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.

''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 run-down 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.

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.

Housebloggers point to Bill Chapman as the pioneer. Chapman made his first online journal entry in 1999 -- ''no one was using the word 'blog' yet'' -- the day he and his wife closed on Enon Hall, a Dutch colonial on four acres in Lancaster County, Va. that was deeded to an ancestor of Chapman's in 1762.

Seven years of renovation later, Chapman's journal on EnonHall.com gets 800 unique visits a day; his forum has 170 registered users. ''We get e-mails from people saying, 'You're doing something we've always dreamed of doing,''' Chapman says.

He, too, gets comfort at tough times from his virtual family. When Tropical Storm Ernesto hit Virginia earlier this month, it took its toll on the house. Demoralized, Chapman, 43, didn't post an entry for a while. Readers expressed concern: ''Hey -- hope you didn't fall off the scaffold!'' It was enough to lift Chapman's spirits and get him back online.

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.

Bandon, 39, says it's hard to document whether interest in home improvement has increased, or whether it's just that, as in so many areas, people have found each other on the Web. But it would seem the recent residential real estate boom -- now cooling from its record-setting pace -- has added to the number of people interested in fixing up their homes.

And Bandon -- a writer and senior editor at This Old House magazine, affiliated with the popular and long-running ''This Old House'' home improvement show on PBS (her blog is featured on their site) -- loves the response she gets from other women. Like her, they realize you don't need to be a guy to handle a power tool.

Bridging the gender gap is also important to Olson, who with her husband founded houseblogs.net three years ago (they also teach learning and development at Northwestern University.) ''Women write, 'You've motivated me to pick up a drill,''' she says.

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 Marrakesh. There's also a guy renovating a former missile base in upstate New York that he bought on eBay.

''Devil Queen'' author Ahlen, a 30-year-old legislative analyst, checks about a dozen fellow blogs each day. He's particularly grateful to the people at ''Nightmare on Elm Street,'' who sent him an extra set of Victorian doorknobs, and to Gary at ''This Old Crack House,'' who sent him some wood plugs for his floor. He also enjoys following the stories.

A novel, perhaps, with no ending. ''There's a debate on houseblogs over whether anything is ever 'finished,' says Olson. One day, maybe seven years down the road, she says, she and Aaron will look at each other and decide their project is done.

This is cache, read story here