One Step Closer

Today I moved into our duplex.  We bought this house about 5 months after we bought our 35 acres.  It's been a rental ever since.  We've had reasonably good luck with tenants.  On one side we have a very stable, professional woman who has lived there since we bought the house.  We've chosen not to raise her rent because she always pays on time & has been absolutely no trouble.

The people on this side have been more flighty.  This apartment has seen probably 7 different tenants in that same 5 years.  I'm wondering why, although I always saw us living here while we build our home. 

What a long day it's been!  It seems like I've been carrying stuff into this house all day long.  I was happy to find places to put most of it.  I already feel more at home here than I ever felt in the apartment in Newbury Park.  Yuck!  Anyway, Jim has been a wonderful help through all of this.  But even so, every muscle in my body aches.

In the bathroom is an antique claw-foot bathtub.  I learned a very valuable lesson today about the shower curtain.  When you have a shower curtain rod that goes all the way around the tub, you must buy two shower curtains.  Very important tip there.

I received the bid from the electrician today.  He gave me a piece of very valuable advice.  Take the plans up to the builder's supply store & have them bid all of the materials for the house.  Now why didn't we think of that??  What a great tip.  I've been killing myself calling all of the subs for the construction and have been worrying about the materials that we can work on ourselves.  We had no idea how to figure out how much lumber we'd need; flooring; drywall; nails, etc.  Now we can get the bid from the pro & finally get the info into the bank.

He also advised going to a local store rather than a big box store 80 miles away.  One big issue is if Lowe's delivers some bad lumber, try getting them to come back to replace it.  It would be more practical to deal with a local builder's suppy.  They may be a tiny bit more expensive, but it would come out in the wash later on.

So those are my helpful tips for today.  Don't try to get away with a petite shower curtain when you need a queen size & let the pros do the work for you.

More later...