Let's take a look at what we're working with, shall we? We bought the house from a guy named Paul – a ruddy older dude from the East Coast, former ski patroller, the kind of guy who'd ride a bike up the Alpe d'Huez on his 70th birthday – who had spent the past 20 years slowly overhauling this house. He's also a genius of reuse, with a magpie's eye for found materials: a demigod of DIY.

He found some hand-hewn doors in Mexico, hauled them home and built a front gate around them...

...Pulled one of those bubble-like skylights from a defunct office park and added on a sunroom (which leaks like crazy, by the way; puddles and puddles – sometimes it's more of a rain-room than a sunroom).

A reclaimed railroad-tie beam in the living room looked too new for Paul, so he rubbed black shoe polish on it and set it on fire: the pyro approach to interior design.

When Paul moved out, we inherited his assortment of antique fence posts and massive timbers and hundred-year-old bricks, all picked up by Paul in Mexico or Montana, all to be used in some future dreamscape he'd never get around to building. All around the property are the unfinished legacies of Paul. Ornate Mexican tiles left uncaulked, half a kitchen unrenovated – everything always an ongoing project. He built six sheds around the property to house all these odds and ends while they awaited their architectural destiny. One of them has hundred-year-old Mexican doors with a hand-forged iron latch on it; it used to hold his camping gear. (I keep a please-repair-me motorcycle engine in it.)

The practical result of Paul's mania is that when something breaks or needs to be replaced, we can't just pick up a new one off the shelf at GiantMart; we have to track down the Bangledeshi craftsman who fabricated the original, only to be told the craftsman's dead or the goat whose horn he harvested to make the drawer pull we're seeking has since gone extinct. Another downside is that nothing is standard – no nut, no bolt, no pipe, no flange – meaning that GiantMart is largely useless, but the elderly dudes down at the local plumbing supply will have what we need. But another, more ethereal result is that we've become more aware of the value of the unique or original: We don't want a new one off the shelf. We want to build around those fence posts and bricks; we want to make work what we've got.

Paul was, for the most part, retired, and had more than enough time to dawdle over which oak plank reclaimed from an upcountry ranch to put where. We've got jobs, and a bit of book-learnin', but maybe not quite the eye or innate skill that Paul has. Join us in crossing our fingers, won't you?

Next Time: Our first project – ostensibly the easiest upgrade – replacing our 1970s water-hog dishwasher.