Well it took us long enough, but Errek and I are finally getting off our duffs and looking to take advantage of the incredibly low interest rates (along with pretty much everyone else in the country).

As it turns out, despite the down economy and the burst housing bubble, our neighborhood is still valued pretty well -- far above what we currently owe. As a result, we've now got our hearts set on getting a little cash out of this thing, only to turn right around to put that cash back into this thing (oh dream kitchen, how I've longed for you).

The only problem is, the value which the banker has on his little sheet of paper now has to be verified by an appraiser. If he's the number-crunching type of appraiser, then we should have no problem. If, however, he is the walk-through type of appraiser, we fear that our lack of drywall in some rooms, lack of a real kitchen, and the overall unfinishedness of the house will hurt us.

And so it may be that our slow and underfunded past efforts to remodel the house could further slow and underfund our future efforts to remodel the house.

Yep.

Lame.

But, the fat lady hasn't cleared her throat yet! Until we get a call from an appraiser to set up an appointment, we still have time to decide our own fate. We've planted some shrubs in our long fallow brink planters for that all important "curb appeal". On the inside, we're planning a drywalling frenzy, we're going to finish out the temporary workshop, and polish the bathroom to a blinding shine.

If the appraiser wants to see the house, then we'll fill his head with all the gory details of how we brought the plumbing up to code, replaced 60-year-old (read: dangerous) electrical wiring, and replaced the entire sewer. If he still gets hung up on the lack of pretty parts, well then we'll just have to forgo the cash and work on this thing at our usual snails pace. We've done it before and we can do it again.

That said, wish us luck!