Woof. And not like a dog, but like a kick in the boiler. We had frantic fits of cleaning and painting almost all the month of July and had the main push last week leading up to our first open house on the townhome. Paint, clean, patch, sweep, paint, window-wash, more paint, sweep again, vacuum, more paint, ooops missed a spot, more paint, clean up from that, it goes on and on and on. Here’s a peek at what we started with (Max’s room BEFORE we rented the tractor).

The Max Pit - Before Tractor

But at last comes the goal. Saturday, 1PM. Our place has NEVER looked so good! We’re finally open for business on our first Open House! It didn’t matter much, fishin’ was poor and we didn’t get a single bite. But we sucked it up and were SURE they would be beating the doors down on Sunday!

Sunday. Better, but only by degrees. We were open from 1PM to 5PM, and the first of our 2 guests strolled in about 4:30. All the internet advertising brought in was zip; the 2 we saw were just drive-by’s that saw our lawn sign. At least one of them was honestly looking for a lease/option but I think we’re a little out of their price range. There’s always next weekend!

We found out cats and open houses don’t mix. That’s the thing about an open house, the open part. It’s best to leave the front door OPEN, and most everyone was concerned the cats would use the opportunity to make for the hills. Not to worry. Even fearless Bongo made himself scarce. Very scarce. There are words in our language to describe what Sly made himself. Invisible would be an understatement. We could have been missing an entire wall of the house and he would have stayed in hiding.

Speaking of missing that entire wall thing…. Just after we finish patching and painting most of the interior, the construction crew that has been doing all the exterior refurbishment of our development decides it’s time to start OUR building. We have an end unit, so we have more exterior walls. And it was on the end wall that this crew decided to do an extra special job. They stripped the entire outside down to the framing. Then they stripped all the trim from the windows. Then they commenced to rebuilding it with what felt like 8 lb. sledgehammers. For 2 days it felt like we were one of the little pigs and the big bad wolf was banging on our outside wall to get in. Of course, all our fresh patch and paint pretty much got knocked loose, along with a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t cracked or popped loose in the first place. Just this morning our new BFF Paul, the interior repair guy, finished with the patching again so now I can finally start painting AGAIN! I knew I missed a spot…..

We continue to bash away at both the commercial real estate investing (2 great property leads that we’re in the middle of putting together, stay posted), and have been putting a fair number of hours into the Internet Affiliate marketing programs we have up and running. Those are pretty exciting, especially when they finally start to respond with higher Google page ranks and even some revenue! It’s funny how 2 grown adults can jump with glee over their first earnings report from their portfolio of advertising sites: $0.77. That’s right, a whopping 77 cents! It’s a start. You don’t have to stay so tuned in on that one, it might take a few months for these things to start earning something with numbers in FRONT of the decimal point.

At last we have all the family birthdays, parties, and weddings out of the way. All that stands between us and the open road now is renting out the terra-digs (trailer talk for TownHome). So between that time and Thanksgiving, we’ll be rolling around the West looking for some fun, and rest.