I haven’t updated this site in the past week or so because I am buying a new house. This means I have to read through and sign mountains of paperwork for the mortgage company and the selling realtor. My phone rings all day. I can’t believe I bought the house that I’m in now and still went to work.

On top of trying to buy a new house, I have to remodel my house now and put it up for sale. I’ve began working Monday morning, a week ago exactly, and it’s been nothing but 18 hour days. I am able to take a break this morning and type this now because I am standing on an island of tile while three guys lay carpet in the rest of the house. My house doesn’t look a thing like it did seven days ago. This is all I’ve been up to:

  • Ordered a huge dumpster for the driveway. I am so glad I did this first, because having a big dumpster in the driveway allows allows me to throw things away. If all I had was the trash barrels from the city, I’d never get rid of all of this crap.; After shopping around for a couple hours, I finally settled on a more expensive company that had no hidden fees. They delivered the dumpster in two hours.;
  • Scraped up linoleum flooring. This was an absolute pain in the ass. I didn’t want to rent a tool to do this because I had so many people helping that I figured we’d just plow through it. But after a day of trying it the old fashioned way, I rented a machine for $50 and got the rest done in less than an hour. Lesson learned! By the way, I know that people put in linoleum because it was inexpensive and quick to install back in the 80s, but all you are doing is handing that hard work over to the people in 20 years who have to get rid of it.;
  • Cabinets. Removed doors and drawers from kitchen cabinets, filled holes, sanded, painted, then attached new hinges and handles.;
  • Kitchen Appliances. It takes a lot of money to buy a kitchen full of new stainless steal appliances: fridge, stove, vent hood, and dish washer. I had to shop around, compare prices online, and finally negotiate with the store. When you spend an average of $1000 each day, you have not choice but to find the best deal. Every dollar counts. The appliances look awesome.;
  • Removed old curtains, filled holes in the walls. The curtains were so dusty I could not believe it. I guess they haven’t been cleaned in over five years. They are old and nobody has curtains out here in AZ, so I used them as drop cloths so we didn’t get paint on the furniture.;
  • Paint. I spackled, sanded, and taped-off all the rooms: living room, kitchen, dining room, den, office, and three bedrooms. Smearing paint on a wall can go pretty quickly, but it’s a totally different process and result when you do it correctly. I still have to do both bathrooms, but I have to do that last because those have been our storage closets while we laid the tile.;
  • Cleaned windows, installed two-inch wood Blindz. Although this seems like a quick job, it’s still a lot of work. You have to measure, drill, measure, drill…
  • Landscaping.; I watered all of the backyard plants and trees so they look bright and healthy. My automatic water system does this normally, but I wanted to give them a little more water so they look even better. My friends weeded my desert landscaping and around my clementine tree. This was a lot of work. They filled up half of my green barrel with weeds. That’s easily 75 pounds of weeds.
  • Travertine tile. This has been the single biggest chore of the week. Luckily, my buddy Dustin offered me his tile cutting saw and a little advice. He showed up Monday morning at 6:30 AM. We worked together for a few hours and then it was all me. This is my first tile job, and I’ve gotten better as the project moved along. It’s been a week now, and I am finished laying all of the tiles, and all that is left is to put in the grout and put in a 3-inch tile baseboard.;
  • Carpet. So last night at nine Kevin and Nick came over to help us move all of the furniture out of the house so the carpet guys had room to work. I am infinitely indebted to these two. Together, we did some serious manual labor. We moved desks, cabinets, chairs, couches, etc. At midnight, I was making trips from the closet to the patio with armloads of clothes, shoes, and sports equipment.;

I finally fell asleep this morning at about one. Candyce worked through the night at the computer lab at ASU. It’s been a hell of the week for both of us. I’m remodeling a house and she’s finishing her semester.

I hope to paint the bathrooms this afternoon and begin putting the house back together. In two days, Wednesday, I want to put the house for sale. I should host an That means an open house on Saturday.

In the forty-five minutes of typing this journal, my carpet has gone from smelling like dust and cement to smelling like new carpet. It’s awesome.