My hands hurt

They do. Ouch. They're sore from cutting vinyl tile. Scissors work surprisingly well for such a task, but by the end of a whole room my hands are sore and feel as if they might blister. Yuck. I know, you're thinking, "Good lord, vinyl tile sounds gross. Makes me think of school cafeterias and bad, old kitchens from 1974." A-ha, this is where you're wrong, lovey. This particular vinyl tile is the exception to the rule, I'd say.

It's surprisingly good looking. It looks like slate and the colors are mottled and varied and it makes the walls in our dining room look like a big yummy mug of cafe con leche (ode to the Cuban god of caffeine). See, we needed an inexpensive solution to the horror that used to be the dining room floor. It was, well, it was hideous. Ever seen cat puke? Well, think of cat puke with dirt and sand ground into it and you've pretty much pictured the old dining room floor. It didn't start out that way, of course. It started as an off-white speckled mess of linoleum that was ugly even back in the day. It was nasty. The thing is, it wasn't dirty. I bleached the damn stuff several times. It was just that stained from years and years of Miami grit being tracked though the house by various Miami feet.

Since we're pretty fed up with this city and most of the people in it we're in the planning stages of our escape. That plan includes putting the house on the market and getting as much as we possibly can for it. When the man bought the place 6 months ago he got a great deal. Since then, there have been several houses in our 'hood that have sold for almost twice what the man paid. Which means the value of our house has gone up significantly. That's excellent news. Now, in order to get as much as we can for the house (read: sell it to well-to-do yuppies who think they're going to be the next urban pioneers in this "great up and coming area") we need to do several things. We've already painted the living room, made bamboo blinds (that look positively amazing - all for $24 for a roll of bamboo fencing we bought at Home Depot and cut to size), refinished the wood floors, painted the dining room, laid the new tile floor, painted the kitchen, trimmed all the hedges, planted a new palm tree and potted plant. Next, we're picking tile to lay in the front of the living room, putting in a new tub & vanity in the bathroom and refinishing the tile, and painting the exterior of the house. It might seem like a lot, but it's not that much, actually. We're doing the work ourselves and it's easier than you might think. The man's been remodeling houses for years now and I've never lived anywhere that wasn't a "fixer-upper" to some degree.

I can't wait until it's finished. No more sore hands. No more Miami house. It's going to look so super great by the time we're done that for a split second we won't want to leave. But then our sanity and sense of better judgment will return and we'll be itching to peace outtah dis joint.