Ty Pennington is a Wimp

Admittedly, my blogging has been less than habitual. My apologies, but I have a great excuse. Wanna hear it?

Back in glorious Pleasantville, IA, where we moved from 6 months ago, we own a rental house. It's been a great little house and made us decent money. The renters have been the same people since we bought the place. Good people (so we thought). Paid their rent on time. Never the neat freak people, but never destroyed the house either.

We recently got a phone call from some friends back in Iowa telling us that there may be a problem with our house. We do some investigating and here is what we found - and what my excuse is.

• April - sent a Realtor over to look at the house so we can sell it.
• April 27 - Realtor says "no way can we sell it like that - it's a disgusting pit"
• April 28 - I call the tenants and say clean up by May 15 or move out by May 31 and call me by May 1 and let me know what you are doing (cleaning or moving)
• May 2 - still no call so we send a letter saying bu-bye.
• May 14 - the call from friends comes warning us of troubles at the rental.
• May 15 - I get to be good friends with the police department who, along with several others tell me April 30 the husband is arrested (he should have been shot) husband makes bail and parties for a week solid with is looser friends who use crayon to misspell "Sinco de Mayo" on every wall in the house along with some other choice words I won't use.
• May 25 -31 drove to Council Bluffs, Ia after work to stay the night - Drove the rest of the way to Pleasantville, drop off the kids at Steve and Teri's house and start working - Took 9 loads of trash to the dump, painted every interior wall in the house and a number of other smaller things Celebrated my 12 year anniversary with my beautiful bride by sweating in the humidity while she laid a new kitchen floor and I installed a new front door - Had new carpet installed, cleaned 2 years of dust off ceiling fans, pulled carpet out of the office and cleaned wood floors, installed tub surround, caulked the heck out of everything that didn't move, installed new window, swore under my breath I'd never own a rental house in a town I didn't live in again - Drove back to Colorado Springs, dropping the kids off at my parents house so they could stay and have fun and I could die from exhaustion in peace.
  

All I have to say is Ty Pennington is a wimp. Takes him a whole week and a crew of hundreds to do what we accomplished in 5 days. I'll take you and your craftsman tools any day of the week.

Special thanks to:
Steve - your ability to say "looks good to me" kept me going when I was frustrated and wanted to quit.
Teri - thanks for keeping my wife sane and helping with all of the detail stuff I hate.
Shannon - thanks for painting so much stuff. I still think ivy stenciled on the kitchen would have looked great, but you did more than enough as it was.
Gary - dude, you rock - thanks for getting high with me off the glue to hang the tub surround. (note to self - may need better ventilation in the bath room)