Before and After

We are nearly done. I am beyond exhausted and hurt all over.

There was a mad rush to get everything done this weekend - getting the porch painted to improve curb appeal, straightening the yard, painting trim in the house, straightening, dusting, sweeping, mopping, shining, staging. You would not believe how filthy the house was - and I feel like we just cleaned it! Constant construction = constant dirt and dust. Jay had to work yesterday, so I busted my ass from the time I got up to the time I crawled into bed. We had hoped to finish the stairs, but at 10 pm last night, I gave up. The steps still needed to be sanded before we stain and poly them and there was no way I had another 2 hours in me. Overall, we spent 51 man hours from Friday through Sunday working on our project. Jay spent 21 hours between Friday and Saturday, I spent 27 hours between Friday and Sunday, and my girlfriend Angela came over and helped us paint for about 3 hours on Saturday.

Why the mad rush? Our house is being appraised today for refinancing. When my dad died, I inherited a substantial sum of money. However, since he wasn't planning on dying anytime soon, the majority of the money was in an IRA. I don't think he knew much about how IRA's work, because the money that he had inherited from my grandparents was all in cash, which he converted to the IRA. Since I wasn't a surviving spouse, nor of retirement age, I took a HUGE hit on taxes, which left me with less than half of the original amount. I won't lie - I spent about half of the remainder on a ring to wear in my dad's memory, furnishing my Odenton apartment, paying the disparity in rent between what I was putting in to make up for my ex not making much money, Ann Taylor clothes for work (and good makeup & skincare products) and took some nice vacations with the ex (which was also mostly on my dime). The rest of the money went to dumpster rental and some emergency repairs with the house, mainly the roof and porch to the tune of $30,000. By the time I met Jay, most of the money was gone - so I had to take out a home equity line of credit for the actual rehab project. And of course aforementioned rehab project ended up taking more time and costing way more than what I took out from the HELOC. So that is the long story short of why we are refinancing. Once the new conventional mortgage is in place, we will be saving almost $500 a month - or more, if the appraiser gives us a better LTV (loan to value).

Add all of this work to the Atkins diet that I started last Wednesday? My body is screaming for more nourishment. I probably should have eaten more this weekend, but we were so busy. The thing that I've noticed about Atkins is that I'm not as hungry, and things with the least number of carbs suddenly tastes ultra sweet. We had green beans on Saturday and they tasted sugary to me. Weird! So that's going pretty well, but I need to force myself to eat more often. Today is day six and I feel pretty shaky this morning. I'm sure it's because I didn't eat enough this weekend and I put my body through hell.

Unfortunately I don't have photos of every room for the before comparison.

So, without further ado... I give you the final comparison (and some in-between) photos:

Not too shabby, eh? :)

25 Things - The 2013 Edition

I kicked off 2013 in the best way possible... with some of my favorite people at a low key pajamas-required New Years Eve celebration. Meat pie, oysters, cheese in multiple forms, margaritas, champagne cocktails and more deliciousness were consumed. New Year's Day was spent recovering with a Walking Dead marathon.

I started back to the gym (again) last week, which was admittedly poor timing. I'm not going to beat myself up over it and this time I've set what I think are very reasonable goals. Sure I'd like to weigh what I did when Jay and I started dating, but the fact is that I wasn't all that healthy back then. Although I was working out like a maniac, I had some pretty unhealthy eating and drinking habits. My new goal is to lose about 13% of my body weight and to work out at least three times a week. My previous goal had been to lose almost 20% of my body weight, which I think was probably a recipe for failure. When I get down to my goal weight, I can decide if I want to lose those last ten pounds.

I'm looking forward to these 25 things in 2013 (not resolutions - and also not in order):

1. Be more positive
2. Lose ~13% of body weight (or eat healthier and exercise at least 3x a week)
3. Start a few plants from seed for the garden
4. Come up with a new budget and stick to it
5. Get rid of the red couch and chair that I freaking HATE
6. Purchase new furniture and decorate downstairs
7. Put together a time capsule for our house
8. Blog at least twice a week
9. Get organized - important documents, books, seasonal items, etc.
10. Be in good enough shape to hike the Tongariro Alpine Crossing (aka Mount Doom) in New Zealand
11. Raise a small flock of chickens for meat (at least six)
12. Sell some eggs, otherwise we'll be overrun when the new chickens start laying
13. Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, even though I'm scared of being eaten by a shark
14. Snuggle a koala
15. Install the heat pump downstairs
16. Make room in the budget for a cleaning service
17. Get the crawl space insulated
18. Have photos done and send Christmas cards out this year 
19. Fence in yard
20. Hatch out some silkie and black/red star mixes 
21. Say no and not feel guilty afterwards
22. Have an awesome time at the Mardi Gras Ball
23. Can tomatoes from our garden
24. Print "before" collages to frame and hang in the house
25. Use at least one week of our time share

We'll have to see how active Mount Doom is for #10. Apparently it has erupted quite recently!

That's all for now... I suppose that I should start working on my next blog post and plan my next gym visit! 

Wordless Wednesday - Holiday Edition