there's no place like home

I've been happily enjoying an amazing, awesome, incredible, and totally over-the- top gift from God during the last month.

 

It's been...beautiful.

At least once a day, David and I look at each other and say in disbelief, "...this is our house...".

I'm going to go ahead and say that the moment our Realtor handed us the keys to our new home was one of the top 10 best moments of my life.

The house we bought was a foreclosure, so there was definitely some work that we had to do to get things up to par. Especially in the cleanliness department. 

Cleaning up someone else's mess is not fun.
Especially a total stranger's mess.
Every single drawer, cabinet, shelf and corner was covered in dirt and/or hair...and stuff.

Gross.

Groooooosss.

Thank you God for shelf-liner.

And rubber gloves.

The fans in our screened in porch had at least 2 inches of black dirt caked on top of each blade.

Some Krud Kutter, a grout brush, and some serious elbow grease later and...

 It's safe to breathe in my screened in porch again.

I have an unrealistic amount of soap scum on the shower doors of our bathrooms upstairs. I've really never seen anything like it. It has to be from years of build up. It grosses me out. Really bad.

I've tried everything to get rid of it. 

After getting Chemical Pneumonia a few times, I decided to check out my other options. 

Did you know that you can literally watch hours of you tube videos just on cleaning a shower door? 

Unreal.

Still no success. My final solution may end up involving a large jack hammer. I'll keep you posted. 

Cleaning was bumming me out, so I decided to move on to to something more challenging...Furniture refinishing.

Last year, I spilled some bug spray on my kitchen table. In case you were wondering, bug spray and wood don't really mix...

I've wanted to refinish it forever... and our new move seemed like the perfect excuse.

Here's the before pictures:

 and after...

We've still got a few boxes sitting around, and a seriously daunting to-do list, but I've never been more thrilled to be working my hiney off.

Cause... "this is our house..."