::tap tap:: is this thing on?

It's been almost a year, during which not much has happened on either house front. The old place is listed, the new place got a new floor in the dining/front room, and eventually, we'll take the Christmas lights down.

Your basic holding pattern, at least until the old place either sells (pleasepleaseplease) or we find renters for it.

Owning two houses: a mistake for all but the super rich.

Frustration

You know, I'd had one specific about the paint for the living room at Beacon. One.

It was the one echoed by our real estate agent, back when we thought we'd be selling the place (which we may still try, but renting's looking more likely): don't paint the living room white or off white. It was pretty specific. I was pretty specific.

So what, on looking at the color I had chosen, does my husband do? (Me being stuck at home with the kid, who was a little under the weather.)

Decides he doesn't like it for the room, goes out, buys off white paint.

It's a really, really stupid thing for me to be so angry about, and make no mistake, I'm foot-stomping, wall-kicking, door-slamming mad right now, but for the love of all that is holy, I was pretty freaking vocal about the NO OFF WHITE thing.

The room was off white when we bought the place, and it looked awful. Worse than awful. It's a SE facing room, and the light's always filtered and dim. White or off white paint makes it look oppressive and gloomy and just bad. It accentuates all of the bad of the room, and none of the good. Which is the last thing any part of that house needs right now, when we need to get it pulling at least part of its weight.

Nope, mood not really improving.

I'm not sure what would improve it, outside of running away on a life of crime.

Hindsight being 20/20...

I wish we'd painted the office before we moved in.

The office is half of what was once the downstairs bedroom. When the previous owners converted the parlor/living room to their bedroom (I suspect he had knee issues that made the upstairs difficult for him), they used a little less than half the small bedroom down here for a closet, and turned the larger portion into an office. (If we ever do the whole wild plan involving expanding the house slightly, I think we may undo this.) The office, like the parlor and closet, has blonde laminate floors (I'll undo this even if we don't expand or undo the office/closet split). It also, probably a result of depersonalizing for sale, has beige, beige, wow, I hate beige, walls. And trim. And doors.

When triaging activities, I determined we could live with it.

I forgot one key thing: it's the most-used room in the entire house.

And I really, really, really hate beige.

Old house update

Except for the yard, which used to be my pride and joy and is now a huge mess of not-so-benign neglect (there's a reason my original blog years ago was called "The Weeds are Winning," and now they've won, and you know, I need to give up and find where I put my Chicago Manual of Style, because the punctuation inside this parenthetical just looks off, though I haven't worked as a proofer since back in the time of said original blog, and maybe my more technical career path since has destroyed my ability to tell if a sentence is well-formed, that part of my brain now given over to XML), the old house is looking pretty good.

Exterior paint (needed to be done when we moved in, frankly) has been applied, the missing bits of siding patched, the bedroom and its little roomlet to the side given a fresh new floor and appropriately sized for the era trim, the kitchen got a refresh, and the only real major project left is finishing the built-ins. And then some serious clean up, but the heavy lifting, it's mostly done.

It only took, umm... six months.

Six months is a lot longer than we thought it would take to get the place in shape. I think the spouse thought he could do it all in two weeks (ahahahaha--pardon me while I breathe), and I was working under the 1-2 month assumption.

Since July, it's been "almost done" in my head. Now it's really rounding into that, but wow, can we ever pick crappy timing for this kind of thing. (Hell, we bought the place right before the tech crash cost me my old job! We are EXPERTS and bad timing!)

At some point, we're going to have to make the call: list it in the joke of a market, knowing we don't have that much wiggle room in the pricing; or keep it as a rental and hope for the best.

I'm kind of holding out for option 3: jet engine falls from sky, lands on house.

I mean, we *are* directly under the flight path there...

The old place, recapping

When you spend your weekends either solo preschooler wrangling while the other half works on the other house, or letting your mother wrangle while you and the other half work on the other house, apparently, time flies.

It's like having fun, only without the fun part.

At long last, months and months behind schedule, the old house is almost ready (for certain values of almost) to list for sale or for rent.

Woo.

It's kind of depressing going over there now, doing all the things I've been trying to get done for the last seven and a half years. Hey! Look! Patches in the living room plaster! Ooo! Wow! Our bedroom is now something other than the deep plum I thought was a good idea and had regretted for years! Hey! Check it out! New countertops! And a stainless steel sink! And... my goodness! The hallway wall has SHEETROCK. No more exposed studs!

Oh, and the ugly, broken screen door? GONE.

It's why I fear starting ANYTHING at all over here. I know us. We will hit a wall, declare good enough, and before you know it, five years later, you're still living with exposed studs.

Rotten is the new sour (grapes, that is)

Ahahaha.

All that angst over my inability to get to the cherries, only to discover after fetching the ladder that they are riddled with rot. Well, riddled with cherry fruit fly maggots.

Tree, you win. Next year, I am totally looking into the approved for organic gardening methods of destroying those squirming white things. This year, I'm sticking to store bought. And not angsting about the ones I can't reach for love or money.

Aside from the cherry debacle, it was a productive weekend on both houses. Painted two rooms at Beacon, and put in a raised bed for our daughter (who was told we'd make her a bed with plants she was allowed to munch on weeks ago).

My annual Oops, Missed a Spot! sunburn is in. Two neat and tidy bright red wings of pain below my shoulderblades, right next to the racerback of my tank. Ouch.

Tree 1, me 0.

Dear Self,

Repeat after me:

Birkenstocks were never meant for climbing trees.

Four cherries were probably NOT worth the scratches gained in the effort to get to them.

Patience is a virtue, wait for the blasted ladder already.

Birkenstocks were never meant for climbing trees.

Also, you need to clean the moss off the garage roof.