"It is better to be the hammer than the anvil."

Looking at my bank account right now is a little depressing, so instead I will focus on the positive: my next steps as a homeowner!

As I have mentioned before, I can't get into my house until Sunday, which means I am in this strange sort of limbo. The house is mine, but not really, not yet. Kind of sad, but I am dealing with it. Soon enough, my friends, soon enough.

In the mean time, I am preparing for the big day by setting up meetings with contractors. I have (obviously) never done that before and really had no idea what the process would be like. Basically, it is pretty simple: they meet with you at the house, you go over what you want to do, they give you an idea of how much it will cost. HA. Something tells me it won't exactly be like that. I have heard so many contractor horror stories. They go over time, over budget whatever. I am not a fan of those ideas. I have a pretty tight budget and some pretty big ideas, so we shall see. Most importantly, I am unique in that I don't want them to do EVERYTHING. Anything I can physically do, I want to do. Which leads to a conundrum with issues like the hardwood floors: I want to refinish them, but I can't sand them. Will a contractor let me get away with paying him just to sand them and not finish the job? We shall see.

Fingers crosses, everyone. My first meeting is on Monday night!