Work 'til it hurts

Physical labor (or movement of any kind) is not on my to-do list most days from 8-5(ish). I go in to the office, sit at my desk, and occasionally walk to another person's office where I then sit down. Needless to say, after 3 days of lifting, ripping, pulling, prying, scrubbing, and constantly running up and down stairs, mommy's tired.

We're taking lots of before and after pictures, which I will share just as soon as we find the elusive computer-and-phone-cords box.

Until there are photos, allow me to step you through the high points.
Friday:
The closing was super easy and we didn't have that nerve-wracking "I'm signing my life away" feeling we had with the first house. Had a little lunch, called a flooring guy, took some before pictures, changed to work clothes. And then the fun began. The odor in the house improved immediately after the carpet was removed. I gave the bathrooms the once over. My mom brought dinner and we ate on the card table in the front yard. (In other words, we started classing up the neighborhood right away.) Eventually we couldn't stand tack strips any more and went home.

Saturday:
The sun rose on what would be a hot and humid, disorganized and, for me, somewhat demoralizing day. High of 94 with high humidity and no A/C. Awesome. We had a short term plan going in - focus on the main and upper floors, then move in and then do the lower floor (family room, office, 2nd bath). The plan was being adhered to until my boss showed up, started peeling old self-adhesive tiles off the downstairs bath and all but kidnapping me to Home Depot to buy tile. We wanted to tile the downstairs bath eventually, but he was there and volunteering and the new me does not turn down offers of help. Despite working through the worst part of the day (which we had intended to spend floating in the pool), it came out awesome and really gave us a leg up (ha ha pee joke) on fixing up that bathroom. The upstairs bathroom also got (re)scrubbed 3 times, and an entire bottle of Simple Green was used to get greasy mess of the kitchen. Fun was had by all. At about 9 we managed to get home and cool off in the pool.

Sunday:
So tired. Had to go to Lowe's for plumbing supplies which took about 2 hours in our exhausted state on a rainy early morning. DeuceDad grouted while my father attacked the dripping upstairs tub faucet. The grout went well and looks great. The bathroom... well let's just say my dad sawed 2 holes in walls, broke off one of the knobs, determined there are no shutoffs to anything (save the house) and no actual progress was made. The problem is now understood and a plan is in place. While he was back and forth to his house for tools, I decided to work on the lingering old-man-urine odor. The house has hot water baseboard heat and there is a heater next to the toilet. Probably a good candidate for a source of the smell. I took the cover off and almost got knocked on my kiester by how bad it smelled. I cleaned it with Clorox Cleanup with Bleach (not environmentally friendly, I know, but I needed to bring out the big guns). I scrubbed and rinsed for an hour, and the smell was better but not gone. I was nauseated from the pee smell, dizzy from the cleaner and generally disheartened by the thought that I now own a house that some old dude peed all over. We got more work done, but my heart just wasn't in it. Luckily, by best friend came by for dinner and some work, so while DeuceDad hayed mowed the lawn, she and I sang to the Boyz II Men greatest hits CD and put on the new kitchen cabinet knobs and papered the shelves.

You'll notice that Deuce didn't get mentioned in there. My mom watched him all weekend, which was wonderful because we got a lot done. But the weekend is my time with him. My dad put it into perspective saying that the faster we get our stuff done, the sooner we can all live under our very own roof again. He has a point. But I miss him... so tonight I am taking the night off. We're going to go for a walk and hang out together. Then tomorrow, back to the grindstone.

Wow, congrats if you read all that! As a special prize, I'm offering bags of vinyl flooring scraps that were used to line every shelf in the house!