As for the outside, "We had no idea what we were getting into," Jude says with a frown.
Here's what they were getting into: tough dirt, exhausted trees, and rocks and weeds so angry that city bureaucrats cited the Yosts for neglecting the landscape - even as they were pouring cash and sweat into their bottomless pit of a house.
Before vaulting into that pit, neither Jude nor Clyde, who have three kids and own a transportation-distribution company, had experience in gardening or home renovation. You could tell because as they approached each task, they'd look at each other and cheerfully ask: "How hard can it be?"
How hard to lay tile? How hard to blow out a wall?
"How hard can it be?" they taunt in unison now, laughing their heads off, trying to get a rise out of their audience. It's as if the simple, constant repetition of this absurd notion will summon the knowledge, the skill, the energy and the money to accomplish all.
Neighbor Norm Klinger, a retired lawyer, says he saw "a lot of elbows and butts" when the Yosts were in their restoration frenzy. But it inspired him to attempt jobs he'd never have imagined before, like soldering copper pipes to his outside shower.
"What's the worst that can happen? I kill myself, lose an eye, whatever," jokes Klinger, who nicknamed Jude "the unsinkable Molly Brown."
But you can't argue with success, folks.
Wish we could report that the Yosts' new tile is crooked, that the rebuilt walls are lumpy, that the freshly installed windows fall on your head when you open them.
Guess it wasn't that hard.
Even in the garden.
