Now that we have had time to walk through and look more carefully, we see all the small projects that will take our time: painting, carpeting, broken outlets, chipped banister, strange wiring (using two switches to turn on one light), and more. We’ve already started with windows – was that a painful process. Every salesman has an hour long presentation they’re excessively trained to deliver. After only two, we couldn’t take any more so we went with the second guy and cancelled the appointments with other companies. We learned that you can counter-offer to bargain the price down. One guy said that 90% of all the window business is done on the first visit.

Tonight we did some painting prep. Two good friends from our church, Aaron and Reagan came over to help out. Hopefully carpet will come (from Lowe’s) this week and we’ll be able to move in before the end of the month. We’re living at Lowe’s and Home Depot – too bad we have to drive to Burbank each time. I’m expecting we’ll get better at preparing lists and planning.