Day 8 at My Rental

Ok! Again, we ran into probable a while trying to finish a simple project. Today we were supposed to change the fence, but we kept running into problems and couldn’t get finishing putting it up. There were 2 main issues that slowed us down. The first was that the there used to be a huge oak tree in that yard that we had cut down 2 years ago. The roots, although dead, are still covering large parts of that yard. We had to cut through several roots to get the panels up. In the end, we were able to get 2 panels up after 5 hours of work. Secondly, the person who put the old fence up did a crappy job at measuring the distance between the studs. When we’re getting ready to use one of the old studs, we saw that the fence went way over.

2 of 5 panels up

After sawing through many of the roots, my stepdad’s electric saw burned out. It turned out it was too small to be cutting through all those roots. We needed his other tools to cut through a small section of the fence so it would cover only half of the post. Since we were tired and the night was right around the corner (thanks to the time moving back and forth hour the night before), we called it a day and said we would plan to finish that fence sometime during the weekday.

My mom, on the other hand, spent the day cleaning some of the closet doors and the kitchen. I have to be honest, she’s probably one of the best cleaners I’ve seen in my life. The kitchen cabinets were covered in grease and tough stain spots that I thought would be nearly impossible to get out. But she got in there and made it look almost as good as new.

She also went in and started cleaning the oven, which looked like it had not been cleaned in years.

Although this picture looks like it’s still dirty, it was a lot worse prior to her making an attempt. I put some degreaser on it before I left so that it could sit on the stains over night. Hopefully tomorrow I can have a solid victory. I’d say today was okay, but I definitely expected to have progressed a lot further than I did.

Todays goals were to trim the trees, which are shown laying in the middle of the yard in the picture above; seal the interior holes all over the house, which I failed to do; and to put the fence up, which I think we only got halfway through the job.

Hours worked: 5

Total hours on rental: 46.5

I think this is going to be an 80 hour job to turn this house over. Ugh!

Tomorrow I will go after work and see how much I can get done. This is what my last post said Monday’s plan was calling for:

  • Monday: finishing painting both rooms that are left and add wood filler to outside of house (front)

I’m going to add painting the 2 fences that are up with engine oil. Although, I could probably take care of this on Tuesday when I’m off.