First Round

It is amazing how different a house looks when the former owner leaves a house empty! The good news? We love it even more!

This last weekend was a whirlwind of projects at the house. Big priority? Get it clean! Oy! Thanks to Kevin's mom, our friend Tracey was on hand to work her magic. Tracey was such a blessing. She loves to clean and see the fruits of her labor, and boy, those fruits were abundant! The dirt that came off the walls was ridiculous.

The carpets too. I think we all have no idea how much dirt and nastiness hides and thrives in our carpets and rugs. Thank goodness for my mom's carpet cleaner. Whew! Really, you should have seen the rinse water she was dumping. Totally gross.

I would be amiss if I did not stress that it was really the purpose of my parents' visit to have Dad help Kevin with reshingling the garage. The garage roof was showing significant wear and tear and it was estimated that it would not successfully weather another northwest Ohio winter. Thankfully, Dad was a roofer in a former life and was able to share his experience with us.

Kevin started early in the morning to tear off the old felt and shingles. The unexpected bump on that project was that it took until noon to clean off the roof. Originally, the plan was for them to return home early Sunday morning, but with this bump, they decided to stay longer and get a lot further on the roof. And, that's exactly what they did. When it was time for Mom and Dad to leave, there was just one side of the roof left and I could help enough for Kevin to finish it up. Well, except that we ran out of shingles. But, we fixed that Monday morning and Kevin officially finished the garage roof Monday night.

Roof? Done. Whew!

Oh, yeah. And, we also wanted to tear out carpet in two rooms: Ethan's bedroom and the full bathroom upstairs. Mom did most of Ethan's room. She and I pulled up the carpet, but the padding underneath had completely deteriorated and was giving my allergies major grief. So, Mom finished that room, scraping up the lingering padding with a putty knife. It really worked wonders.

I worked on the bathroom. Yuck! You know, I just want to take a little break here and say that we all deal with our own dirt. And it's gross, but it's your own so it's mostly okay. It's much less okay to work with someone else's dirt. Not cool.

So, the carpet in the bathroom was gross.

Anyway, I pulled it up after some major wrestling with an abundance of carpet tacks. Oy! Seriously, there was no need for so many tacking strips and nails. And underneath it? ... Are you ready for it?? ... Marble! No, I'm just kidding.

There is lovely vinyl tiles glued to a wood floor, which means if there really ever was marble under there it was torn out long ago. Bummer, dude.

That being said, it's vinyl which means it will do until we can renovate that bathroom. Mission: Accomplished.

All in all, a very successful weekend.