Painting is done

    We cut a deal on Friday that saved the house for us. The seller was very shaky on paying $4,000 to replace the septic tank system. They asked if I would be willing to contribute toward it. I told them I didn't have the cash to do that (and to be perfectly honest, I would not have given them any money up front if I did have it before there were signed documents and legal protections). So I called my loan agent and asked if we could raise the sale price of the house by $1800. This allows us to pay the seller almost half of the cost of the septic replacement, it only raises our mortgage payment by about $10 per month (although I know in the long run it comes out to about double what the $1800 cash would have been now...but we're not planning on the long run; we're working to have this place paid off in 10 - 15 years max, not 30), we don't pay the seller anything if the deal falls through, and we get a brand spanking new septic system out of the deal. So, after an exciting and eventful Friday afternoon, we made last minute arrangements to get up there and paint first thing Saturday morning.

- AND -

After a day of hard work, the painting is done. The homestead at Dusty Acres went from looking like this:

to looking like this:

It may be hard to tell from the "before" picture, but we painted almost the entire front of the house, including the porch coverings. And all of it with that 5-gallon bucket of paint that we got for $25.00. Now that I've paid my stupid tax, the seller should be completing the septic work this week (probably by Wednesday). We may get the keys by the end of next week!

And so, to celebrate, we all went to the beach yesterday. It was our first non-dramatic family beach day ever since we had more than one kid. And Joey, the youngest (9 mos. old), sat up by himself for like an hour and ate Cheez-Its. So proud. God is good.

Grace,

Jeremy