Time to open those 'healed wounds'

And by that, I mean its time for us to start work on the house again. We’d focused all our efforts on the inside of the home back when we bought it and moved in (Jan of '06). This spring, summer, and fall are dedicated to the outside of the home. It needs and will get: painted, new sidewalk, new front stoop, roof and soffit patchup, and whatever else comes along.

I think enough time has passed that I’ve somewhat forgotten how mentally exhausting (not to mention physically) it all was. Time to go at it again and see how we fare. I’ve gotten to a point now where I can almost joke about how awful it was, when people say something will cost say $1,000...I now know that *really* means I have no idea but it will probably be at least 5x that. And that my idea of timelines and timeframes have no business in rehabbing. Hmm, I think I’m still a little bitter! Lol.

Seriously though, I’m going to truly try to go into this with a more flexible mindset, so I’m not freaking out all the time when deadlines aren’t met and budgets are seriously blown. Thinking back, almost makes me want a valium-laced vodka cocktail right now, it was that anxiety filled –but Lance and I can get through it, we will persevere!!! (just keep swimming, just keep swimming). It is no secret that I have a short fuse, but when Lance’s fuse got tripped last time....that was big. It takes a lot to get him angry, (one of many reasons he is the ying to my yang) but he got angry. But we have learned a lot about things and will hopefully have better luck with contracts/etc. this time around.

On the positive side, it is exciting to me that the house will now be pretty on the outside. As they say on the TV, its all about curb appeal. And since our renter goes away at the end of this summer and we’ll be renter-hunting, it is only wise to make it appealing to those on a drive by checking the place out.

The scaffolding is in place and the scraping has begun, woohoo! Scraping outside paint, so far, is still yucky work, but WAY better than scraping the 16 layers of paint and wallpaper that was inside the house. Its also no secret that I am a big klutz, so this business of scaffolding has me a little on edge. I once fell off one step and broke both feet – ONE step – BOTH feet, makes me wonder what a tumble off the scaffolding holds.... But we won’t think about that :) Teri reminded me that any time spent on the scaffolding needs to be on the buddy system, advice I will totally heed.