Closing Day

We closed on the house today!!!  It was a little hairy right up until we signed the paperwork, but it all worked out!  We don't plan on moving our furniture into the house until January 7th or 8th, so we have a couple of weeks to work on the place.  Every square inch of the house needs to be painted. Top to bottom.  And it needs some repair work on the eaves, new carpet in the bedrooms, and new kitchen countertops and sink to kick off the kitchen mini-fix.

Day one, we just wanted to focus on cleaning, since the place was pretty filthy.  Within our first four hours in the house, I had swept up two dustpans of dirt, dead bugs, dog hair balls, and other ickiness; cleaned all of the bathrooms; vacuumed the floors; used the blower to clean out the screened patio; put up temporary shades; used a razor blade and Goo Gone to scrape up sticky stuff from the bamboo hardwood and travertine floors; and met two very nice, but clearly nosy neighbors.

Here is a sampling of the work we've already undertaken:

First, I'm definitely clean-freak-ish, so starting out by cleaning this house is a must.  I just can't get comfortable amongst filth.  I cleaned all of the counters, glass, mirrors, and surfaces with my favorite Method product.  This stuff works great, smells great, is great for the environment, and dries without a sticky residue.

We then swept the hardwood bamboo and travertine to pick up the dirt and junk.  This was the first dusptan of ickiness:

As proof for those of you who don't believe I get dirty or sweaty:

This is the north wall of the living room.  The outlet that is high in the middle of the wall is a cable jack.  Why is it so far left?  I think we're going to have it patched by our handyman since I like symmetry, so there's no way I'd put a TV that far left of center.

This is looking toward the family room from the front door/entry hallway.  Imagine how good it'll look once all of that paneling is painted (yes, we're trying that before drywalling... paint is cheaper):

One of my favorite little features of this house is the adorable built-in bookcase in the family room:

Once again, a picture of all of cleansers and air fresheners, my little helpers:

 I had Darrell vacuum under the bathroom vanity, since there are decorative openings near the floor.

And it's good thing we did that, because look at the nastiness that he pulled out of there -- a hair ball and styrofoam!  These pieces were so big it clogged his shop vac.  Gross.

 Then, we noticed that there was all kinds of gooey stuff stuck to the flooring and tile...

Believe it or not, we soaked each spot with Goo Gone solution and scraped gently with an old school razor blade, and each and every sticky mess cleaned up in seconds.  Seriously, it would only have taken someone a few minutes to do this, and somehow it was neglected for a year or more.  The negligence is shocking.

And here is the shower tile after the sticky tabs were taken off (much better!):

And finally we wrapped up our evening by installing the temporary (paper) window shades that will stay up through our paint job.  Not pretty, but functional, and they look better (less askew) from the street: