Years ago, back in 2005, Mike and I were newlyweds.  Pistol and I had just moved up to Santa Fe from Albuquerque and I had closed my design business.  I was looking for a way to make a living in a new town.  The housing market was hot – flipping houses seemed like a good fit.  Mike had years of construction under his belt and I was a scrappy DIYer with a background in building theater sets and welding.  Mike was going to school at the time so I took the helm relying on him to help me on the weekends.

After shopping the Santa Fe fixer-uppers it was clear that this market was out of my budget.  I drove down to Albuquerque which hadn’t quite caught on to the housing bubble yet.  We found a great fixer-upper on Saint street.  It had everything you could want in a house to flip; good bones, only cosmetic damage and the eye watering stench of years of cat pee.  The best part was that it had a bomb shelter-who doesn’t want their own bomb shelter??  It had potential.  It was in a good neighborhood on a street where people kept their lawns mowed and trash in the containers.  The layout of the house was decent, it just needed was a  make-over.  We spent the next few months ripping out the old cat pee carpets, re-tiling everywhere, painting, landscaping and generally fixing the place up.

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