It's a done deal! Now the work begins!

This is the key to my future! I closed on my shabby cottage yesterday and now the work really begins. Closing was at 11:30am and I was numb! It's a lot of money to fork over. I was really having buyer's remorse and was literally feeling ill. In my head this voice is screaming "WHAT HAVE I DONE, WHAT HAVE I DONE!!!", but I'm numb on the outside. Then I kept remembering that killer view from my front door and thinking with a little tile, paint and a sparkling pool, I could sell this place tomorrow and make over $50k. So I took a deep breath and felt better.

My lovely realtor, Britt, gave me a perfect gift. A very sweet card and a Lowe's gift card! How appropo! Since I'll be living there and the habitat for Humanity store. Can't wait to use it!

I had contacted a great pool company (If you're in the Sarasota/Venice area it's ElSol Pool) so as soon as I closed they started on the pool. My first post had a picture of the black hole. After 2 hours it was already a blue green and today it looked like this.
I took the picture through the window so it's a little out of focus but the pool is looking better, if a little cloudy. Ryan said it will take about 10 days to get the pool crystal clear. He'll be coming over once or twice a day to take care of it. I think it looks smashing! We still can't see to the bottom so still don't know if Jimmy Hoffa is down there. I'll keep ya posted!!

Anyway, after the closing I went to the house and did a lot of measuring, measuring and more measuring and had a spurt of energy so started pulling up the carpet. Under the stinky smelling carpet are terrazzo floors. I've never really cared for them, although they are very in. The floor isn't bad looking a very nice white. If I cleaned them and polished them they probably would look great but, as I said before, I just don't care for the look of terrazzo.



Today I brought some things to have at the house while working on it, tools, water for the fridge, scrapers for getting rid of the wallpaper, sharp knives for pulling up the carpet and cutting it into smaller pieces for the trash, hedge cutter for all the overgrown plants etc. I went into the back yard and found I had a tangelo tree, a huge ficus and tons of philadendron and wandering jew plants. I also pulled down a dead tree and have started a pile of brush to be disposed of.

This is my backyard behind the pool. The house sits on a very large lot so besides the huge lanai and pool area there is still a lot of backyard. It needs a lot of cleaning out of the bush but when It's done, fairies will be dancing in the dusk.

Linda