No-one ever promised that it would be easy, this transition of ours, but how could we have expected it to be quite so stressful. I won’t lie, the last 3 weeks have been probably the most stressful that I have ever experienced.

First of all, we moved into the RV and relocated around the corner to Oak Hollow lake while the estate sale was going on. We didn’t drive by the house, as we didn’t want to see what sort of turnout the sale got. So we were on tenderhooks all weekend while we waited for the final result from David, the Estate Sale guy. I must admit, it was tempting to do a quick drive by, but we didn’t. Instead we tried to take the weekend to decompress from the weeks of emotional and physical hard work we had done to get ready for the estate sale.

I must admit that the weekend, although nervous and worried about how much we would make at the end of the day, the RV stay was very peaceful and for the first time in years, we both slept really well.

By the end of the day on Saturday, we had a total figure from the sale and although it was a little disappointing, we were ok with it.

On Monday, we returned to the house to greet the painters when they arrived to paint the inside of the house. The foreman arrived, but his crew did not! So, right off the bat, I had a sinking feeling that it had been a big mistake to hire this crew to paint the entire inside of the house. At 10am the crew started to arrive in dribs and drabs….. they swooped into the house and within minutes, they had started to paint. The problem is that they started painting the walls, not the ceilings. I’m not a professional painter, but I do know that you start from the top and work down. you paint the ceilings before the walls, and you cut in to the trims and corners BEFORE you paint the rest of the wall. So when they started painting the walls first and not even cutting in to the trim and the corners, I was really worried.

By the end of the day on Monday, there was more paint on my beautiful hardwood floors than there was on the walls. I took the foreman to one side and tried to talk with him about the order in which things were being painted and also the mess that was being created inside my house. He stated that he thought the paint job was good and that he didn’t think the ceilings need to be painted. The contract was that the WHOLE inside of the house would be painted, not his selected areas. This is what he had quoted for, and I wasn’t happy that he was now trying to cut the job in half, but still wanted the full amount of money for the job.

His workers ended up working a total of 3 hours on Monday, then Tuesday, didn’t arrive until 11am and left at 4pm after taking one hour for lunch and a 45 minute break to get a drink! On Wednesday, they didn’t arrive until midday, and I lost my cool and asked for a meeting with the whole crew in an attempt to get the job back on track. The crew, by this time were fighting amongst each other and spending more time arguing than painting.

As a result of my requested meeting, the foreman did bring in another guy who had the rest of the crew assigned to certain areas and who also made them work until midnight to catch up. I was actually in the house painting myself and got a lot more done than any of the crew members, apart from this new guy, who was great. The problem was that we had a schedule that had to be stuck to as the house was going live on the market on Monday, and taking an extra week to paint the house just wasn’t in that schedule! I had given this crew the benefit of the doubt long enough, and when they came to me on Thursday and said that they would not get the job done on time, I had to take a few minutes to talk to Linsley, and we decided that we had to fire the painting crew.

Donny, the only guy who knew what he was doing, when I asked him what it would take to get the job back on track, stated that as far as he could see the job would not be brought back on track as long as we had this same crew, who didn’t want to work. So, much as I hated doing it, I went out and told the foreman that I had to fire him and his crew because they were not performing the work for which they had been hired. That was at 2pm, by 9pm, they were all still hanging around the house arguing and taking whatever they could to offset the fact that they had been fired, and I thought they would never leave. They were very aggressive and I was concerned that they might trash the house. I carried my phone with me at all times during that horrible day, just in case I had to call 911.

Donny agreed to stay on and bring his own crew, who he said would get the job fixed and finished within the timeline we had originally scheduled. The first crew that I had to fire had totally trashed my whole house! I was distraught and worried sick. It makes no sense to me that someone would portray themselves as a painter with a fantastic crew, when in reality, he was someone out to make a buck with a bunch of unemployed people who didn’t actually want to work as his crew! The other strange thing was that almost every day it was different people on his crew, so there was no continuity at all.

Finally, after Donny and his crew set to work, they fixed the mess the first painters made and also got the job done and on time. I will forever be grateful to Donny and his wonderful crew for saving the day.

Still, before we could leave the house, I had to get on my hands and knees and scrub every inch of the floors (almost 3000 square feet) throughout the whole house as there was so much paint and plaster etc. on the floors. It took so long, but I finally got the floors gleaming, and hours after we had planned to leave, we finally closed the front door for the last time, and climbed into the RV and drove away and I have to say, by the time we left, we couldn’t drive away fast enough!

So begins our new adventure! We are now in a lovely campsite at Lake Hartwell in South Carolina, we will stay here for a week before making the push down towards San Antonio, Texas over the following week. Our new neighbors are wonderful and have offered us “”newbies” all kinds of help and advice, which I have to say we gladly accept as we know we have so much to learn. BUT we are on our way!