Sugarhouse: Turning the Neighborhood Crack House into Our Home Sweet Home

An improbably funny account of how the purchase and restoration of a disaster of a fixer-upper saves a young marriage.

When a season of ludicrous loss tests the mettle of their marriage, Matthew Batt and his wife decide not to call it quits. They set their sights instead on the purchase of a dilapidated house in the Sugarhouse section of Salt Lake City. With no homesteading experience and a full-blown quarter-life crisis on their hands, these perpetual grad students/waiters/nonprofiteers decide to seek salvation through renovation, and do all they can to turn a former crack house into a home. Dizzy with despair, doubt, and the side effects of using the rough equivalent of napalm to detoxify their house, they enter into full-fledged adulthood with power tools in hand.

Heartfelt and joyous, Sugarhouse is the story of how one couple conquers adversity and creates an addition to their family, as well as their home.

They thought buying a house would solve their quarter-life crisis. Instead, it introduced them to the world of home improvement—and a whole new set of problems.

• A Fixer-Upper with a Past: From its mysterious stains to its former life as a crack house, this dilapidated building in Salt Lake City is more than they bargained for.
• Salvation by Power Tool: With zero experience, Matthew and Jenae tackle everything from rotten foundations to septic carpets, learning that adulthood looks a lot like a trip to the hardware store.
• Laugh-Out-Loud Funny: A witty, self-deprecating story about the absurdity of trying to save a marriage by taking on a project practically designed to destroy it.
• A Relatable Story of Adulthood: For anyone who's ever felt like a perpetual grad student or waiter, this is a hilarious and heartfelt account of finally, messily, growing up.