Here's my soapbox

       I'm just going to put it out there.  Don't smoke.  Please, there is tons of research out there saying it kills you, slowly.  With all the knowledge people have available about how bad it is, I honestly have no idea why people even start smoking.  It always kills me when I see a kid (you know, the ones who hopefully are at least 18 but look 15 or 16) smoking.  I think to myself, "don't you have anything better to spend your money on?" If you smoke to calm your nerves you could probably cure that problem with counseling or Dr. visits that would be cheaper than the 10+ years it took you to figure out you should never have stopped smoking.  

(image from Google)

        I love you all, even if you do smoke or have in the past, but please do yourself a favor.  Do your spouse or significant other a favor.  Do your children or future children a favor.  They love you and want you to be around for as long as possible.  It's not too late.   Our bodies are amazing and they can "heal" from smoking, it's possible.  

        I am sorry if anyone reading this feels I am speaking rudely or out of turn.  It comes from a place that cares about the human race and the health of others.  I saw what it did to my great-uncle who died of lung cancer.  It was tragic. 

        So, the secret I have been hiding about our house is that the lady who lived in our house before was a heavy smoker. dun. dun. dun. She smoked inside and we had to clean away the evidence.  It was nasty.  [If you must smoke, please go outside!]

OK, I am done.  Now I will show you why I feel so firmly about it.  Photographic evidence. 

The dining room-before.

These photos are from our dining room. It was where I started cleaning.  We scrubbed the baseboards, walls, windows, doors and trim with a TSP, vinegar and water solution.  When there was a tough spot we used baking soda to have a little grit.  What is TSP you ask? It is Tri-Sodium-Phosphate.  T.S.P.  It was the chemical that we read will get rid of strong odors (smoke) and strong stains (tar and nicotine build-up).   We found it at Home Depot.  

These are pictures of the cleaning process.  You can clearly see where I cleaned on the baseboard vs. where it hadn't yet been cleaned.  In person it was very clear on the wall too.  You might be able to see it above, but you might not.  Just know it's there.  I know, it's disgusting.   The dirty part was sticky and so dust and dirt was very good at sticking to it. [No wonder lungs get so dirty, that's the same stuff that gunks up a smoker's lungs]

This picture I took while I was scrubbing and wiping the wall.  You can see after I applied the TSP/Vinegar solution how the walls were "weeping" the nicotine and tar.  If you ever have to do this project start from the top and work your way down.  If you do it the other way you will end up doing it twice!  I know from experience. ;)  

This is what my water bucket looked like after about 10 minutes.  After about an hour it was quite a bit darker.  It was so satisfying to dump it out! 

 My arms and back were so sore the next day, so very sore.  It took a ton of "elbow grease" to get these stains off.  We did this in every room of the house.  Every wall all the trim.  It was disgusting.  However, we did, eventually, get the smell out.

***I think it's worth it for you to know now that we painted all of these surfaces after cleaning them.  We cleaned them first because the paint wouldn't have stuck to all that dirt and we wanted to get as much of it out of the house as possible so that it wouldn't "leak" out later [we heard that happens sometimes.]  I will post later about using Kilz on the whole house, but for now know that painting all of the surfaces was vital to getting the smell out.***

We used another crazy trick to get the smell out.  I read that bowls of charcoal would absorb the odor.  Well, we didn't have bowls so I put a few chunks on napkins/paper towels all around the house and in all the cabinets.  All our helpers and visitors asked if we had a giant rabbit. hahaha. Curiously, we are still finding them here and there.  Our dog had one in his mouth the other day, hopefully he didn't swallow any! (eeek!)

Well that's it. That's how we got the smell out of our house and my soap box (I promise you won't have to read many of those.)  See ya next time! 

Love,

Sarah

"Clean it up Cinderella"

While no one was ordered around while cleaning the house, I am pretty sure that all of us, or rather, all of the females at one point felt like Cinderella.  No, not in the princess-y way, in the "I am so sick of cleaning someone else's mess" way.

When we bought our home it was pretty disgusting.  We didn't buy it because of what we saw, we bought it because of the potential we saw.

A little background about our house:  It was a reverse mortgage.  This means it was bank owned, but not because the previous owner couldn't pay, because they owned the house outright and asked to start getting money out of the house.  So basically, the bank paid her and when she moved on (we aren't sure if she died or went to a nursing home) the bank owned the house.  So like a foreclosure the house was managed by a group that was paid by the bank to cut the grass and make sure there weren't squatters, but they didn't really clean at all.

Ok, so we needed to do that before anything else could happen.

The first couple of days it was magical and wonderful.  Then we noticed how nasty everything was.  When you'd turn a light on your fingers would feel sticky and gross.  YUCK.  So, Cinderella got to work.  You can't see the tar on this light switch but, you'll just have to trust me.

I can't tell you how many hours and days we spent cleaning.  I forgot.  I blocked it out.  I don't want to know actual numbers.  I do know it was hard work.  For me, this was the most grueling part.  It was the part that we had to do before anything else upstairs could be done.  While this was hard work, we had amazing help from our families!  Both of our Moms scrubbed things down and made sure we weren't going to miss any spots.  Especially the windows.  It seemed like my Mother-in-love was endlessly cleaning windows.

Here they are working side by side, sorry for the dark photos, it was SO sunny out!

They got every window frame and the outside!  The frames were hosed off and wiped down. 

Even though we ripped out the carpet (eventually), I think we vacuumed it.  We left the windows open so that we could get air circulation.  At this point we hadn't turned the AC on yet.  It was August in GA and it was HOT and HUMID but we were only there for 4 or 5 hours a day so it seemed wasteful to cool the whole house. 

Daniel and Joseph helped clean too! (There were others who shall go un-pictured but who also helped us so very much!)

We washed the walls with a vinegar and water mixture or dish soap for tough grime, but more on that later.   Sorry this post is so boring but I am saving my major Soap Box to sit on next post.  It's a doozy.  This was a major process though.  It took a lot of time and effort.  It was good to get to know all the nooks and crannies of the house.  I think we would have cleaned any house we bought, but definitely not this intensely.  If you don't already know why we cleaned so much, you should know I am holding on to that secret, but next post I'll share it!  Stay tuned. ;-)

until next time,

Sarah