have a radar for home improvement.  (Of course, they’re not selling the shop, because then they’d have to deal with all the stuff they’ve got stored here — not just in our house, but on all the grounds and in the shop, which is two-and-a-half the square footage of the house, and every bit as packed-tight with crap.)

So the house is in a state of sad disrepair, and we’re half-scared to do anything with it.  It needs new carpets, for sure.  It needs a coat of paint.  It needs ceiling repair in some places.  The fireplace, which is gorgeous by the way, needs extensive cleaning and repair.  The water is so bad that it turns everything from steel to porcelain to skin a nasty shade of orange, but they don’t want to upgrade the well.  (Which, by the way, was also salvaged.)  The back yard is scary, and we have mice in the winter, mosquitos in the summer.

All in all, it’s a giant, festering hole of suck.  And it’s HUGE.  Way more than we would need, if my husband hadn’t inherited the must-own-everything gene from his parents.  (That’s a rant for another day, though.)

I’m not whining about having a home, and a home, virtually, for free.  I know there are people with less, and I’m profoundly grateful for the fact that there’s a roof overhead, even if it’s a roof that’s crumbling and is constantly in danger of being taken away at his parents’ whim.  But it does lend a kind of uncertainty to my days that is unsettling.

There is much, much work to be done to the house.  And I’m now to a point where I just don’t care anymore if it’s not here tomorrow.  I need to bring some stability to my own days — to make my surroundings a warm, welcoming place for both visitors and for my family.

It will not be an easy task.  And I’m sure that the minute I invest in, say, a chimney sweep (chimney services technician, I think they’re calling them now), they’ll be all fired up about selling the place.  But I need this for me and for my husband.   I need to have a base from which to work, and to feel like we can grow our family without the threat of mouse poo or strange rot.  And if that eventually means that we have to leave here to find it?  Well, I’ll have this experience behind me, and I’ll have things cleared out to the point where it should be easy(easier) to pare down further if the situation demands it.

I’ll do a house tour over the next few weeks.  Show you what it really looks like inside, and what I want to do with it.  I’ll be formulating a Plan of Attack.  I’ll update the “About The Project” page when I’ve got a room plan formulated.

It’s time to stop living with someone else’s instability.  It’s my job to create new stability for my family, no matter where we might be.