To-Do List....The Last Five Months 2024

 JULY/AUG./SEPT./OCT./NOV. TO-DO LIST

I am just getting to the last 5 months of To-Do lists.

How I did the last 5 months....

*  Pay Bills  DONE  Everything got paid on time even though I was in Virginia for half the month in July and when I was incapacitated in Sept.

*  Fly to Virginia  DONE  It was a nerve racking flight but I got there safe and sound(can you guess I don't like flying?)  And Hubs drove up to pick me up in August and bring me home.

*  Have Brain surgery  DONE  Little did I know that the side effects would throw me for a loop and cause a chain reaction of other conditions that went on for another 4 months before I began to feel like myself again.  Would I do it again?  The jury is still out on that.

*  Have YAG Laser Procedure on Right Eye  DONE  I had that procedure done before I left for Virginia.  I have no plans to go back to that eye doctor other than a yearly diabetic eye test.

*  Have New Skirting put on House  DONE  The workmen finally had a slot open up to do this in July, again before I left for Virginia.

Before shot the naked house after they removed the old broken skirting.

After shot with new skirting on the other side of the front of the house.
There were matching rose bushes in the front, one of each end of the house.  Problem was the rose bush growing on the side of the porch where the stairs were was rooted 
BEHIND the old skirting, and growing from under the house.  So Hubs had to cut down and dig that bushes stump out.  Who plants a rose bush under their house??lolz

*  Have Interior Work Done on House  FAIL  Other than the kitchen counter tops and molding work we haven't had time or energy to tackle some little jobs inside the house.  It's mostly painting and some molding repair work which we'll job out to local handyman operations

*  Hem Pants  FAIL  I haven't done any sewing since the surgery.  I bought some new pants while in Virginia but I either haven't hemmed them or one kind doesn't need hemming.

*  Move  PASS  We have decided where we are moving to, have gotten a realtor to sell this place and are working on our timeline.  I no longer will have to live 7 miles from a daughter who wants nothing to do with her loving parents after she asked us to move down here at her behest even though we had misgivings about living here.  Children can be heartless.  We have been nothing but supportive to this child her entire life and gave her a large amount of money to buy a house and this is how she pays us back, by turning her back on us?  I can't wait to get out of this place!

*  Contact Lawyer about Will Changes  FAIL  Just didn't have enough time to do this before I left for Virginia.  Since returning and after my hospitalization and rehab we have met with the lawyer in November and he is having papers drawn up with the changes we asked for which we'll sign this week.

*  Read/Finish One Book  DONE  I finished "Varina" by Charles Frazier.  He also wrote "Cold Mountain" which was made into a film of that name.

*  Buy Stuff for House(Always)  Done  I guess all the various bits and pieces Hubs buys at the Big Box Home Improvement Stores, plus the new Skirting and Rails goes under this item.

*  Start PT for Back  Done  My PT was interrupted by a hospitalization and the rehab clinic, then wound care for a place on my calf(if you have Home Health you can't do outpatient PT until that's over with).  I did finally had the PT, for my back plus my hip and thigh, but more than that, my Radiofrequency Ablation(RFA)did more good for my back/hip/thigh than PT.  I still do home exercises though.

*   Take Items to Food Bank  DONE

This was the July donation before I left town.  I found cans of baby formula in the  Kroger clearance area that were long dated so picked those up.

When I was finally released from the rehab hospital I was able to gather all this to take in for September.

Here is the October donation.  It was a good month.

So good it took me three photos to get it all in.

The next  two photos were a donation earlier in November.

And here is the donation we made in late November.  This will be the last of the year.  I think I did right by this food bank.

*  Start New Food Bank Donation Box   DONE  As noted above as we took a donation in we started filling up the Rubbermaid tubs with more stuff for the food bank.  Since I( won't be sending anything to the food bank until 2025 now, presently I am only gathering items with long shelf life/use by dates.

*  Edit More Photos  DONE  While I fell behind this Summer/Fall on the photo editing I have been working at this as time permits.  I still have quite the backlog of photos though to edit.

*  Post About Old Trips  FAIL  I haven't had the time or energy to post trips.  I have trips going back to 2021 to still talk about.  Because of the medical fall out from side effects from that Focused Ultrasound Procedure we missed a planned cruise in September.  That was a big disappointment but I'm getting used to disappoint at this point in my life.  Luckily we bought the trip insurance so we got most of our money back.  Taking trips are my happy place so I really need to get back into posting about that and getting healthy enough to enjoy more adventures. 8-)

*  Work on Genealogy  PASS  I've done some genealogical work.  Mostly for cousins and folks who contacted me on Find A Grave and Ancestry needing source material or questions answered.

*  Edit Fabric Photos for Listings  PASS  Well I got about 2 dozen lengths of fabric photographed, measured and weighed and 8 of them listed with no action.  I really need to put this sort of item on Etsy but they require you to pay for a store on there and with what we have going on and now our trip to Virginia for Christmas that just doesn't make financial sense until January.  So I'll spend more time photographing,  measuring and weighing more fabrics so I can hit the ground running in Januay.

As you can see, this year has been a real hodge podge of a little bit of good and a lot more bad.  I hope 2025 is a lot nicer to us! 8-)))

Sluggyu

The Estimate or Selling Our Firstborn

We finally got the estimate for the work on the house last Saturday.

The handyman guy called here about Thursday wondering why we hadn't gotten in touch with him.
HUH?

Come to find out..... at least he says this is the issue....he had a problem with his email.....he's send out emails with estimates to prospective clients but the emails never got sent.  He's had this issue with a number of clients.

Don't know if it was an issue with his mail program, his employee or "him".  But that was the story why we hadn't heard from him for 3 weeks or so after coming here to look over the jobs.

So I open up the attachment/estimate and the floor about fell outta my ass.

Seriously?
The total was over $9,600 for the work we need/want done.

In my mind I had a figure of around $6K for all this.  That is what we were willing to spend to get this stuff done.
Not anything near almost $10K!

Here are a list of the jobs, broken down into 5 projects, we wanted priced out.

1.
 Repair and patch ceilings and walls-One spot in kitchen, 3 spots in dining room, a few seams in living room.
Skim coat of spackle 1 ft. wide section of walls around living/dining rooms.
Redo 4 corner beads over exposed metal edging.
Labor and materials.
Estimate-$1,140.00

2.
Paint downstairs walls and ceilings, approx. 1000 sq. ft. plus stairwell and upstairs hallway walls plus 2 interior doors.
Customer supplies the paint, handyman supplies the primer.
Estimate-$3,185.00

3.
Cut and install bifold door on front closet.  Customer will supply door and hardware.

Install crown molding in living room and dining room matching existing.
Labor and cost of crown molding.
Estimate-$675.00

4.
Remove carpeting in dining/living room.
Install approx. 400 sq. ft. of bamboo flooring(to be nailed down).
Customer supplies flooring and underlayment(if needed).
Estimate-$3,010.00

5.
Wrap garage trim in aluminum, 6" on jamb and brick molding.
Replace 3 sets of shutters on front of house.
Replace 2-23" hexagon gable vents on front of house.

Estimate-$1,330.00
 

An additional fee of $300.00 to cover material disposal.

 

Total Estimate-$9,640.00

 

The ones I thought  that came in high were Jobs 2 & 4.

Job 2 we are supplying all the paint(except the primer)so I really thought this one was high as it's basically just labor.  Painting isn't necessarily difficult work but it is time consuming.

 

So we decided to modify the painting job and make it smaller.  We will only have them paint the living/dining rooms and the stairwell and upstairs hallway and ceilings instead of the whole downstairs and upstairs hallway.

We can live with the kitchen/den as it is and when/if it needs painting, we can do that because we did it the last time.  We would also do the living/dining room ourselves but with the timing element of spackle repair, painting before the flooring gets done, it's easier to just let them paint those rooms.

The one place I can't paint is the stairway/hallway upstairs as I can't reach some of the stairwell walls and the ceiling.

Would like to get this down to $2K.

 

But I am also thinking I can paint the living/dining rooms so just have them do the stairwell and upstairs hallway.  I will go back and see what they would charge just for this paint job.  I think if I have a day or two between the time he spackles/repairs the living/dining room and throws up the moldings, I can do the painting in there, especially since we have the a/c now. ;-)

 

and Job 4.....Laying the bamboo flooring.  I really though this one was high!

We had our old handyman/contractor guy replace our master bedroom with bamboo in 2007.  He charged $550 and we furnished/bought the flooring, plus we removed the old carpeting.

Now I know the living/dining room is a tad larger than the master bedroom was(by only 10' x8') and prices have risen since 2007 but to go from $550 to $3,010??

 

So we went up to Lowe's, since that is where we bought/buy our flooring, and got a cost estimate for having the crew from Lowe's install that floor.

The Lowe's guy gave us a quote of $2,800 including the cost of the flooring and the cost of carpet removal, or $2,500 if we take up the carpet ourselves.

And the price of the flooring would be $850 of that cost.....so labor of $1950 or $1,650 to install.

So we have a difference of $1,060 for a complete labor only install(w/carpet removal)between Lowe's and the Handyman guy estimate.

Wow.....

 

Me thinks the handyman guy will NOT be laying our bamboo flooring......

 

I'd love to call up the old handyman and get put on his schedule for him to put in that floor because I know he'd be even less than the Lowe's quote but I don't really want to wait until JANUARY 2014 to be able to buy furniture and use the living/dining rooms.

Sigh.

 

So if we decrease the painting job and remove the flooring job, the handyman will cost us $5,630.00 plus another $2,500 to Lowe's for the floor job, for a grand total spent of $8,130.

We already have 3 boxes of bamboo flooring leftover from our bedroom floor we can use but we need to buy paint, so that basically evens out, so we need to spend $8,130 for these projects....or  if he'll accept $1K to just down the stairwell and upstairs hallway we can get all this done for $4,445.00(handyman) + $2,500(Lowe's)=$6,945.00

 

Still more than I planned on spending but it looks like the least we can get away with paying and still have a good outcome.

 

 

Sluggy