Despite my best efforts to mess things up, sometimes they work out anyway – just not as expected. Take my house, for example. Or as I’ve said so many time these past 20 months, a la Henny Youngman, “Take my house – please!” Finally, someone has.

In the hope there’s something in it for you, here’s the full story. Thirty months ago, I was seeking a place to live with air less fragrant than St. Helens’ paper-mill fug. A search on Google told me Astoria’s air was among the freshest in the country, thanks to a maritime climate and ubiquitous winds. I already knew of Astoria’s history and turn-of-the-20th-century charm from weekend visits 30 years ago, when the wife and kids and I lived in Portland. I knew I could find a Victorian or Craftsman beauty needing some work, live in it for a couple years while fixing it up, then sell it and move on to another attractive project, turning a profit that would pad this widower’s modest retirement. Remember, this was 30 months ago, when bankers actually believed they couldn’t go wrong treating folks’ homes as investments perpetually increasing in value.

Bolstering my confidence, my St. Helens home sold in a week, to a native with impaired olfactory buds. Instantly, I rolled that equity into my Astoria diamond-in-the-rough: a stately Victorian near the Goonies house and the Kindergarten Cop school. Though my income was modest, my down payment was big; I had no difficulty getting a prime mortgage on my new, very old home: “Big Vickie,” I called her.

I went to work: a new garage, new windows and door for a basement ancillary dwelling unit, repaired porches, refinished fir floors, a more efficient kitchen with an optimized view of the river and space for an office, new landscaping, a tastefully repainted exterior. I was having a ball, making Big Vickie mine. And valuable – a reclaimed Victorian beauty worth a bundle!

I had few worries about what I was spending – didn’t even blink at the second mortgage needed to finish the remodeling. No worries at all, until I ran out of money, big time. My mortgages rates were low and fixed, but my credit card rates weren’t. My card payments tripled because my interest rates tripled, overnight.

Oops! Time to sell, earlier than planned – but not soon enough to avoid the mortgage industry/real estate meltdown, as it turned out. Big Vickie went on the market in November 2007, at a price that would recoup my investment, clear my debts and perhaps produce a small profit.

Last September, after scads of advertising and 11 months of nonstop open houses by my realtor, I finally got an offer I could accept. Not a full-price offer and not a “clean” one, but still OK. My buyers, respected local restaurateurs, expected to sell their house soon and then would exercise their option to buy Big Vickie. In the meantime, they would pay me rent that would cover the bulk of Vickie’s mortgage payments. So I bought a cheap trailer in a plus-55 park in Warrenton and hunkered into my temporary abode. Like Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardener (“Being There,” 1969), I knew that “All will be well in the garden in the spring.”

But unlike Chauncey, whose naïveté did produce an abundant spring, mine didn’t. My buyers opted out of their purchase option as their restaurant revenues went into free-fall. Oops again. I needed to find new buyers or other renters to subsidize my mortgages – right now.

Miraculously, I found both: renters through a classified ad, buyers referred by a dear and generous friend, who wanted to buy the house herself but couldn’t. I chose to deal with the buyers.

Thus began the move-to-closure process: hard negotiations over who would pay closing costs and loan fees (mostly me), a house inspection with more negotiations about who would pay for repairs (again, mostly me), and finally a bank appraisal producing a value lower than hoped for; I lowered the price to match the appraisal.

Through the entire process, I held to one thought: I would close this deal, by God – whatever it took. It took a lot. But escrow will close in 10 days.

Am I happy with how things turned out? Yes. And no. It’s never fun to lose money, even less fun knowing the loss stems from my own delusions. But I’m satisfied and grateful, and very pleased to have gotten to know a fine family who will enjoy my fine house – and who have invited me back to watch the Fourth of July fireworks from my old front porch.

If it’s true that we grow by making mistakes, I’m now a mini-Hindenburg (thankfully, not immolated). I’ve lost a pile of money but found joy living in my very humble home in my very congenial mobile home park.

And the pleasure of living within my income, ready for whatever the future will hold? Priceless.