Groundhog day...week 7 or 8 down in LA.

[smilingcat]

I've been down at my LA house since first week of May to spiffy up and fix the place up so I can get top rental dollar.

I thought it would only take two weeks. You know paint inside, paint outside, do some yard cleaning...

I'm getting bit discouraged and feeling bit overwhelmed. I had no idea how long it was going to take or how much it would cost. Good thing I'm not a contractor.:eek::eek:

Ended up hiring a painting company to paint the outside, hired a gardener to take care of the yard. Hired a company to replace a chimney cap and will be hiring a house cleaning company...

I've been painting inside the house, tore out the old ratty cat pee stained carpet, hanging new curtains, clearing out the garage, did some repair work myself and it's taking me almost two month.

Each night I'm exhausted. I feel like I'm not doing something right for taking so much time. Painting the kitchen is taking me two days. Bathroom is taking me 4/5days... I just don't understand why it is taking so much time. It's just tearing out the wall paper, wash with TSP, patch up, prime then top coat.

I wanna go home :( I miss my kitties and my partner and her dogs. I just want to wake up tomorrow in my house in Oregon in my bed with all my cats on my bed!!

And to add insult to injury, I've ruined one my favorite Talbot jeans with paint. I wasn't thinking when I start painting one day :(

My partner cheers me up with each morning on telephone "Rise and Shine!! It's Groundhog day!!"

Soon soon... Maybe what I need is a pair of magic red slippers and I can click my heel three times.

[emily_in_nc]

Oh man, smilingcat (maybe frowningcat now?), I feel your pain. When my DH and I were prepping our house to sell last year, we had a master list of all the different jobs we had to do. So many of them took WAY longer than we'd anticipated, especially painting (prep, cut-in, and especially trim...rolling is the only thing that goes fast!) It was all worth it in the end (house sold in 60 days!), but we were exhausted to the bone during that time.

I surely do wish you good luck. It's not easy doing this stuff ourselves, which is why so many people call in the pros. We knew we'd be losing money on our house so were not willing to spend the $$ to do that. Thus, we suffered. But it's only a distant memory now, and someday, your toils will be too. I promise! :o

[smilingcat]

I left LA on late afternoon of July 4. Stayed overnight in Patterson California. Too many crazy drivers and just too dangerous out on the road that night.

Happy to say I made it home. My cats were not sure about me for the first 24 hours or so... but I think it came back to them that I was their mom :cool:

I'm finally starting to feel like regular human being...

So good to be home. Now I just want my house in California to be rented out.

Maybe I will go for a short ride tomorrow if my body is up to it.