"The kitchen's looking good ...



...okay, better."

That's a direct quote from Chris, who has been working out in the garage (top photo) this weekend trying to make it into an office.

Let me give you a little background. The detached building has a large room upstairs and a small kitchen and bath downstairs, next to the two-car garage.

When we first moved into the house and were really broke, we rented the apartment out. But when we had to evict our last tenant, a 55-year-old man who spent all his money on the dope he smoked in our backyard and so, couldn't afford the rent, we gave up on tenants out back.

Since then, the upstairs (bottom photo) has been used has a chicken coop--a digusting use for a room with shag carpet--storage and a workout room. The downstairs kitchen and bath haven't been available for their original purposes in years, since the pipes froze and water flooded the rooms. The broken pipes are behind the fiberglass shower stall. Their repair just hasn't made it to the top of the list. So, the downstairs became the paint storage department. (Chris is a remodeling contractor and can't bear to throw ANYTHING away.)

Meanwhile, we're now both working out of our house and want to move him to the upstairs room. (I call it the chicken or chicken #*&% room, due to it's previous life. Chris tries to call it the carriage house, but given its poor condition, he then generally has to explain what room he means.)

I've attached a couple of photos to give you an idea of the challenges we face! That is a crack you see along the ridge in the ceiling. The morons who built this place didn't use enough beam to carry the load. We try not to think about the roof caving in on us, though it could happen. Once the mess is cleaned out, the structural rebuilding can begin.

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