Homebirthin' Momma: Whew

I have been dying to sit down and blog for over a week now. I seriously have not had a spare moment to do so. My days are crammed full from the moment I get up (5:00am) until the moment my head hits the pillow (10:00pm or 11:00 on rare evenings). I am blogging this morning in lieu of school. Yeah, I'm gonna pay for this one. This week is super busy and crazy! My head is swimming with everything I need to get done. Oh well. At least I'm updating my blog, right? :D

So.... the big news! We are in our house!!!! Do I like it, yes! Do I love it, you better believe it!!! I love it so much more than I thought possible. I am so content out here. Let me start at the beginning.

Brent knows the man and woman who lived here before us. He worked with them. That is the ONLY reason we even got this house. They were going through a divorce and a series of events led up to the lady (who technically owns the house) letting Brent know that she was wanting to rent out this house. It sounded perfect. Really, too good to be true. I hated to get my hopes up. We came out to look and I loved the land. The house was ok. It was junky and had older and outdated furniture. I made myself envision painted walls and my furniture and decorations inside. I wanted this land so badly for my boys that I agreed to rent it. We want to buy it, but at this moment, the owner is not selling it. She thinks she may be willing to sell it come January or July and we have first dibs. SWEET!

Back to my story. The couple split and the woman moved to Utah. She allowed the ex-husband to stay through the end of October. Then, he was moving to Florida. When we looked at the house (back in July), the outside was junky and cluttered, the house was junky and cluttered (along with being filthy) and the basement was full. She assured us that it would be clean and ready to move in my November 1st, if not before.

I talked to her the last week of October and she told me she would be getting in to town that Thursday and she wanted me to come by and get a key and see the place. She wanted to go over some things with me. She also told me that we would be able to come to the house and do whatever needed to be done starting that day. She said not to move any furniture in though until Monday. I didn't understand why we could come work on the house (painting and hanging things), but not move in our furniture. Ideally, we would get to "move" on the weekend when our family members were off of work. Oh well.

When we pulled up at the house, the yard was still very cluttered and junky. I looked at Brent and he looked at me. I know we were both wondering the same thing, "Is that stuff staying???? Is that our job to move it??? It is trash????"

This is the only picture I took of the outside this day.

We went inside and it looked the same way. Stuff and junk was EVERYWHERE! Still hanging on the walls, still in all the cabinets and corners, trash was everywhere. I just wanted to sit down and cry. Now I knew why we couldn't move in furniture. How were we suppose to even paint? I felt discouragement. I didn't think we would be able to move in on Monday. It was that bad.

This is the filth that was all through the house. Notice the baseboards!

Once again, I was trying to capture the filth!

I felt so hopeless and discouraged (and exhausted already). Wow! I took these pictures because I knew my mother and mother-in-law would NOT believe me and would think I was over exaggerating it. Talk about shock from them. Mom went straight to the store and bought a TON of cleaning supplies and lots of gloves. I didn't even know what to do. Obviously, I was going to have to have the carpets cleaned. There was NO WAY I was moving my stuff into that OR even thinking about letting my babies on the carpets. GAG!! They were full of dog hair and dust and nastiness. The dust is what amazed me the most. It was about an inch thick on the baseboards, CARPET, blinds, it was so bad on the fans that it was hanging, yes HANGING, off the blades. I called the carpet cleaners who told me they also cleaned ceramic tile. THANK YOU, LORD! I also arranged for them to clean the bathroom floors. I "ok-ed" it with the owner on what day would work. I knew her stuff occupied the space being cleaned, so I knew I needed to make sure it would work for her. I wanted it done BEFORE we moved our stuff in.

Friday when Mom, Brent, and I arrived, it looked just as bad. You could not tell that anything had been done. Honestly, I don't think anything had been done. We worked on painting the master bedroom and my mom (THANK YOU!!!!!!) cleaned the master bath. GAG. It. Was. Disgusting! She probably cleaned it for 2 hours and it is so small that 2 people cannot fit inside. LOL. We painted and then eventually left because there was nothing we could do. She assured us that the rooms would be empty by 11am the next day for the carpet cleaners.

We arrived the next morning and the house looks the exact same. The furniture and junk still covered all the floors being cleaned. The owner ended up leaving and her best friend took control. She knew we paid the carpet cleaner whether he could do the job or not. We moved EVERYTHING out of the rooms and into the living room floor.

What she had moved out.... you could no longer tell.

The carpet cleaners were able to do their job. That is what matters. To make a long story short, we had an army of people helping us. 12 to be exact. I mentioned in the blog before this what all we had to do to get this house "move in ready". It was not a cheap thing to do. We went to clean the fridge the day we were moving in and discovered we were going to have to buy one of those too. This is what the inside looked like once we cleaned all her stuff out.

Can you say, "NASTY"!!!

We were going to clean it, but seriously... I don't know that there was any hope! We bought a used/like new side-by-side black refrigerator and put hers in the storage building.

Her are some pictures of the progress

Boys room getting painted.

Dane helping paint the guest room.

My big helper!

Here are some after shots... everything is not completely done. I still need to hang lots of things and our table we ordered is not in stock yet.

Living room

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The sitting area of the Master--- I'm pretty sure I'm going to be painting that big wall the gold that the guest room is and the master bath.

Yes, my hubby bought my comforter!!! Merry Christmas to me!

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The screened in porch.

The master bath. I hate having to have those selves, but it is so small, I have no choice.

Boys room.

Boys bathroom.

I took one looking in, can't find it now. Will post it later.

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Guest room... still needs lots of work!

The kitchen

My marriage wall in the living room :D

I will take pictures of our workout room and post those later.

We moved in at Halloween time. Mom and Dad took the boys to a Fall festival while we worked so they could have some fun.

We moved our furniture in on Halloween. We were going to take Dane trick-or-treating (since I spent $30 on the costume!!!!), but with all the excitement, he refused to go. He wanted to stay with us. LOL. I was actually ok with that. NO CANDY :D

It has been great living here. I love it and the boys both love it. They run around and play outside all day!