'Rental property renovation is complete with two hours to spare.

The tenants sign the lease and get the keys.

The nightmare is over.

I will post later on the lessons learned from this little excursion.

Until then, please just sigh with me. Had I energy, I'd do a happy dance, but alas, I don't.

*SIGH*

The tenants sign the lease on Friday.

We saved $160 by cancelling a junk pick-up. We've done two trips to the dumpster at my father's apartment building and will spend about $30 in refuse stickers.

We delayed driveway sealcoating until next year. Saved $160 on that, since we were an end of season request and we had workers needing access to the driveway for the interior work.

I spent $1,025 on new appliances (fridge/stove/dishwasher) at the Ding and dent event at Sears Outlet. And since I bought during Halloween season, I saved an additional 13%.

We saved tons of money doing all of the cleaning and painting ourselves. We recruited my inlaws for that. Any stepdad helped relay the bathroom floor and installed all the new light fixtures and closet doors.

My parents were helpful and purchased a set of four new tires for me. My inlaws purchased a needed tire for my husband's minivan. Plus both were helpful paying for an outing (movies/pizza) and dinner in (Chinese food, etc). Also sundries. And when my kids' were in need of extra funds, my mom put them to work at her house with tasks.

I've learned to stretch the budget by shopping only at Aldi's and The Dollar Tree. And I defrayed the cost of some convenience foods.

I was blessed with a dear friend who sent me a much-needed crockpot. And I did find a find $10 Target card floating around an old purse that I forwarded to a young working mom making minimum wage trying to support her daughter. It was so nice to pay it forward. I clearly lived without it and passed it on.

I also cash-flowed older daughter's community college tuition ($1,450 plus helped out with about $200 in books). I did cover her $81 flight home from CA.

I did speak to the high schools about the inability to pay tuition until our financial situation changed; since my kids are partial scholarships, they front loaded those payments so the kids are current and can sit for exams (one in December, one in January).

So we've had to rental property income from 9/1-11/15 and thousands of dollars in expenses. I haven't tallied it up, but I will. We've cash-flowed most of it. We do have one credit card that we used to book work, though if it was billed, we paid it off.

This is a long and rambly. Just sort of a quick recap to myself of the timeline.

Next time you hear from me, I'll be setting some goals for ourselves for the remainder of the year.

I splurged yesterday at Walmart (while buying draino and light fixtures) and spent $.75 for a salt shaker on clearance. It was a cute fox that I admired when he was part of a matched set for $4.98. I already have squirrels that are on my mantle. Apparently the pepper shaker was gone, so he was reduced. I snagged him up and he's on the mantle with the squirrels and pumpkins. I decided he was too cute to pass up. Not needed, but wanted.

So upward.