Back to work... again

My neighbor and I finished remodeling our new Pastor's home around the end of March. Here it is, the end of April and I'm finally getting around to mentioning that (good thing there's no deadlines or need to rush).

If you follow golf, the Pro-Am Golf tournament was just held in Aventura, Florida, at Turnberry. I've been working in a 40 story condo on Turnberry Isle that overlooks that golf course (a yearly membership is $250,000, excluding tips). The condo's board of directors, manager, and head of maintenance have all been begging us to come work on their building since January first. They can get other people to do the work, but the others don't ever seem to be able to follow instructions, and usually they take much longer... 3 to 6 weeks to do the same job we do in 6 or 7 days (and they do it poorly).

When my neighbor and I finally finished here on the Pastor's house in March, we went down to the condo and started. They have work enough for us to stay busy for months. It is about 20 miles each way, and with gas creeping ever upward, unless we raise our rates to cover the added expense, we'll be losing money soon. The work is fairly simplistic, but it's tiring. For much of the prep days (the first 4 or 5) I work mostly on 2' high stilts. I've used my stilts as high as they go (4') and even then, it's not overly difficult, but walking for 4 to 8 hours a day on stilts is murderous on the feet, calves, and knees. When not on stilts, much of my time is spent crawling on the floor -- that's hands and knees on marble floors. I'm so ready to be finished.