I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that the owner of this rental won’t sell to us. It was such a morbid dump before, but after 1 ½ days of us working in it it’s beginning to gleam with the charm that originally inhabited the house. The gorgeous hardwood has been exposed, the walls patched and painted, the disgusting carpet removed. He’s going to make a ton of money off of this house.

So we’re doing this work to:

1) Make the house elegant and lovely so that the two months we’ll spend in it will be comfortable and exciting, not depressing. Plus, we’re paying $800 a month. After we exert ourselves for a week it will be worth $1400. We will be doing the labor, but we’ll be getting a great deal afterwards.

2) Gain the experience. The landlord is paying for everything. EVERYTHING. We finally get to fiddle about with the expensive options of remodeling that simply weren’t practical before (i.e. crown molding, expensive tile, the nicest paints, new, modern lighting, the works) In the end he receives the monetary bonus, we get the knowledge and experience. Hard work is always good for a person’s mentality and their waist line. How exciting.

Today we finished removing all the carpeting, and it turns out that there is hardwood in two of the three bedrooms. We’ve ripped out the edging and the staples in the living room, its now ready to be sanded and finished. The rest of today’s work will be composed of de-stapling and de-edging the two bedrooms, and sanding and finishing the floors. We’re putting new carpet in the third bedroom, we’ll go pick that out today. Oh my.

It’s nice to be tired, though, to feel worn and stretched after a hard days work. And we still have to do the sanding! Aaaah! I’m going to die!

Anyway, this is what I want to experiment with, after letting the landlord's pocket foot the bill: