Since the closing was pushed back two weeks, my panic attacks about this place have subsided....until tonight that is. For some reason I was wide awake at 3am thinking about all that this place needs and whether we have enough money to do it. Since I have failed to qualify for a loan or even for a Home Equity Line of Credit, everything we do to this place comes out of the stored away cash under the mattress account. Tossing and turning from 3-4 am while thinking about heat and windows and insulation is not good for the old back, so here I am, blogging about it at 4:45am in hopes that my panic attack will subside.

It didn't help that I showed the house to a woodworker friend this past weekend who advocated reducing the size of the addition by lopping off about 1/6th of it in favor of a larger porch on which to sit a look at the water! I am trying to economize here, not spend all my extra cash making sure that some renter has a sun deck on the first floor!

I recently came up with the idea though to have an outside set of spiral stairs leading to the second floor sun deck off the master bedroom. I went on Craig's list and found a listing for "old cast iron spiral stairs...$1000 in Brunswick" I emailed and asked for a picture and this is what I got back via email. It's a riser from the staircase that this guy has:

The staircase is apparently 9' tall, probably without a railing and in need of serious sandblasting!

The real estate market is starting to stabilize here in Maine, so that is one good thing in our favor. A number of places are selling again in Bayside, but for values far below the peak when a house with 14' of waterfront sold for a lot of money. After that, scores of houses went on the market at inflated prices and burst the bubble pretty fast.

Ok, back to sleep now...I hope.