the last time

Today was the last visit to the Renovation Project for WM and I.

The painter finished today and we did our final clean up, hung the curtains, removed the last of our possessions (cleaning items, handyman tools, coffee, tea bags, etc) and closed the door for the last time.

It has taken us many hours over a period of eleven weeks, with at least ten full days included. Yesterday we were there until nearly seven o'clock. We were back there this morning, returned home for lunch, and went back in the afternoon when we knew the painter would be finished.

Who knew how hard it is to clean up old paint flakes from all around the house where the painter had scraped down the old paint under the eaves?

who knew how hard it is to keep little bits of old paint flakes off our shoes and out of a clean house? It didn't help that it started raining on Wednesday afternoon, poured much of Thursday and couldn't make up its mind today! So we trekked in mud and little bits of grass as well as the paint flakes. Being an empty house in terms of occupants, there was no doormat on which to wipe our feet so we had to use an old curtain in the laundry so we could wipe our feet (and stomp them too) as we came in the back door.

Look closely at the very dirty floor!

Anyway, it's all over now -- we've handed the house over to the property manager that DD and SIL have chosen. We hope there will be (good) tenants in soon -- I don't like the idea of the house standing empty, especially as it has a lane down one side and a reserve at the back.

It's not the house it was when they bought it!

In the meantime, I am typing this while sitting on a bed in a motel room overlooking Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport. Tomorrow morning we're leaving on a jet plane bound for Perth, the capital of Western Australia -- nearly 4,000 kilometres (about 2,485 miles) from here for a well-deserved three-week holiday.

I hope you'll join us as we travel around some of the southern parts of Australia's largest state (2,500,000 square kilometres -- 965,000 square miles).