Some tips on saving money while remodeling

I took a few days off writing and nearly forgot what I was relating. I had to go back to my previous entry.
After showing the young man out I went to retrieve my fridge components. Disturbed not to see them where I had left them, I went in search for the children. I found two little girls in the back yard building forts.
"See what we found?" the smaller one asked.
The older (and more knowledgeable, though not necessarily wiser ) one looked nervous.
I sighed.
"Sorry," the older one cleaned up the trays while the younger one fussed at the destruction of her most precious creation.
Now, to wash them again. . .
What a learning experience this has been. It has been exhausting, frustrating, and – at times- very gross, but I can hardly wait to get going on our project every morning. I wonder if I did this full time if I would always be this tired.
Steve says he has figured out more of the bizarre wiring. This is a relief to me as we certainly don't want to sell a house that is unsafe. We also do not have the budget to hire someone to redo the entire electrical system.
The past few days the kids have been scraping the landscaping rocks away from the edge of the house so Steve can repair the skirting. It was separated one place from another, pushed in under the home in places, and twisted around itself in others. It certainly did not add to the curb appeal.
Today I was waiting for a kid to come out to help me so I started pulling at the garbled aluminum. To my amazement, it straightened out rather easily. That skirting is resilient stuff. Steve came out and looked at it and said I had added five hundred dollars to the property value. Not quite so much, perhaps, but it does look better.
Last week, while priming the outside of the house with rollers, the kids and I noticed we weren't sufficiently getting in the grooves of the siding. We used a brush to get between them, but it was slow work. I estimated it would take twice as long to get the grooves as it had to prime. I was wrong – so very wrong.
Steve took up a brush and began painting the grooves. By the end of the first day of it he had realized I was right in my belief that we needed a sprayer to do the job. By the end of the second day – after finishing one-third of the house – he admitted it to me.
We now own a paint sprayer. It is nice, it sprays smoothly, and it took Steve one and a half hours to paint two-thirds of the house's exterior. Not only has he finished priming the outside of the house, he also primed two rooms, six shutters, the inside of the kitchen cabinets, and two ceilings.
Since the rocks were mostly pulled away from the deck, it seemed wise to have the boys paint the lattice work at the base. I helped a little bit, but I have to say they were more patient with the job. I “supervised.”
Susan stopped by for a few hours to help with some painting. She and the girls primed the small bathroom together. Susan is so patient with her little helpers and now has a proper painting shirt, completely covered with the primer the girls' were supposed to be putting on the walls.
Thankfully, we are still quite a bit below our budget. We managed to get a free toilet after all. We have discovered the joys of mis-tinted paints. Someone was giving away free scrap lumber and Steve was able to use it to replace the flooring in the master bedroom. Another person was remodeling their house and wanted to get rid of their old doors – the exact fits for our needs. This house is going to be a conglomeration of other people's houses, but I doubt it will be noticeable.
Last week, Steve took out the upper cabinets on the north side of the kitchen. What a difference it makes. The room used to be a hallway with appliances in it and now it is a cozy kitchen.
I am pleased to report the smell has dissipated in the majority of the house. The bathrooms still worry me, but I hope the floor painting will take care of that. Of course, at the moment, everything smells of paint.
Steve let Isaiah rip the ballisters, the rails and the posts off the deck today. Could a boy be happier? He unscrewed the rusted hardware before practicing his taekwondo kicks to finish off the job. Isaiah graciously allowed Oliver to do some of the kicking. It is nice to see those lessons have done some good.
When I left, the deck was no more than a platform and steps – no rails of any sort. Steve and Isaiah stayed down there after we left for Oliver's paper route so they could reassemble some of it. He sent me a picture of the progress with the caption,
“One, one post, ah, ah, ah.”
Do you know Steve's favorite Sesame Street character?
I think he is a little frustrated with how slow that went, but I didn't really expect him to get more than that done. He had to take a post that was not made for a corner and make it work on a corner. It was bound to take some configuring. Thankfully, he excels in conundrums.