man, oh, man. my house is my dream and my nightmare. i love that it’s old. really old. like 116 years old and all the charm and victorian aesthetic that haven’t been ripped out by rehabbers for the most part. and then i hate some of the not so charming features.

like the original windows. note the wavy glass–that’s the original leading dripping down after years and years and years. pretty cool. speaking of cool, it’s getting to be winter pretty soon (ignore the fact that it’s supposed to be 70 degrees tomorrow–three days before Thanksgiving) and those lovely original windows also are not exactly air-tight. more like air-tunnel if you’re sitting next to it. i’m just mad because it takes forever to put up the 3M plastic window covering dealy. the first time i did it, it was kind of fun; cutting out the plastic to fit, measuring the double-sided tape, hot blow dryer air to tighten it up to crystal perfection. after the fifth window, it’s not as magical.

add to this my neighbor’s recent good fortune. there’s a city program that will actually pay for homeowners in certain city neighborhoods (ours is one) that if you can prove that you have lead-based paint on your windows, they’ll REPLACE them. for FREE. the paperwork process took about a year, but she now has beautiful new windows in her entire house. ones that don’t have the extra benefit of a year-round draft. or brain-damaging lead dust particles.

of course, you have to meet an income requirement. i’m usually too poor to meet any other interesting requirement, but not this one. of course. so until one of us loses a job (not really worth new windows) or tony tries his hand at being a stay-at-home dad, new windows are just an expensive dream that will have to be realized at a later date. oh, well.

in the meantime, i will have to focus my ‘this old house’ energies on repainting the cast iron tub white instead of the obnoxious black it currently is. who paints the exterior of a cast iron tub black??? and then of course, there’s the trim in the two season sun room. or maybe some crown moulding in the living room?

too many projects, never enough money.