Renovation blogs take off.

A couple of years ago the idea of blogging about your house renovation would have had you labelled as crazy. Now, of course, it is very common. Now the mainstream media is writing stories about bloggers writing stories about their renovations.

The Toronto Star has captured the flavour of these online renovators:

Welcome to the entertaining world of home improvement blogs.

Yes, Ahlen's nemesis is merely his stubborn old house near Atkins, Ark., a Queen Anne Victorian he's dubbed "The Devil Queen" — or on tough days, "the house of pure evil." And he's just one of hundreds of "housebloggers" who swap tales of stripping paint, restoring windows, installing fixtures, varnishing, scraping, caulking, sawing, hammering, shaving and drilling.

As with all worlds brought together by the Internet, it doesn't matter where you are. You can be at your villa in Morocco, commenting on the stain a fellow blogger has chosen for his floor boards in Wisconsin. You can be in your tiny studio in New York City, getting advice from Australia about the backsplash in your kitchen.

And the best thing? "Nobody thinks you're crazy," says Jeannie Olson, author of the "House in Progress" blog and editor of a whole community of blogs. When you buy a rundown house that needs years of renovation, says Olson, "people you know think you're completely insane. You lose your social life."

But in the blogosphere, you have a home.

"This is where you can really vent, find commiseration, find motivation," she says. "And you get such great ideas from people!"

And friendship — virtual, maybe, but also quite real. When Olson and her husband, Aaron, had their first child eight months ago, they posted a delivery-room video of newborn Grace. It was only natural, since readers were well acquainted with their first "baby" — their house in the Albany Park section of Chicago.

And, naturally enough, Morocco gets a mention.

There are now 358 blogs on houseblogs.net. Among them: bloggers from Australia, Estonia, France and even Morocco, where an American family is designing and building a guest house in Marrakech. There's also a guy renovating a former missile base in upstate New York that he bought on eBay.

Mmm... one guy in Marrakech? For several years David Amster's site (House in Fez) has been a font of knowledge for the extreme renovators in Fez and Marrakech. The View from Fez then came along, followed several months later by Fez Restoration Blog and a host of others.

But, good blog or bad blog, the trend seems set to continue. According to the Toronto Star...

You don't need four acres — or even a mortgage — to have a popular houseblog. New Yorker Alex Bandon has about 550 square feet — pretty typical for a one-bedroom rental in the city. But her blog, "The Shelter Life," has had 20,000 visitors since she began it this summer, she says.

The full Toronto Star story here: Bloggers share the pain and pleasure

Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news