Poor House™

You may have noticed a little upheaval lately: a post disappeared along with a comment or two. Last month, I decided that our web host was too tight a fit and looked for a new home. It went smoothly enough but there was an issue with our IMAP folders and I only changed my name servers about a week after doing the initial transfer.Fascinating, eh?Anyhow - it's finally warm enough to willingly go outside and in our household, this means it's time to tackle renos.Poor House™ was built in 1909. We acquired it in 2001 from, shall we say, 'questionable' former owners. It had a few problems:-it was heated by electricity, gas *and* oil.-half of the basement had been converted into an apartment. To call this apartment dingy would be to compliment it: an animal lover lived there with a python and an assortment of furry animals. The queen size mattress fit three of the bedroom walls exactly. One room housed the kitchen, laundry room and bathroom (the bathroom was roughly the size of a closet).-The scariest thing about the basement apartment wasn't the snake. Get this: when we removed the washing machine from the kitchen, we found the main electricity panel behind it, about 10" from the ground. There's more! Someone has also tapped directly into the panel, bypassing the meter entirely.I could go on. Suffice it to say that we have been busybusybusy every spring and summer both doing things to the house and attempting to convince contractors to come over and fix things. We've replaced windows, updated the electrical system, redone the roof, changed the water main, renovated a bathroom, refinished floors, taken out walls, had new walls built, painted endless surfaces, finished half the basement (the former snake's abode) and stripped enough trim to permanently traumatize ourselves. To name a few.We actually have a head start this year: a Manitoba Maple that was much too close to the house was already taken down last week and the staircase leading upstairs is currently shedding its likeliness to a crack den's entrance. We'll probably take care of the crumbling porch next.Did this distract everyone sufficiently from the lack of knitting content? Actually, there should be some very soon: I was fortunate enough to spend the day with Lucy Neatby week on her day off and an interview is in the works...