Really??

I love the sense of accomplishment I get when a huge task is done… and done well.  Three months ago we closed on our retirement farm and ever since we’ve been busting butt trying to get what my husband calls “Phase One” done.  Because of the type of mortgage we were able to get, we were given a list of items that had to be corrected, repaired, or replaced within six months of closing.  Some we expected.  Some we did not.  Replace the roof: yep.  No brainer on that one.  It was raining indoors with areas as large as 6’ x 4’ rotted straight through the roof.  We had planned on taking off the new and replacing it with a metal roof immediately upon closing. 

Others we didn’t see coming until the list was placed in our hands, like paint several of the barns.  Really??  You would have to see these barns but it would be like putting on a brand new high gloss paint job on a car that was rusted through and needed Bondo first… a lot of Bondo first.  Just seemed crazy.  And then there were the three porches that needed to be scraped and painted.  Really?? I know I must have asked that same question far more times than the inspector had planned on answering.  Porches.  They were a priority.  On a farm.  Just made no sense to me whatsoever.  But hey, what the inspector wants the inspector gets.  (I learned that one from my husband.) 

We also expected to find on the list that one of the bathroom faucets needed to be replaced (leaking profusely) and an old stove pipe hole in one of the upper bedrooms needed to be covered, filled, or otherwise repaired.  No biggies for either of these.  One that continued to force my proverbial question was the requirement to paint the entire interior of the house.  This is not a small house, though we both thought our retirement home would be one of the little box homes you find in the halls of IKEA.  Instead, we fell in love with a five bedroom, two bath, over 2000 square foot home complete with a formal dining room, oversize living room, country kitchen and mudroom to boot.  Paint it all?  Now??  Really??  We honestly had planned on spending the next fifteen to twenty years painting a room here and a room there as we could afford to buy another can of paint and fit in the time to do it.  Nope. That was on the list too so it had to be done, all of it, along with the roof and the barns and the porches and and and…  Did I mention we also needed to pull out all the ceilings on the upper floor because they were water damaged from the roof leaking?  Yep.  That too.  So new drywall and ceiling insulation were also on the list. 

Oh, the list.  It’s at times like this you enlist all your friends, family, and even your faith family… and we did.  God bless each and every one of them.  We surely couldn’t have done it without them.  Now you might think six months to complete all this work really isn’t that bad.  Maybe.  But cut that in half.  Yes.  Half.  Come to find out, in order to get a mortgage that allows you to use some of the mortgage funds to complete initial work on the house (which we needed), you get two disbursements of funds, half when you begin and the remainder after final inspection.  That means you have to carry the second half of expenses, both materials and labor, on your own back until the job is done.  Really? Yep.  Really. 

So six months quickly was compressed into three and the race was on.  We finished this week.  We hit the finish line and received our ribbon.  Perfect inspection.  The barns had been scraped, primed and painted.  The porches the same.  The old roof was removed and the new was installed, along with new insulation in both the rafters and attic floor.  The rotted drywall was removed from the entire upper floor ceiling and new was installed, taped, mudded, sanded, primed, and painted.  Every wall in the entire house was mudded, sanded, primed and then painted… twice.  The faucet was replaced and the hole was filled.  And at 1 am before the 9 am we expected our inspector to arrive, we were done.  [sigh] Sometimes we don’t know what we are really capable of until we do it. 

What huge task do you have hovering over your head?  Don’t give up.  You’ll reach your finish line as well, if you just keep at it… and at it… and at it.  But I have to tell you, when you see the finish line and the ribbon is being dangled out in front of you like a carrot in front of a horse’s nose, just reach out your hand and grab it!  And then go take a nap.