Almost Done
The condo is nearly done. The tenant is sleeping there for the first time tonight. Three bedrooms are cleaned out now so she has room to move in. Her rental period starts on the 15th so I don’t feel obligated to actually have all the work done until then, which is good, because it isn’t. But almost.
We’ve still got a list of stuff that needs doing there, but it’s rapidly shrinking. The kitchen counter came out well, the tile looks great and the grout we chose looks nice with it. Hubby was able to reinforce and fix up the old solid wood cabinets, so we didn’t have to completely start over with that. The previous owner probably never actually cleaned the cabinets, so I spent a few hours with some Windex and a brillo scrubbing pad and was able to get the cabinets to look like wood again; they previously looked like baked muck in a cabinet shape.
I’ve been waxing all of the woodwork in the condo, of which there is a great deal. The 20-year old doors look a lot better after a coat of wax. And the new closets we built look presentable after a coat of wax. The problem with the wax is that it makes me sick to use it, I can stand it for about an hour but after that I start to feel a pain in my upper lung and get sort of stupid. Hubby keeps asking me if breathing the wax makes me high. All day he says “is that shit making you high yet?”. He’s a broken record. And I wish. I think I’m going to have to detox seriously after all these stinky fumes. But the reason we chose this product is that after just one application you get water beading up on the wood. The wax has color in it and is really thick. So even though I’m suffering from the stink this is still better than first applying stain and then dealing with polyurethane. This won’t last like poly would, but it’s pretty good, and that’s good enough. It IS only a rental after all.
We also decided to install a stationary gas tank on the roof of the building. And yesterday the gas company came to fill it, so now the new hot water heater is working and the new stove is working. Add to that the nice new kitchen sink and the nice new bath sink and that place is livable.
We still have a couple more days of knocking things off the list. And then it will be time to bring home the 4000+ tools that have migrated over there. My husband is a tool collector, truly. I think the guy probably has at least 6 hammers. Screwdrivers are definitely too numerous to count. So it will be a big effort to actually get all that crap back over here.
But then, then it will be done. Then I will be able to collect the rent and not go over there and work. Then I’ll be able to get this week-old pile of clean laundry folded. And I’ll find time to watch that DVD I just bought of some bad Bruce Willis action film. And maybe I’ll even begin getting some of my other work done. That would be nice.
