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though? I don't DO tornadoes.

      "Don't worry", my husband said. "They never hit in the city. You're safe!"

      Our New Beginning

      Racing towards our Minneapolis home, I'd never been so scared in my life.

      Normally, I'd consider myself to be calm under stress… maybe even thrive on it. When having conversations that no couple should ever have to have, as our world was coming down around us though? Not so much. On May 22, 2011 our lives changed. Violently.

      A few months earlier, we'd been renting-to-own a home in a nearby suburb. The rent was crippling us, and it was impossible to save up for a down payment. It was a world of hurt for us, but we loved the house, and tried to stick it out.

      When the foreclosed house next door sold for 1/3 of what we were contracted to pay, though... we decided to look into buying a foreclosed home.

      I still laugh when I think about how lucky we were, in buying this new house. Within minutes of finding out the selling price of the neighbor's house, we were scanning listings online.

      I came upon one listing that grabbed my attention. To this day, I don't know what it was that caused me to take notice. It was a fairly average older house, one of many in our price range. The exterior was not the nicest color, but the inside looked "ok". There wasn't a ton of room... there wasn't any real particular advantage to this house at all.

      Instinct is a funny thing. I just had a feeling that THIS was our house. We wanted to see it right away, super excited about the possibility of owning our own home. So, just after 8pm that night, we drove out to look at it, in the dark.

      It was a house. It was dark, and completely in snow. Just a regular old house, nothing really spectacular... but I was still feeling like this was "the one". I arranged to meet a realtor at the house the next day.

      Honestly, the tour almost ended immediately. The kitchen was awful - seriously the worst kitchen I'd ever seen in my life. It was tiny, had awful cabinetry up one side, a weird, super tall sink unit (that was very trashy looking), and it was shaped like a ... stealth bomber.

      I felt sort of guilty about wasting the realtor's time, so I toured the rest of the house. The two bedrooms on the main floor would make great offices for us. The bathroom was awful, though. The living and dining rooms had gorgeous dark wood trim, but the walls were in crappy shape.

      I headed up the stairs to the converted attic, which was the main bedroom. Huh. Some moron had sprayed popcorn finish all over the walls and ceiling, and then painted it an ugly yellow color. Never seen anything like THAT before!

      From the top of the stairs, I scanned the room, with its unfinished floor. That amount of space would be nice... I could picture hanging out on the mini deck on the other side of a patio door... I think I was trying to convince myself that my initial instinct wasn't horribly wrong.

      Then I noticed a weird little alcove off the far end of the room, behind the stairs. Unlike the bizarre yellow popcorn walls, it was nicely finished in cedar. It looked new... what the hell? Was that a .. THERE IS A JACUZZI IN THE BEDROOM? Maybe I'm simple, but the idea of buying a house for $45k, that had a Jacuzzi alcove in the bedroom? That's enough reason to make everything else work. I have NO idea why that Jacuzzi was neither mentioned nor photographed in any of the real estate listings for the house, but I loved it.

      I had my husband drop what he was doing at work, and come view the house.

      On first glance, he thought it was a cute older house, and immediately fell in love with the woodwork. Aside from the gorgeous dark wood trim that I loved, the hardwood floors throughout were in excellent condition, and the doors were all solid wood.

      He's a handy guy, so started looking for potential deal breakers. He checked out the foundation, looked for any sort of major repairs that would be needed. Not as concerned about the cosmetic issues, he wanted to ensure we were buying a sound home.

      Having already researched the crime statistics that morning - North Minneapolis having a reputation as a bit of a bad neighborhood - he gave his seal of approval, and we put in an offer immediately. One month later, the house was OURS.

      For him, the bedroom was a huge selling point. While his calculations on crime and population density had us facing the average of getting broken in to once every 5 years, he loved the idea of the bedroom as an "oasis". No matter what may be going on outside, this would be our fortress of solitude, vaulted above the street below.

      We hired dry wallers and painters to come in and fix the place up. The popcorn finish was scraped from the bedroom wall and all of the ceilings, with "knock down" texture added. New carpet was installed in the bedroom. The walls on the main floor were repaired and painted. I made custom curtains for the entire house. Aside from the kitchen and bathroom, the interior of the house was gorgeous when we moved in, in March 2011.

      For budget and scope reasons, we decided to wait until the summer to start discussing what we were going to have to do in the kitchen and bathroom. They just required too much work, to try and wrap our heads around at the time. With the rest of the house done so beautifully, though... we could wait.

      We were so very happy with our purchase, and with the work that had been done so far. This house was our freedom! It was the end to paying exorbitant amounts of rent, with no long term gain from it. It was OURS, and we loved it.

      That's not to say that it was perfect, of course. With our new purchase came a list of things that the city wanted us to do to renovate it. Most items were small… replace the outlet covers, put a new railing on the stairs to the basement. The big, labor intensive, and expensive to-do was to add railings to our sizeable deck, which would have to wait until the snow melted.

      We had plenty to keep us occupied for the next 3 months. The decision to move, home purchase, and actual move had all happened so fast, nothing had been properly packed. We picked away at unpacking the many boxes, and trying to get things where they were supposed to be.

      We tackled some of the interior fixes that needed to be done. We brewed up a few batches of wine in our new "brew room". We thoroughly enjoyed our new "oasis" bedroom... soaking in the Jacuzzi, watching movies, and snuggling with our 4 cats. Life was good!

      As spring arrived, the melting snow provided us with another unexpected surprise from the house.

      Carrying groceries in from the car, I noticed an ugly, wrinkled little mass on the ground. I wasn't sure what it was, but damn - there were quite a few of them. I was hoping that it wasn't some sort of weird fungus, when I saw that one of them was cracked open. It looked like... yes, it was a walnut. A walnut!

      I can't even tell you how excited I was to find out that the huge, gorgeous old tree in our back yard was a black walnut tree. I'd never had a walnut tree before, but I'd heard of other people locally who owned them - and I was a little jealous.

      The discovery sent me into a flurry of research. What do you do with the walnuts? How do you shell them, dry them... what would I make with them? The ideas flew. I'd actually just read an article about making Nocino liqueur, and Italian walnut liqueur.

      In addition to the happiness that the find brought me, it also brought a bit of negative information. I learned that black walnut trees render the soil beneath them - for a large radius - toxic. Not many plants would grow in our back yard, as a result.

      "Oh well", I thought. We may not be able to have a garden out there like we'd hoped, but we had WALNUTS! I was so very excited for the possibilities.

      As the end of May - and our repair deadlines - approached, we planned for the completion of the deck railings. We did the math, selected the necessary wood and hardware, and placed an order for everything we needed. My husband cleared some room in the garage - which was impassable, with unpacked boxes from our move. I worked on unpacking my office, to allow for us to bring in the final piece of my matched set of office furniture, a shiny purple hardwood credenza.

      Knowing we'd need to rent a truck to haul the wood, I juggled logistics to handle a few other errands at the same time, maximizing that

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