"Come one, come all!"

As we mentioned last week, home renovations can be costly. If you are planning such an undertaking, you may need to be creative in finding funds to pay for your remodeling. Depending on the scope of your project, you may even need to sell some heirlooms, such as vases, jewelry, paintings, Aunt Millie's fruitcake, your hair, your right leg, etc.

If your experience is anything like ours, before any actual remodeling occurs, you will first have to pay professionals to destroy your house. But do not despair, because the result of their demolition efforts may actually lead to ideas for offsetting the costs of demolition and remodeling.

In our case, for instance, the work has left our ceiling a tangled mess of wires that appear to wind all around the basement and have no purpose whatsoever. Pipes have been installed in such a way that they cover the most amount of territory possible, like the Family Circus children's random paths. In short, the ceiling resembles certain art exhibits occasionally seen in great museums.

Which has given us an idea. When we have guests over -- if the county ever allows us to let people in without signing some sort of waiver ("I hereby understand that objects may, without warning, fall on my head while visiting this household. I accept that this is a natural and beneficial part of the process of experiencing "art," and do herein hold the owners harmless") -- we can bill the dangling wires and exposed pipes as an art exhibit:

"View this daring, thought-provoking art collection from everyday life, an interactive, ever-changing display with randomly falling debris that has been collecting in this household for over a century. Take a piece of history home with you! In fact, take several!"

This billing would allow us to charge visitors a slight fee for the privilege of viewing our great exhibit. And if nothing else, people would pay a slight fee for the privilege of leaving the house.