Why my life is NOT a reality TV show

Everyone has a double-edged sword in their life. 

Ours is the apartment that is the rental unit attached to our house.  When we bought this house, the only way we could afford the house was the fact that the back 1/4 of the house is a one and a half bedroom apartment that we are able to rent out.  The rent pays for 1/2 of the mortgage.  When we bought the house it came with an existing tenant.  It was no big deal when we were newly married and had no kids of our own.

However, one slight hiccup is that home renovations are not our *thing.*  Well, smooth move X-lax, for buying a house in an Historic District where the houses are a little bit old.  Thus the Historic part of the District.  And when you buy a house that also has an historic apartment under the same roof, renovations soon become your *thing.* 

Over the years we have had great tenants and not such great tenants.  I won't go into the details because they involve things like legal eviction, 200 nail holes in the walls, chicken bones down the garbage disposal, scorched ovens and 2 dogs and 3 cats at one time by a lady who was only allowed one dog (she may have also been the one that was evicted... just sayin').

We mostly enjoyed our last tenant and we were really thankful for him.  He paid the rent on time and had a slight hearing loss, which was nice since his bedroom wall shared a bedroom wall with the boys' bedroom.  They are occasionally noisy.

Unfortunately, he moved out at the end of July.  It was especially unfortunate because upon his departure we were left with some major renovations (and cleaning) on our hands.  My sweet and hard working husband has been burning the candle at both ends trying to turn this apartment around.  I've helped here and there but honestly while the kids were still home from school, I could barely tinkle in private, let alone get major work done next door.  We were also able to hire our good friend who is very talented in the work of construction.  I don't know what we would have done without his help.

Thankfully, with the kids being back in school, I was able to spend some time yesterday and today cleaning and clearing the last of the stuff out of the way in order to begin showing it to interested renters. 

We have had a shop vac for years but it has kind of always been on its last leg.  I would get it out for the quarterly vacuum of the car when I could no longer stand wading through gold fish and French fries in the back seat.  With the onset of this apartment turn over, Steve bit the bullet and went out and bought a new one.

I'm telling you, this shop vac has changed my life.  It is so fresh and new and full of power and suck, I'm practically giddy.  I was shop vacing everything that got in my way today.  The back porch had tons of saw dust from where our friend was doing work for the flooring.  I got the vac out and the porch was tidier than I've ever seen it.  I did not stop there, no sir!  There are some cracks and crevices on our bricks and walkway that tend to collect debris that I can't seem to get up with the broom. Yep, I was literally vacuuming the sidewalk.  I was in a shop vac frenzy.  If it was in my way, I was sucking it up.  At one point, I was actually laughing at myself because I had gone crazy.  I may never bend my lazy buns over to pick up another thing in my life.  I don't have to, now I can just shop vac it away. 

So, that's how I've been spending my first two days of freedom.  Not exactly the plans I had dreamed of a few weeks ago, but that's OK.  Sometimes life just sucks.