Under Construction

After a year - or so - of living here David has restarted our house. We moved here rather unexpectedly, not that we hadn't meant to buy it, but we certainly had not planned on moving into it so fast. And looking back, we hadn't intended to buy it in the first place. When we buy flips we rarely pay more than 25,000 and before you get all excited about cheap houses, we ALWAYS get exactly what we paid for - holes in the wall, sagging ceiling, free cat pee. When we were shown this place it was well above our usual budget, but there was something about it so we forged ahead. The game plan had been David would fix it up and then we'd decide what to do with it, it pushed our budget right to the edge and then.......

Our neighbor at our previous house sold his home for a really high price. Hmm. So we planted our For Sale sign with the idea it might sell in four, five, months and it sold in less than one.  I frantically packed while working full time, David was over here double-timing it as he'd started the gutting process since he thought he'd have a lot more time. He got a couple of rooms livable - when people asked about my new house I'd just respond "well, I have a toilet and internet" - and that was true. We had no kitchen, the bathroom looked like something out of a 70's horror movie complete with old fixtures and peeling wallpaper. Squirrels danced in the attic, the wind blew in through the ceiling. David finished most of the first floor and closed in the falling apart covered porches, and stopped. 

Because we do not live on air - we bought the house in Mapletown and work commenced on that. It ended up being a lot more labor intensive than he'd originally planned and he lived up to the nickname I've given him - Mr. Pickypants. David's houses sell quickly because of this trait, he nitpicks and micromanages, I've seen him rip out whole sections because it didn't look right to him. The downside is it takes him longer to finish houses, the upside is they tend to fly off the market, so it works out. But he's done and the closing is tomorrow, his attention is back on our house. He's flying through the upstairs but oh, the mess! Dust everywhere - plasterdust, sawdust, dust dust dust. Construction waste, piles of old shingles and 2 x 4's litter my backyard. 

Everything is boxed and piled, it's so much harder than when you aren't living in it. 

But it's starting to come together and yesterday, standing upstairs I could see what it will look like. I don't think we'll move upstairs, we discussed it and right now the idea of hauling all the furniture and our stuff upstairs is overwhelming. We're probably not going to stay here, but who knows? At some point we'll have to stop moving, it does get tiresome never unpacking completely, looking at every new piece of furniture for pack ability instead of function, not feeling settled. Someday, we'll put roots down, someday. But not yet.