So... where to begin?

I've been pondering this for a while now, and don't really know where to start. We've been in the new house for about five weeks or so and we've already done so much that it's hard to know where to begin.

Fortunately, I am a creative soul and I've come up with an idea. What follows is two separate perspectives: the first is the description of the house as provided by the seller's real estate agent in his listing/advertisement; the second is the description of the house if WE were the ones writing the listing... and maybe not actually trying very hard to sell it.

Don't worry - I'll include some pictures for those of you with shorter attention spans (*cough* Dad *cough*).


The text from the agent's listing:

This lovely 3 bedroom 3 bathroom 2360 Sq Ft Tudor style home is set on a .23 acre lot with several fountains, a pond, flowering borders, a rock garden and a greenhouse. Inside is a large living room with fireplace, a separate dining room, a large open plan kitchen with a sunny breakfast room and an adjoining large family room with its own fireplace and a sunroom leading out to the garden. Upstairs is a spacious master bedroom suite with lots of closets and a full ensuite bathroom with a deep soaker tub, perfect for relaxing. Two more sunny bedrooms and another full bathroom complete the picture. Located on a VERY quiet street close to walking trails and parks.

Sounds pretty nice, eh?

Now, here's what the listing would have said if the agent had been COMPLETELY honest:

This lovely 3 bedroom 2-and-a-half bathroom 2360 Sq Ft Tudor style home is set on a .23 acre lot with several thirteen assorted statues and fountains, a brackish pond, flowering borders, an unkempt rock garden and a somewhat ramshackle greenhouse. Inside is a large living room with a never-used fireplace, a separate dining room, a non-functional half-bath, a large open plan, terribly out-dated kitchen with a sunny breakfast room and an adjoining large family room with its own stained carpet, fireplace and a leaky sunroom with terrifically smelly carpet leading out to the garden through two doors with broken handles. Upstairs is a spacious master bedroom suite with lots of closets, dust-enriched drapes and a fully carpeted ensuite bathroom with a deep soaker tub equipped with a ridiculously low overflow drain, perfect for relaxing splashing around shallowly, and highlighted with fixtures chosen by Saddam Hussein himself. Two more sunny bedrooms and another full bathroom with leaky toilet complete the picture. Located on a VERY quiet street close to walking trails and parks.

Needless to say, I do have photographic evidence of all of this, but for now, let's stick with the statuary. Here is a sample (by no means an exhaustive collection) of the statues and fountains we seem to have inherited...

This is the only statue visible in the front of the house and really the only one that I kind of like.



I want to put him in a nice spot in the backyard and then surround him with a small tableau of grinning gargoyle statues, arranged as though about to eat him. I think that'd be cool.

This fine fountain features a trio of dolphins, each equipped with a water nozzle in its beak. (War Department added for scale.)



I cannot even begin to imagine how we're going to be able to get that thing out of there. It must weigh four hundred pounds - and no, I'm NOT talking about the War Department.

This fine specimen isn't really all that offensive... which, I suppose, is why the previous owner felt he needed TWO OF them:



This virgin Mary and her reflecting pool sit right outside the kitchen window:



Well, a friend took the Madonna away, so it's actually just a grotty old concrete pond now. I'll be smashing that up in the spring.

This is probably the largest statue in the yard, and despite appearances, is not a fountain. It's just huge. And ugly. And huge.



Did I mention it was huge?

This one... well, this one offends me on some deeply primal level:



I dunno. I mean, I look at that, and I just want to reach for a sledgehammer. I've told Amy that when the time comes - and the time will come - to remove that thing, the only way it's leaving the yard is in pieces. I simply can't allow it to continue to exist. Seriously. I can't wait to wind up and take a swing right at its curly little, water-squirting head. POW! Right in the kisser! And that goes for that crazy fish horse of yours, too! Ha ha ha ha!



Ahem. Sorry. Let's move on...

And finally, given that you're probably as tired of looking at inanimate blocks of concrete as I am of uploading pictures of them, I'll spare you the mermaid, cupid, and frog statues (no, I'm not kidding) and leave you with this "lovely" angel statue, perched at the top of the very back of the yard and, as this picture suggests, visible from the master bedroom window:



The deer? Heh, those are real. Man, I love this neighbourhood...

Here we go again...

Welcome to Broadmead!

I've got a couple of longer posts in the making, but for now, welcome to the new blog. I plan to update this much more frequently than the old one. Which means, of course, that my next post will be in ... six months.

But seriously, we've already tucked right in to the renos, so there's lots to show you. I've posted a teaser after the jump.


This is the light fixture in the stairwell/hallway of our new house (click to appreciate its true grandeur):



That fixture is notable for two reasons:

• One, those are HAND-MADE porcelain roses. Somebody paid a lot of money for it.


• Two, it is only the SECOND ugliest light fixture in the house.

Welcome aboard. It's going to be a hell of a ride.