The finishing touches

Life really kind of felt like it was stuck in limbo while I was waiting to hear about job possibilities - I was showing my place as often as I could trying to sell it, applying to different jobs and slowly packing up my home. I showed the trailer a lot, and the more I showed it, the more I wanted to make sure I finished all the projects possible before I had to leave. I hated the idea of leaving something I had started unfinished - it felt like an insult to my pride, like I just didn't care enough about what I was doing to finish. Totally not true! So I tried to make that a priority and got to work. First project - finish the rock border around the outside.

3 days + 20 bags of river rock + lots of grunt work and the project was done. I planted a bunch of wildflower seeds in the back flower patch along with a couple patches of daisys that were ready to bloom, brushed off my hands and turned my attention to the inside...

For a good while, I mostly focused on packing up and taking loads of stuff up to my parents home for storage and cleaning as much as possible. Then BAM! I got a phone call and suddenly I had a deadline. If I wanted to finish any of these projects I had to get on the ball!

Thank heavens for family - some parts of the job I just couldn't do without injuring my wrists (sanding was a killer!) so once my sis had a spare weekend I conned her into coming down and lending a hand.

She did SO much work for me - I felt guilty just asking her to come! I couldn't have done it without her though. She taped, mudded, patched, sanded all through the night and basically did everything I should have done long ago, and more and got everything ready for me to paint. I wasn't exactly slacking during all that, but she definitely did the hard stuff!

Side note: as we sat out on my porch that night watching Chuck on her laptop we heard something rustling in the bushes and got a big surprise when a crying body flew out of the darkness and latched onto the wire enclosing my porch. Scared us both half to death! Appropriately, it was a lost little kitten that I couldn't turn away - I may not like it, but I refuse to ignore something in need. He spent the night on the porch with us, and I spent a large part of the next day going door to door, desperate to get rid of the blasted thing before I was finally able to find his home.

'Nae went home to a well deserved rest, and I got busy with the paint brush. I finished the walls in the kitchen, hall, bedroom, and living room, touched up the bathroom, and even got a coat of paint onto the ceiling.

Turns out, when you are trying to sell a place, people are more likely to think seriously about it if it looks better. Maybe it was just lucky timing, or perhaps all that work did it's job, but I only showed the place once after we finished the big projects.

That was all it took.