This is the victorious before and after section ... except that after almost a year here it's still very before. OTOH, the worse 'before' looks, the better any 'after' will look. So here goes.

I found this unlikely houseon the Internet somewhere in many hours of searching for '2 bedroom, ranch, fenced yard, under $100,000'. Very few houses in the extended Baltimore area (not Baltimore City because of the two-dog limit) meet that description; most of them turned out to be mobile homes in trailer parks with no trees and certainly no yard for the dogs and forget the baby grand piano. Others were former military housing tract homes on barren flats next to military bases, mostly duplexes and all utterly without character and crawling with children and barking dogs and dis-assembled pickup trucks.The remainder were H.U.D. houses, houses repossessed after their federally insured mortgages had been foreclosed, houses being sold as-is to recoup the balance of the unpaid mortgage.

When I first saw this house in April 2003, it clicked. Despite the remains of a removed swimming pool and pilings left over from where they cut off and removed the decking. Despite the obviously unusable outside unit of the heat pump - central air conditioning system. Despite the hanging lines from the missing propane tanks. And that was just the outside.

But I loved the big back yard and the six-foot fence and the seclusion of trees just beyond the back fence, and the plantings and the cute little picket fence in the front. And the wooden walkway to the door, with no steps - and two, count 'em two! driveways to park in.

I didn't know then that the sheds were there because there was no inside storage and no basement and that the big shed had cloud cover for a roof. I didn't know that the lovely wooden fence was twenty-one years old and standing through sheer stubbornness. I didn't know that 'heat pump' is a fancy name for central cooling but forget central heating. I didn't know that the missing propane tanks were the only source of gas for hot water and cooking, that the town had declined BGE's request to put in natural gas lines years ago.

But I did know I could afford it, and the dogs would fit, and the piano would fit, and there would be no more parking tickets.

And then I went inside.