Day Three

Today it's just the PM and Little' ol Me. I am tackling the kitchen cabinets. They are covered with years of grease and grime oh, my. Murphy's Oil Soap and a citrus cleaner should do the trick. Mr. B needs to install a new front door lock and one for the sliding door in the back. We have been using pliers and the key to open the front door and putting something heavy in front of it to keep it closed when we are inside the house. The sliding door doesn't have a lock or handle. After Mr. B finished the doors he worked on more wall repair, and pluming issues. None of the drains or faucets function properly. I don't understand how anyone could have lived here.

At the end of Day 3, I was only partly finished with the cabinets and the pluming was the primary concern. :(

Day Two

Day Two:

I have a new recruit E, she is our youngest sons GF. We head out and pick up Mamaw and Papaw for work duty. Mamaw will finish the refrigerator and I will finish cleaning the bathroom. Papaw's task is to remove damaged doors, all the cover plates, nails and screws left in the walls. E's left with removing contact paper.

Around lunch time more help arrives our youngest son and soon to be renter (L), and youngest sons friend and soon to be renter (A). They are used to pick up food for the hungry workers. After lunch the Project Manager (G) arrives. He quickly begins a lesson in repairing holes in the wall. L spends some time with E since he already knows how to fix walls. He and his brothers learned years ago after creating a hole in the wall.

Putting the refrigerater back together ended up being a group task. It felt like we were on "Survivor " doing a puzzle challenge. In the end there were a few extra pieces that must have belonged in another refrigerater. Oh well no worries!

Goals accomplished and hoping not to get caught in rush hour traffic team 1 departs for home. Team 2 continues to repair walls and tear down walls. The upstairs bathroom needs a complete overhaul so G and L remove the tub, tile and wall.

End of day 2

Renoveting a house for our college kids

Well, we are so desperate to become part of the Empty Nest Club, that we bought a house close to all our sons schools. There is a slight problem the house needs a lot of work. We are not new to buying houses that are fixer ups but we do already have plenty of unfinished projects at our current home. All this said to introduce my blog. I will be blogging our journey.

Armed with our bright yellow legal pad we enter our new but very used house. Going room by room the list began to grow. There are two columns, before move in and after move in. There are helper list and seasoned do it yourself list. I fall under helper/awesome cleaner and painter.

The first day of real work is my wonderful Mom and me. Our goal is simple, clean and make usable one bathroom and clean the refrigerator and stove. Armed with numerous cleaners, rags, scrubbing utensils, rubber gloves, buckets and a lot of good ol' Elbow Grease we are ready. Mom will work in the kitchen and I will work in the bathroom. After three hours I have cleaned the inside of the shower and some of the sink. Mom has sprayed the oven with cleaner but needs more. While that sets she starts taking the refrigerator apart. It was a successful first day but it was time to leave since we were both being overcome by fumes from our favorite cleaning agents.

We leave feeling very optimistic that another two or three hours should be enough to finish the refrigerator and bathroom. It was important not to overdo it on our first visit or we won't want to return. So we load up my Honda and begin our trip home which is around an hour.