The Fun Part

Now the fun begins!

We've owned the house just a little over a month and have had a total of 10 actual workdays (five weekends working Friday/Saturday). To say the job is overwhelming is well, an understatement. We should buy stock in hand-sanitizer and there are lots of thinks that I just try not to think about...like Ethan's habit of sucking his fingers. I will not let myself go there.

Weekend #1:

We had grand plans for this first weekend of work. We would drop the bebes off at a friend's house early so I could "sanitize" a room where they could camp until we had the house to a point where they could run around and play. I would pick the bebes up at noon, take them to swim lessons, bring them back to the new house for lunch, let them watch movies in our "clean" room until mid-afternoon when my parents had offered to pick them up.

Yeah. Well you know. Grand plans usually don't work. I got to exercise my duties as a parent and deal with some pretty big attitudes for several hours first thing that morning. This ended up meaning that ERIC sanitized the room, set up the DVD player and camp chairs while I trekked back and forth across town taking care of the problems. It was fun. 

Once I finally got to the work part, I got to mop. And mop. And mop. I mopped every wall in that 1,400 sq ft. house with a strong mixture of bleach and water. This meant rubber gloves, a face mask, and usually a hat to protect my hair from the falling dust bunnies in 90 degree weather. I am a wimp.

I'm not sure how technically necessary mopping was to the work that needed to be done, but it did make me feel better about my children being on the premises. Of course, it also helped me spot all the dried boogers on the walls and I discovered that bleach does indeed dissolve them if applied liberally. Needless to say, I didn't want to touch anything when we left. I would have probably boiled myself to get clean if I didn't think it would kill me.

While I mopped (cause you all know that I'm the main worker, here, right?), Eric was busy removing all the carpet in the Master Bedroom, the laminate wood flooring in the Living Room, and the vinyl bits that were scattered around the various rooms. It was so gross. The smell of pee did diminish a great deal when that carpet made it onto the trash trailer.

After the mopping was done, I bleached the bathroom...I'm not going to tell you about that other than the fact that regardless of whether or not the toilet was salvageable, I cannot live with it in my house. It will be replaced.

This is the front door after I'd bleached it three times:

Just in case you forgot what it looked like originally:

Nope. It's not staying either. 

Surprisingly, the bathtubs in this house are (were) in really good shape. After cleaning for a solid weekend and not seeing much improvement and growing more aghast at the filth by the moment, I told Eric that I didn't think I could handle bathing in one of the existing bathrooms psychologically. I would never feel clean.

This was the weekend we also met most of our new neighbors. It was nice to be welcomed to a place where you don't know anyone...only it turns out we did. Our new next-door neighbor is someone I had grown up around and actually thought I was cousins with until I was about eighteen (I'm not the brightest crayon in the box, k?). That was cool. 

That was pretty much all we did the first weekend, but here are a few more pictures of the inside before I move on to the next weekend.

Hall Bath:

Notice the visible signs of anger? What you can't see is that behind the door (where it had been slammed repeatedly into the wall) is a large hole in the drywall that backs up to a hole in the bedroom (what will be our school room) wall also created by the slamming of the door into the drywall. Before using the restroom, one always had to make sure everyone knew not to peak.

Front Porch:

The Back Elevation:

This is Ethan chilling in our "clean" room. The walls are still pretty nasty, but they've been bleached, we put down cardboard flooring and it's complete with a dvd player and camp chairs. 

 Yours Truly. Lovely, eh?