Diligence Due
Well, we’ve made it past due diligence and into the last stages of purchase on a house, but it sure was a coin toss for such an important and long awaited decision. I really...
Category: Thrifty Rebuild
Our 80% Bernina Bookcase
I headed off in pursuit of a Bernina (sewing machine) advertised on Craigslist in an attempt to replace my long lost love. It was just one more small step in the whole distressing sewing...
Maaavelous Magnajector
I first saw a Magnajector as a child. It is a branded opaque projector, a black plastic device with an angled mirror to reflect an image and a lens to amplify it. It is...
Charlie Brown’s Field Goal
I’m feeling really down today. It’s been a tough week. A real estate agent called and asked me to re-make an offer that I made back when her listing was new. I had an...
Crying In the Tax Office
It’s strange how some things that shouldn’t hit hard do, and others that should don’t. Maybe it’s a matter of expectations, or how much reserve strength you have. Sometimes you just can’t really figure...
Replicate, Replace or Rebuild ?
After the twin towers came down, they didn’t try to replicate what had been before. It wasn’t appropriate, practical, fitting or even possible to put things back exactly as they had been. Yet when...
A House, A House, My Kingdom for a House
That’s not exactly how the Bard wrote about King Richard III’s battleground predicament, but I’m feeling a bit of the same dilemma. Trying to find a home has certainly marked a winter of discontent...
Thrifting for a Day
One never knows what the day will bring when setting out in search of treasure. Many people look at fishing as a similar venture. My father was an extraordinary fisherman. People who went at...
Gone Man, Solid Gone
There’s this frozen instant in time when almost everything in the house is gone, sucked away. What exists afterward depends on what we were doing where it was happening, and inches apparently matter. The...
Magnificent Monarchs on St Mark’s
by Karen As I go about the business of putting a life back together, there’s nothing I’d like more than an escape to the sandy beaches of my youth. I look forward to the...