Pat Curry is a former senior editor at Builder, the official magazine of the National Association of Home Builders, where she covered new home sales and marketing. A veteran journalist, her freelance articles have appeared in such publications as USA Weekend, Smart Business, Working Mother, American Profile and BobVila.com. When she’s not writing about real estate, she is planning, executing or recovering from a remodeling project.
My father wasn’t very happy about the fact that I was engaged at 19, until my fiance, also 19, announced that he was buying a house. That got my dad’s attention. To him, it was an indication that this was a serious young man who would take good care of me. ... It took a lot of vision to see our house in South Florida, an FHA repo, for what it could be. Little more than a concrete box, it had no heat, no air conditioning and no appliances. The yard was nothing but weeds. The next-door neighbor regaled us with stories of the owners' family members shooting at each other inside the house. That explained the bullet holes in the walls and the letters from prison in the attic. ... Over a long holiday weekend, I helped my fiance paint the house. Before making the 325-mile drive back to the University of Florida, where I was a senior, I painted ‘I love you’ and a flower on the inside of a closet door for him to find after I was gone. With all the remodeling we did in the house, we never painted over it. I’d like to think it’s still there."