Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Holy Cow!

Last picture moving out of FL - again!
It's been a long time since I posted a blog!  We've been busy and have a ton left to do.  Lots see if we can catch everyone up on the last month concisely.  Well, not likely but I'll try.

The purple room every house needs
Let's start by filling everyone in on all that had to be done.  Our house in Florida was bought during the highest quarter in real estate history.  Yes!  Buy high sell low...or is that sell high buy low.  Well, clearly it's not important because it's an investment in our future.  Oh, the agony.  This time around we bought a foreclosure.  Well, it's not exactly turn key.  We've had many a vision of the classic "Money Pit."  The previous owners took everything!  And I mean everything!  They ripped it (it being everything) out of the wall and took it with them leaving the holes, anchors and holes behind.  Did I mention there were a lot of holes?  I know a great drywall guy, though if you need a recommendation.  We bought 45 light bulbs.  Holy cow!  I can't tell you how many trips I made to Home Depot simply to buy more light bulbs.  They took every piece of hardware; door knobs, every single nob that went to a drawer.  Think bathrooms, kitchen, every closet door, etc.  The ripped all the closets out and I do mean ripped out.  So we had to patch them all and then buy shelves and dowels so we could hang things up.  They started to rip the trim off, but it must have been too challenging because they only tore up the master bedroom and our guest room.
And the every color in the rainbow room

Oh, the paint.  We used 19 gallons of paint - the entire house has been painted; every closet, room and even the downstairs ceiling had to be painted.  We painted every orifice in this house.  I pity the poor family members that encouraged us to move closer to home only to find out they had to pay penance immediately upon our arrival by picking up a paint brush and not putting it back down for 72 hours.  It was 2 cases of beer and 6 gallons of paint a day.  Three days and we painted the whole house.  I even got coaxed (possibly by purchasing this house) to getting up on scaffolding borrowed from a neighbor my father-in-law made friends with 10 minutes before, 25 feet in the air suspended over a very long drop with a ladder propped up against the upstairs railing and another 25 foot ladder in the entry way.  Clearly, we won't be changing the color anytime soon.  I don't want to see another paint brush for a long, long time.  The boy's bedrooms required 4 coats of primer to get rid of the purples, yellows, greens, oranges, reds and blues the previous owners thought would be, one can only assume, cute.  Weirdos!  Why are people so weird!?
Everyone was pitching in
We had to get all new appliances and they are installed and functioning. We can eat again!  We bought yet another washer and dryer and dare I say we purchased the same ones again!?  Oh the insanity.  We keep moving from gas to electric to gas and selling the incompatible ones always being one step behind.  For the love! We replaced the carpet on the main level and shampooed the upstairs carpet.  Would you believe we had to replace all the aerators in every sink - the last people took them.  If you don't have them when you turn on the faucet water sprays everywhere. I repeat - weirdos!  Who steals aerators?!  Shower heads?  Yup, needed new ones.  They took the hardwired smoke detectors.  Those won't even work wherever you took them.  Who steals smoke detectors? They did leave one or two but took the 9-volt batteries out.  When we were painting it was beep, beep, beep, beep. I'm going beeping crazy with all the beep beep beeping and need to run to Home Depot to buy 10 beeping 9-volt batteries! I'm sure those fetched pennies on the open market.  There is a huge after market for used 9-volt batteries.  My personal favorite, though, was they took the screws out of the garage door so whenEver you opened the garage door it's hanging by a thread onto the mechanism that carries the door up.  In other words at any moment in time it can come crashing done on some unsuspecting family member doing their penance at our house. Nice one!  Who would be that psychotic?  I actually need to fix that still.  This house has 2 garage doors, though so you can drive right through your garage to the backyard.  Who knew that would be so convenient?
It's not easy painting a ceiling

My poor folks were spending quite a bit of time watching the boys and both got sick during all this.  Quinny caught the flu and puked all over my mom, her couch, her rug and Carrie. For a bonus, it was beef stew night. Ewwww.  Gavin had pneumonia and still hasn't recovered. Sweet.  Did I mention we did all this in 4 days?  Holy cow!  We had a lot of help.  Thanks to my parents, Carrie's parents, Uncle Brett, Uncle Spuke and Carrie's grandparents for the child watching, the painting, all the food and prepared meals, the patience, the countless hours of hard, really hard work and the 3 times daily trips to Lowe's, Home Depot and everywhere else we've been.  Lastly, thanks to Miller Lite for providing a daily dose of sanity for all involved.  Pictures to come!
This guy does not like heights

We also celebrated Carrie's birthday, our anniversary and mother's day.  They were all possibly the worst celebrated holidays in our lives.  It was here have a beer, put that paint brush down for 5 minutes, slam said beer and get back to work.  I love you.  Happy anniversary!  That second honeymoon is a long ways away.

Our new beautiful lake with the sun setting last night
The good news is the pool guy is coming tomorrow.  Did I mention we have a fantastically large in-ground pool complete with slide and diving board pool that presumably once drained of swamp water and filled with beautiful aqua blue water will be the envy of the neighborhood?  We're hoping to have it operational and not have it on the money pit list by, dare I roll the dice and say this weekend?  C'mon house, show me the love!

2 comments:

  1. Josh, I'm a journalist and writing a story about fixer upper homes and foreclosure. I was hoping to speak with you about it. Please email me at alinadizik@gmail.com and I can give you more details. My deadline is end of day today. Thanks in advance!

    ReplyDelete