Here's a profile in DIY courage, as presented by the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate.com. I Remodel, Therefore I Am / One man's 17-year love affair with an Alamo Square Victorian

Its a nice write up of the courage this guy has had--many of you will have empathy for him. :-)

Here's a preview to wet your appetite...

First, he had to deal with City Hall, which claimed that his building had actually been legally turned into a boardinghouse, so he wasn't allowed to remodel it as a single-family home. The city government wasn't the only party that seemed to be under the wrong impression about the house: Pecora often answered the door to men who had just been released from prison, looking for a room. "They got quite aggressive with me when I told them it wasn't a boardinghouse any more," he recalls.