finish my house and sell it

Thanks to the help of my grandparents and another aunt (Sheila), our living room is now finished! It really just needed a fresh coat of paint (Good-bye, turquoise! Hello, boring white!) and a little deep cleaning.

The upstairs bathroom still needs a few finishing touches before I can declare it finished as well, but we’re closing in. The closet is done, all of the woodwork that needed to be replaced has been, the new toilet seat is installed, and the majority of the painting is done. There are a few seams above the shower that need to be puttied and sanded before I can apply a final coat of paint. And then it’ll be finished too! WOOHOO!

We pulled the nasty, mildewed carpet out of the downstairs bathroom, and Grandpa fixed the leaking pipe under the sink. He thinks we can paint the shower stall instead of replacing it, which will save us a couple hundred dollars. (YEA!) We have carpet left over from the office project, so we won’t have to pay for flooring either. I’m not crazy about carpet in bathrooms, and if we were planning to stay there, I’d probably want linoleum, but since we’re just getting it ready to sell, I can deal.

Grandpa and Chris also replaced all of the ripped screens in the whole house. (There were quite a few.) Chris’s dad had led us to believe rescreening was a huge ordeal, but it turned out to be pretty simple, and Chris is confident he can handle it next time, should the need arise, and with cats it inevitably will.

On tap for this week: Finish the bathroom and paint the stairway/hallway. My grandparents won’t be able to come this weekend, so we’re on our own.

Thanks to an unexpected visit from my take-charge (i.e., “bossy”) Aunt Sherry, my kitchen is now finished! It looks fantastic! Everything except the cabinets doors got a fresh coat of paint. Sherry spent two hours scrubbing the floor with some heady-duty cleaning stuff on Sunday, and that hideously ugly linoleum has never looked better. We cleaned up all the old paint splatters that were on the floor, backsplash, and baseboard heater when we moved in… I can’t describe how much better it looks. There are a few small things I’d still like to do, but it’s largely finished! WOOHOO!

Grandpa and Chris are still plugging away at the bathroom. I now have a mostly finished closet, which is ready to be painted sometime this week. We took down the smaller broken mirror and plan to put a medicine cabinet in its place. This week will be a lot of scraping, sanding, and painting. I’m so thrilled that I’ll soon be able to put my linens in an actual closet instead of cardboard boxes in the laundry room! YEA!

Due to cash flow issues, we haven’t been able to continue working on the basement as planned. However, this past weekend, my grandparents came over to help. Grandpa and Chris worked on the upstairs bathroom (which ended up having some plumbing problem we hadn’t anticipated), and Grandma and I started painting the kitchen. We got the cabinets and the hutch finished, which is the majority of the painting needed in that room anyway. They took us out to lunch on Friday, in addition to paying for all the supplies, and Grandma brought a vegetarian lasagna, garlic bread, and salad on Saturday. Because of the plumbing stuff, Grandpa didn’t get as much done in the bathroom as planned, so they’re coming back next weekend to do more.

I am so grateful to have so many generous, wonderful people in my life. I always have such a hard time asking for help, no matter how badly I need it, and this experience with the house has shown me that I need to be more honest and upfront with my family about the problems I’m facing. I never expect anyone else to deal with their problems alone, so why do I expect it of myself? Maybe it’s because I’ve always been determined to do everything on my own terms, and asking for help or even advice feels like I’m backing down. Maybe this is something I should work on.

This weekend, we pulled the nasty old carpet out of the basement and even pried up the tack strips and everything. We gave it a good cleaning too, so we may be able to start painting next weekend (fingers crossed).

We didn’t end up getting started on the basement this weekend. I’m a horrible wife, but it kind of dawned on me Sunday morning that we hadn’t made any plans for Chris’s birthday (which was Monday). He isn’t a birthday person, which is why we didn’t plan anything special even though it was his 30th, but we usually do something. So we spent Sunday celebrating his birthday instead, which was nice.

We’re now looking at next weekend to start on the basement. My grandpa is going to help us with the bathrooms, thanks to Mom. He’s going to buy all the supplies, and Mom is going to reiumburse him, so we don’t have to come up with anything out of pocket (whew!). But the best part is that he’s going to actually teach us to do everything, instead of just doing it for us. I love working with Grandpa, and I’m really excited to get started on this.

Now that we have a tentative date set for the Florida move (Oct. 1st), we really need to start working on the house. There are a lot of things we want to do before trying to sell it. Ideally, we’d like to make at least a little bit on it so we’ll have a down payment for a house in FL (renting sucks when you have a menagerie like ours). Mom’s coming tomorrow to give her opinions (generally more generously given than necessary; must be where I get it), and Chris and I are planning to work on the basement on Sunday. The basement and the two bathrooms are going to be the biggest time-sucks, not to mention the most expensive projects.

• pull out the nasty old carpet
• carry the futon out to the garage until it can be disposed of
• determine the best way to repair/replace the wall panels