T-Minus 2 Days Until Move In

Brian and I ended up waving at our best laid plans as we sailed right past them into territory I like to call, "What The Hell Were We Thinking". Our house is nowhere near where we had hoped it would be coming up on our moving date and the last few weeks have been filled with frustrations, stress, tears, late nights, early mornings and more old man pee than you can shake a stick at. I'll keep this to few words and a lot of pictures, since my brain can only process at a kindergarten level right now.

Packing up the kitchen.


















Oh, preground coffee, how I loved finding you in the pantry on a day I ran out of the good stuff. Let's never fight again.














Admit it. You're jealous of my Tony Little Gazelle water bottle and our set of McDonald's plastic cups. (Spoiler: This ish went in the trash. Don't tell Brian I threw away his vessels for Christmas tree water, mkay?)












Awesome wives leave their husbands their beloved cereal bowl.















Little-known fact about me. I had tuberculosis as a child and this is the mortar and pestle my parents used to ground my medicine into applesauce and yogurt.













Okay, enough packing crap. Onto the good stuff.






Powder room before.


















Powder room after demo.



















My beloved Slow, aka Amanda, aka OUR Manda (as Adam likes to refer to her) givin' me a one-fingered wave as she helps us tear up carpet.













THIS is how you do dinner when you have no furniture to sit on and no stove to cook with.















New carpet is going in tomorrow as well as plank vinyl in the laundry room and bathrooms.














This is the reason our house now has an iron filter. And why, along with general grodyness (is too a word), all three of the toilets are being replaced.

Spent the Weekend On My Knees and Boy, Am I Tired!

Now that you're intrigued/disgusted/wishing your son hadn't married me regarding today's post title... ;)


This weekend was all work and no play and Brian and I are fighting for who gets the walker and the recliner that helps you stand up. I was up and out early Saturday morning to start re-painting the peach smoothie bedrooms and between that and a good stretch of four hours yesterday morning, the three bedrooms and the hallway as well as the stairwell are rolled. The trim needs to be done but we've decided to replace the baseboards and casings so no need to tape. *thumbs up*







The bulk of Brian's time at the house this weekend was to de-pee the downstairs bathrooms. He started by stripping wallpaper in the master bath. First layer came down easily and the backing needs to be sprayed and scraped. We'll be TSPing the walls when they're done, priming them and texturing them before we paint.











FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY, CAULK YOUR TOILETS, PEOPLE!!!!!

When the toilet in the master came up, we discovered the source of all that icky water I came across while trying to clean. Yeah, that's a ring of dried pee. *huah, huah* 'Scuse my dry heaves. Toilet got sent to the garage, closet flange got sealed off for now and we are anxiously awaiting the flooring install to be able to put a new one in.






Yo, kitchen tile... I'm happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but old man pee is still the grossest fix-it OF ALL TIME!!!

When I first looked at the house and was describing it to people, I said, "Yeah, and the tile is okay but the grout is dark brown and looks outdated". Um... look closer, heifer. That would be GRAY grout that's just filthy. Shark steamer and a stiff brush to the rescue and it's like night and day. These pictures show just half the floor done. When I finished just the kitchen, there was such a remarkable sense of accomplishment until I realized that I had elbow greased the grout just to be able to actually MOP the floor. The FML moment was brought to me by the letters "F" and "U". Today's chore is doing the hallway and foyer tile.

PEEase Tell Me You're Joking...

Thanks to a perma-pee smell, our powder room has been quarantined until it can be gutted and with little kids, having a useable bathroom downstairs was my main focus today. At first glance, our bathroom is outdated but didn't seem to be in too bad a shape. We've been planning to do a thorough cleaning of it and leave any major work for another time since we have so many other areas to tackle.

My favorite Chilean Fruitz recommended I get a Shark steam cleaner to cut down on the sheer amount of chemicals I'm blowing through. That thing comes with more attachments than a prosthetic leg store (sorry) but it heat up fast and spit out a ton of steam within 30 seconds. I'm figuring a good steaming of the counter and sink, cabinet fronts and toilet were a good place to start. I'd let Brian go to anal retentive town with a Magic Eraser and his beloved Lysol bathroom cleaner on the tub at another time. Counter goes off without a hitch. The sink has some rust issues, but it's clean and the faucet polished up nicely.

Let me take a moment to post a nice picture where I had a smile on my face before I continue because my good mood vanished like WHOA...









So I get down with my steam cleaner and a bottle of Pine Sol for backup and start going to town on the toilet. The more I "clean", the more the smell of pee hits me like Mike Fucking Tyson. I ended up having to take the seat off because the hinges were caked in dried pee and was left with this lovely image.

I worked my way down the toilet, having to steam and scrub every single inch of it because there is pee everywhere. The toilet wasn't caulked at the floor, so I started aiming the steamer into the gap and disgusting brown water started coming out. After ten minutes of steaming, I had half a garbage bag full of paper towels like this one and worse. The brown water just kept coming, all from under the base of the toilet.

Gross, right? I mean, I'm the mother of three boys and have potty trained two of them so far. A little pee on the floor is small potatoes for me. But this was so freaking disgusting and I thought the brown water coming from under the toilet was the worst part. AND THEN I LOOKED UP. And to the sides. And realized that the entire alcove where the toilet is has urine on it. As in the wallpaper that is actually white is almost orange with it. The baseboards are covered in it. Yeah. So what was going to be a room we were going to leave for another time has become our second "kids, don't you DARE come in here unless you want to be on antibiotics" situation courtesy of poor housekeeping and some dude who can't aim.

Hmmm... now what are those two things I've been doing at the house the last two days? Oh, that's right- jack and shit!

The majority of this week has been kissing money goodbye as it goes toward various things. I won't divulge how much poorer I am after this morning's flooring purchase, but let's just say that my buddy that runs that department at Home Depot needs to send me a freaking muffin basket and I want visitation rights with my arm and my leg.

The icky tile, dirty carpet and old vinyl will be gone, replaced with carpet in the bedrooms, plank vinyl in the bathrooms and mud room and gorgeous maple floors in the rest of the house that ended up being THE thing every other product selection was made around. We are on a cross-everything-even-your-legs timeline to try and get the carpet installed before our move in date in two weeks but hopefully it will happen and we can have the boys moved into their new rooms and in their beds our first night in our new home. The wood isn't going in (that's what she said) until after the kitchen is done.

Other purchases have included the light fixtures which are the same ones we put in our old home, a new mailbox to replace the LOVELY one with the birds on it and paint to replace the godawful color I biffed with in the bedrooms upstairs.

Stay tuned for next week's kitchen purchase, the giving away of the rest of my limbs and the legal name change to "Matt".

*crickets*

Tuesday, March 23rd

Welcome to the blog for our new home, dubbed Timmay! (yes, with the exclamation point) at the first viewing due to the wheelchair ramp taking up space in the garage. After a few FML moments surrounding us taking possession of our new home (undoubtedly karmically linked to what I named the house), I thought documenting our experience cleaning up, moving into and doing some renovations on it deserved its own place on the interwebs.


This is me, showing how Wisconsinites (especially the transplants) get pole dancing DONE. And no, the house behind me isn't ours. But I'm sure the neighbors were THRILLED with their sneak peek of my personality. Much thanks to Regina for braving the rain and the threat of Chi-chi-chi-chia hair to take the pic.




This is the worst picture ever of the house. It has four bedrooms and two and a half baths. I can't wait for everybody to have their own room, their own space and for the four boys I live with to be more than 12 feet from me at any given moment, unlike in our old home. This house has two stories plus a basement, the master is on the first floor and the other bedrooms are upstairs. It has a family room and a formal living room. IT HAS SPACE.







If you want to see a grown woman cry, just let her walk up the stairs the day after spending five hours painting only to discover that the color she picked looks like barfed up peach smoothie. And then, add insult to injury by reminding her that she broke the color matching rules to get said color AND that she bought it in a five gallon bucket. See, that's what I get for trying to be all hoity about the paint color. Back to antique white, thank you very much and goodnight and be sure to tip your waitress.



This kitchen. THE KITCHEN. I just can't. Twelve years of my life spent working on other people's homes and I am finally getting a chance to redo one for myself. That desk. That gross tile floor. Don't get me started on the layer of grease on that wood hood, not to mention the stove and fridge that were left behind that are CAKED with grease and food and crap. I have spent a good four hours scouring, scraping, magic erasering (is too a word), Pine Sol-ing, disinfecting and wiping every cabinet inside and out. Just to make me feel okay about fixing stuff in there for the next few months before the new cabinets are ordered and in. I took two totes worth of kitchen things over today and had to talk myself into actually putting them inside the cabinets. And they had already been cleaned. Ish.



















My final thing to share today is the reason Swiffer and I are DONE PROFESSIONALLY. Went through half a box of refills getting the paneling and walls and ceilings dusted and de-cobwebbed and THIS BITCH of a recessed light has to go and eff up my chi.