No one should ever be afraid of their own house. I’ve been watching Paranormal State a lot lately, so this is something I’ve been thinking about. I’d never experienced “house fear” until moving here and checking out the basement den. Initially, the basement was one of the things that excited us the most about this house—it came with a wall unit for the TV and our many DVDs, as well as a laundry room. But once we stepped into it, we both instantly felt that the basement had a creepyness to it, regardless of its awesome practical features. The wood paneling and dark lace curtains that came with the room only added to its bleak feeling.

The first step was simply cleaning. We borrowed Derrick’s mom’s steam mop and went over the floor three or four times before returning the mop. Though the house didn’t come with a stench, it was obvious that the previous tenants were smokers and layer after layer of dirt came off the floor. Though the linoleum still wouldn’t be my first pick of flooring, it lost its dingy look and grimy feel after the multiple mops.

The second step was filling the room. Our central piece of furniture is a futon. We keep buying this futon over and over. We had it in Asheville, got rid of it. We had it in Flagstaff, got rid of it. We got it again here (though thankfully Dad talked Big Lots into letting us take the floor model—yay for skipping installation!) It is a simple black futon, and it’s already been slept on multiple times by guests. But simply filling the space wasn’t enough. The black coloring only brought out what was already dark in the room. I began keeping an eye on futon cover prices, and I eventually found a reasonable red one at Walmart.

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