Working in Florida and heading out again

Hi Family,
Well, we worked like dogs at Grams house and got it looking pretty good. We picked up Elle at the airport Saturday night and we had spent most of the day on Saturday trying to get as much of the random shopping and furniture building done so we could see right away what we would need to run out and get, and we would be able to really concentrate on the fix once Elle go there.

You kids know what it looked like before and how much there was to do, so you will be amazed at what we did in those few short days. I'll post a couple pictures, but I'll show you all of them when we get home. We made our own version of HGTV. But my God, it was hard work. We worked from 5:30 in the morning until midnight for 5 days. The main projects we got done were to strip the old dated wallpaper, repair the kitchen area walls, paint living room, and dining room and litchen walls, buy and install new dishwasher and garbage disposal, bleach and scrup all of the tile and grout, recovered the window valances, recovered the patio furniture, moved furniture around the house, cleaned out cabinets, scrubbed out the fridge, freezer, ice maker, cut down overgrown shrubbery, laid out a crap load of landscape decorator rock, cleaned out closet and donated carloads of stuff to Goodwill. We built IKea furniture and decorated our little hearts out. We took the van in to be fixed for the cross country drive.

The bad news is that Dad fell off the ladder and sprained his ankle pretty bad and I banged up my knee and had some pretty bad chemicl burn on my hands from all of the cleaners and bleach. All of our backs were pretty aching and we were physiclly exhausted.

The good news is that we learned alot about the vacation rental market there so if it doesn't sell, we have some good options, and Ron and I met with a local realtor who brought us some comps and told us we should be able to sell for 50,000.00 more than the realor we met a few months ago before cleaning up Mom's place. I think thats pretty promising. Elle and I will have to look over all of the numbers when we get back home. I think we can list it anytime now, and if we vacation rental it, there might be one more quick weekend down there to get it rental ready. But overall, the worst is behind us. Pray for a quick sell.

We headed back on the road and spent the first night in Ocala Florida. We didn't get out of the house until 5:00 or so, so it was time to stop when we got to middle Florida. I know it might have been smart to stay one more night and leave early the next morning, but Ron & I just really wanted to get out of there. Elle flew out Wednesday afternoon too, so it seemed like the time to go.

We each drove one car, Dad and I traded off on who would drive the smelly van. Lots of windows open. Lots of febreeze. I hope it makes it back to Ron in Iowa.