The House

The house is looking great. It really is. That’s been my focus for the past five months, and probably will be for the next five; I suppose a home owner’s work is never done, and that is fine. One of the things that has surprised me is how much we've been able to do at relatively little expense. I mean, we've spent some money but if you take into account the condition of the house before we bought it and the current state of our home, we've been able to make some great strides while not taking out any loans or opening credit cards or using any 'no interest til' gimmicks. In February, we’ve only spent $250 at The Home Depot, so that’s cool.

For me, the pride of our home is the 450 square feet of ceramic tile. It was my first experience with tile and the like. Will and I put down the quarter round last Saturday and I caulked and painted it and the baseboards with a white high gloss paint and it looks awesome. There are a couple things I need to tweak, but this has sort of pulled everything together and the first floor of the house is awesome.
With the tile done, Paula was able to do some deep cleaning this week throughout the house and it looks pretty stellar. The windows were the biggest thing as they hadn't been cleaned from the time the folks before us took everything and ditched in the dark of night (like a year ago) and now. They were awful, but there wasn't any point in cleaning them because of the crazy dust and debris being thrown around on a regular basis. But now they look great.

Big thanks to Todd and Will for helping me with the floor; to Greg, Melissa and Amy for their coming and picking up Lydia for the day on several occasions so Paula could work; to Papa K for saving us some coin in putting together the heating and air. This has saved us time, money and sanity. I think March will be fairly minimal - just some painting and touch up in prep for Nerf, Linds and Beckett- before we tackle landscaping chores in April.