Thank you to everyone who’s helping us out.  The whole crew is helping! My mom and dad, Dylan and his tutor David, Vicky and Sherry, our friend Lori (her handy work will be posted tomorrow), and even Abbey and William are getting involved!   Oh and of course we’ve also had plumbers, electricians, pest control, and so on!

The house had been “cleaned” before closing, but there was still so much to be done.  A little sample of what we’re faced with.  This was the kitchen pantry.  Thank goodness for my hero Vicky.  She really makes all of these projects possible.  She’s smart, works her tail off and has made some major progress!  Not only has she been tackling things like this, she’s making repairs, dismantling drapery rigging, painting…. what a multi-tallented woman!   And on top of that, her partner Sherry made us a delicious fratatta for lunch Saturday.

How do you like your new yard William?  Based on the way he pranced around the yard, frolicking with joy….. I’d say he approves!

My office floor was an adventure in itself…  We pulled up the old carpet to find what looked like possibly an original carpet pad. It was an unpleasant experience. We expected to find a layer of sandy, dusty debris under the carpet — there always is — but there was a layer of caked dirt and grime under the carpet pad that was an eighth of an inch thick in some places.  It filled the whole room with an overwhelming odor of must, dust, dirt, age and grossness.  It’s a nice reminder of why even if you have a carpet that looks ok, if it’s older than a certain point it just needs to come up!

The last two photos show the tests that Mark at Plantation Carpet Cleaning ran in order to figure out how to attack this challenge.  And then a quick snapshot of after the clean.  Mark did an AMAZING job!

This just makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I’ve narrowed colors down to these but there are still way too many. And I’d be happy with any of these!

Wow, lots of work work to get done before I can get back to house thinking!  Looking forward to it!

Plan as of right now:  Pull up the carpet in the den (soon to be office). Then someone is coming to steam clean the tile in the bathrooms and the tile that is (theoretically) underneath the carpet in the den.  Next we tackle the wallpaper.  Then we’re going to paint the master bedroom, robbie’s office and my office so that we can move in and not be overwhelmed by paint smell. Hopefully the kitchen too.  That’s the plan anyway….

I know it’s not particularly pretty, but I’ve been eyeing this for a long time. It’s a sit-stand desk that will enable me to leave my desk in one piece but transition from sitting to standing using the crank.  This could be a really great thing!   I’ll figure out some way to make it prettier….

I would flip the blades on all of these probably to be the lighter and or white options….

We’re getting excited. Getting the paint brushes warmed up.  I think we’ve got one color picked out so far.

Check out the Before Pictures to see our starting point.

Gotta love Google Street View’s ability to capture odd candid  shots.  Aren’t these two ladies great?