If I had the money, I would totally be one of those people who hire a maid.  I don't enjoy cleaning, but I do enjoy a clean house. I even might be a little OCD about it when guests come over. 

When we bought our house, we knew we weren't buying a perfectly clean home.  But I never knew HOW dirty it really was. We had have our work cut out for us. This weekend marked 4 weeks since we moved in to our new home.  I can't believe it!  It seems like so long, yet I feel like we just got here and haven't had time to do anything.  Jack and I got sick the day we moved and are still sick today. Brandon has been sick for about 2 weeks now, so we haven't really felt up to house work.  So things have moved slowly since we moved in.

So it is good to remind myself once in a while of all the things we have done so far and I will share it with all of you! This post is a little random, but just some photos to mark the past 4 weeks for you to see.

We got the keys to the house on Wednesday January 25th.

 

We got to take the sign down. We were so excited!

 

That night we started ripping out carpet and discovered just how dirty this place really was.

(You will see this picture again in our carpet post- coming soon!)

We spent every evening at the house getting our hands dirty while I packed during the day at the apartment.

Our little apartment all packed up.

Boxes everywhere!

 

After packing every day for 2 weeks, I started to realize we didn't have enough boxes. My sister came in town the day before we moved and because she is the sweet sister that she is, helped me find more boxes in the dumpsters!

I'm pretty sure this is how we initially got sick!

Brandon got to go pick up our new couches that we bought in December.

  

It was very difficult working on the house with a 9 month old baby.  He hated being confined in a pack n' play and there was just too much dirt and plastic for him to be free. I ended up getting nothing done.

 

When we replaced the floors in the kitchen (hint for you in this picture!), we took the oven out and discovered the strong stench of fermented soy sauce and spaghetti sauce. I was the lucky one who got to clean it. I gagged only 100 times. 

 

 

 

 

How did it get this bad?!

 

We moved in on Saturday February 11th. We had friends and family come help and we are so grateful! We rented the largest truck Budget rents out and still had a trailer full of stuff following the truck. How did we accumulate so much stuff?!

 

Sunday the 12th, we spent the whole day cleaning the blinds in the house. We googled remedies and tried many... and we struck out with them all. The one that worked the best was scrubbing them with dish soap and water, then wiping them clean.  This took two people and an entire day! I'm pretty sure they never cleaned these blinds. Can you see the spot we cleaned in the picture?

 Monday, my sister and I spent the entire day at the old apartment. We got the carpets cleaned and cleaned the apartment spotless. Here is Jack unrolling the whole roll of paper towels like a red carpet!

 Last week we got our air vents, ducts, and returns cleaned. To say they were dirty would be an understatement. I got a super good deal on it, so we had to wait 3 weeks to get them done. But it was well worth it. The service we got was normally $250 and I paid $9.99! 

This is a picture of just one of the 3 filters in our house.  DISGUSTING!

If you haven't replaced your filters lately, I highly recommend it. It helps circulate the heat and air, helps keep your gas bill down, and it reduces the amount of dirt and dander in the home.

Our filter

A new, clean filter.

The guy who cleaned our vents accidentally broke our drain (I am giving him the benefit of the doubt since he neglected to tell me he broke it). He must be super strong, because he broke the metal piece connected to the side. When I went to remove the broken drain plug, I discovered this hair ball rope. I don't think they EVER cleaned out their drains. I'm terrified to check the other tub drain.

On the far right is the top of the drain plug and the rest is hair connected to it!

Yes this is random, but had to be included. Yesterday I was driving home from the grocery store and I was stopped in the middle of the road by this!!!!

Turkeys in the middle of the road. One male and all his females.

Where do we live?! Seriously a turkey in the middle of the road?

 I promise the posts are gonna get better and better! So subscribe to our page. Sorry it's taking so long. We're struggling to find all the pictures we took during the process. But we will have plenty to show you.. so check back!

So we couldn't be happier to be home owners. We love the idea of having our own space and doing with that space what we want to. We bought a wonderful home with mounds of potential but a very short window in which to accomplish a lot of the needed revamping. We decided we wanted all of the big repairs done before we moved in so we resolved to take on the task of ripping out all of the carpet ourselves and most of the linoleum. We planned to replace all of the floors with a mixture of new carpet and hard flooring (more about the hard flooring to come). We also decided to replace all of the baseboards downstairs and put up something special in the living room. Oh, did I fail to mention painting 95% of all 3,000 square feet? Yeah well, that too.

Even though we had about ten days to finish all of this work we aren't going to toss it all in your lap at once. We're going to take our time and spoon feed you with it. I know, you are starving and you want to down it all at once but we don't want you to choke on it. We'll start with the house as it looked on day one. (The clutter is from the previous owners. They had not yet completely moved when these photos were taken.)

Living room. Notice the berber carpet and linoleum in the entry. Excruciating isn't it? Disclaimer: The lighting is quite bad throughout the whole house and needs some major improvements so keep that in mind.

Kitchen and pantry. Both great spaces. Love our BIG pantry.

Looking out from the kitchen into the open dining/family rooms. Fireplace included. Thumbs up.

Looking into the kitchen from the family room. I'm sure you notice the blinds and the dirt caked on them. That was kind of the theme of the house.

Back hallway from the family room to the mud room, half bathroom and garage.

Half bath. Exciting I know.

Mud room; typically the laundry room in this home layout. The previous owners moved the laundry into a closet upstairs, which we love. Most of the time it's hard to tell how bad things are by looking at a picture. That's even true here where it looks pretty bad. The damage and filth caused in this room was due to multiple great danes. The berber carpet throughout the house was incredibly soiled and torn up because of the dogs and the lack of maintenance. That's why it had to go, not just because berber is our least favorite type of carpet.

Headed upstairs. Keep that big tall wall in the stairway in mind. It will most definitely be popping up later in it's own special post. We've got great plans for it!

Second family room/loft. We love this space but it's going to take some time to fill. It'll be good for posting in the future.

Jack's room and closet. Plenty of room for a 9 month old. Don't you think? We've got some great ideas for our little boy's room that we can't wait to show!

Next to Jack's room is the laundry closet. It would be nice in the room downstairs with more space but it's even nicer upstairs with all the bedrooms and especially next to Jack's room.

Guest bath.

Guest room and closet. Finally, we have a guest room! If you visit us, you'll have somewhere to sleep. We've got some great ideas for this room as well.

We saved the best for last.

Our spacious master bedroom. So excited for this room!

The most wasted space in the house; the master bathroom. Not sure what we'll do with this space but we'll think of something.

One of our favorite "rooms", the master closet. Again, not a very good use of all that space.

Now here is a video tour of the house the day we got the key.



Let us know what you guys think. We would love comments, etc.  And we will be posting updates on all of our projects that we have done, so keep checking back or subscribe so you can see all the changes!!