Greetings, and welcome to official blog of Casa Vitone, our 1920s Victorian fixer-upper in the Highland Park neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Dylan and I look forward to updating you on our progress--or lack thereof--as we tackle this do-it-yourself renovation project in the coming days and decades. Gulp.

For now, I begin with a story:

It happened a few weeks ago, at our kabillionth trip to the zillionth home-improvement store, to size up yet another bloody electric saw. Nervous over the house, I was starting to feel a case the grumpies coming on. I came this close to snapping, "Why can't we do our comparison shopping online, like normal 21st-century people?!"

But I stopped myself, took a deep breath. "So,” I said. “How did you manage to learn so much about power tools?"

"My dad taught me a lot," Dylan said, testing out the handle on the display model... um.... thing. He paused, moving on to the next doodad in the aisle. "You know, I actually learned a lot because of skateboarding, too. Me and my friends used to make halfpipes."

I loved this image of him: a rat-tailed, hammer-wielding child of the 80s. Meanwhile, I was hundreds of miles away, feathering the daylights out of my bangs and sewing my own scrunchies. In our own way, we were each carving out little pieces of the world for ourselves.

I asked him where they built their halfpipes. "In our yard," he said. "We stashed all the stuff by the railroad tracks for weeks, then we built it all in one day, while Mom and Dad were at work.... Heh heh. Wow. My parents were the coolest.... Not that they let us get away with it. They made us take it all down the next day."

He smiled, remembering, and I could tell it was still worth it.

Since we put in our offer on the house two months ago, people have been giving us that you-naive-doofuses stare. They keep asking, "You do know this kind of thing is really hard on a marriage, don't you?"

We know they're right. We cannot begin to imagine the grumpies yet to come: Mornings when we'll wake up with plaster dust in our eye boogers. Nights when we'll lie awake worrying over the cost of making this alleged great value of a house livable. Plenty of moments in between when we'll take our frustrations out on each other.

But. Standing in the kabillionth power-tool section of the zillionth store for the umpteenth time, I learned something entirely new about this man I've been married to for nearly seven years. Cold feet be damned. Suddenly, I couldn't wait to thrash up an old house with him.

I've dubbed this blog Bless This DIY Mess, a phrase inspired by DIY craft diva Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching, because it appealed to me for several reasons:

1) Come on. It's cute as all get-out. (Props, Jenny!)

2) As a neat freak entering my own worst nightmare--a house full of misplaced objects, unfinished projects, and dust of every conceivable variety--I figured the phrase might serve as a kind of mantra, a compulsive cleaner's serenity prayer.

3) I thought it would be fun to use a houseblog as an excuse to write a few variations on a theme--namely, DIY messes in the much broader sense.

4) Bless This DIY Mess just sort of fits us. We're grownup crafty kids, creative professionals forging our own career paths and making it up as we go. We're the new owners of a great old house that's in dire need of TLC--a place that, according to our super-cool neighbor, "has nice hardwood floors n'at--it's just been prostituted for a really long time." And, as my folks would be quick to point out, we're thirty-somethings who in just a few years hope to embark on the mother of all DIY projects: a family.

That's right, I'm gonna keep stretching this metaphor until it cries. 

I’m coming to terms with the fact that for the rest of our lives, Dylan and I will be wallowing in some or other kind of a disaster of our own design--a renovation mess, a toddler mess, a we’re-too-busy-with-work-to-even-look-at-that-kitchen mess.

But sometimes, in the great DIY misadventure that is life, isn't there a bit of serendipity--say, an original 1921 fireplace hiding behind that crumbling wall of plaster? (A girl can dream.)

Sometimes, isn't the smug afterglow over one project's "after" photo enough to keep you going through a dozen more "during" disasters? (A girl can hope.)

And regardless, isn't there a lot to be said for the equity of sweat and the motivation of naive-doofus optimism? (I have to believe.)

At least we'll have each other to laugh with. And at least all of these messes will be ours.

So there you have it: my grand plan for this little corner of the blogosphere. I hope you'll enjoy it. And if you don't.... well, bless you anyway.