Chapter Text
The north side walls on the ground floor (save the bathroom, funnily enough) were nearly unsalvageable. Horribly mildew stained, with holes punched in them from god-knows-what, but probably Jo’s uncle.
Man had a temper like thunderstorms on Jupiter.
In the end, Joe took out the drywall, replaced it as best she could, and then covered up the inevitable sub-par work with leftover lattice fencing from the backyard; neatly stained and finished. There you go. Lattice walls.
They looked very cottagecore.
Jo could do plumbing and reroofing; could replace windows, bathtubs, and rotted attic flooring. She could do all of those thing quite well, in fact, but she'd never got the hang of drywall. Ah well, she'd still managed to make it look nice. That was what mattered. Functional and presentable. No one was asking for perfection. At least Jo wasn't, not after so many months of renovations.
Jo had long since developed a talent for making do with fuck-all. Which she had reminded herself of many times while working to make her aunt's decrepit almost-McMansion habitable.
The thing had been built in the fifties, renovated to modernity in the eighties, and neglected ever since. The hardwood had been saved purely by virtue of Jo’s idiot uncle carpeting over it. Thank god for the late 19th century trend of ugly carpet floors. The pinewood planks had barely needed refinishing. Thank god. Imagine if she’d had to replace them.
Like in the attic.
Jo did not like to think about the attic.
By itself the damn thing had taken *months*.
In the end, she had scraped it together and it had become two decently sized bedrooms. Nothing grand, sadly. But Jo knew that grand was out of her budget and always had been, so she grit her teeth and worked until she got to “homey.” Jo could do homey.
A life of constant moving had taught her how to make a home where she could, however she could. Frankly, her aunt’s house had presented a unique opportunity. Jo had never stayed in one place for more than three years growing up (Columbus Ohio, 2001-2004) and she was surprised by how relieved she was for the chance to have a permanent home.
So, armed with a mildew infested house and the money her aunt had left her, Jo went about making one. She had no family to fill it with, which was a disappointment to Jo, who had always wanted a warm, bustling household but had never been given one.
Not seeing herself as one to end up with a long-term romantic partner and loathe to spend the rest of her life in a big house by herself, Jo resolved to turn the McMansion into a low-rent boarder house. Hopefully, in doing so, providing an opportunity for others to have affordable, stable housing and, ideally, feel secure.
It was this concept that Jo hammered into the attic floorboards, violently wrenched into the plumbing, and in general clung onto as the house spent many long months rebelling against functionality.
But in the end, victory went to Jo, and it was with great triumph that one sunny November she put an add out on Instagram for three rooms available to rent at Jo’s Boarder House.