A House

Ugh.  How I've been dreading this post.  But it was a part of our lives and we feel the need to document our struggles and our accomplishments.  This summer was full of both.  July began with one of our biggest challenges we have yet to face.  Our house.  We started off July by heading to Idaho to visit family and spend a few days there on the 4th of July.  Here we are all so happy to be going to see Poppy & Grandma! 

 I had a few 'surprise' dollar store things for the kids along the way.  Cody had never played with a slinky before and absolutely loved it.  It was well worth the dollar. 

The trip began wonderfully. The next day Greg & I had set up a house inspection with our house renters there. This was the 1st house inspection we had done since they had moved in a short 6 months previous. While the kids played with Grandma & Poppy, we set off to see our house. Whoa. I cannot post all of the photos because I truly don't like to remember what we saw, but it was horrific. It was nothing we could have ever imagined could happen to a house in such a short amount of time. Just imagine more piles of this...

 and this...everywhere.  The pictures are so bad because we were taking them quickly.

 This was the day they moved out.  Gross. My camera didn't even catch 3/4 of how gross it truly was.  It was the last day I wore sandals in this house until we got everything ripped out. 

 And imagine every wall looking like this.  Holes EVERYWHERE and marker, crayon, & crap on everything. 

We were horrified.  The renters claimed it wasn't that bad, but after talking with them later that night on the phone (Greg & I were in too much shock while we were there to even contemplate what to do) the renters decided it would be best to leave.  Then they changed their minds the next day and wanted to stay even though they were way behind on payments and we said NO.  It was time for them to go.  We held them to their word and said they had 5 days to vacate the property.  It was insane.  What we thought was going to be a few days spent in Idaho turned into a few weeks.  It would have been fun if it had been full of doing fun things with the family, but sadly it wasn't. 

After the renters got out, we started to assess the damage.  Everything needed paint of course, but the list was SO long.  There were hundreds of holes in the walls; the appliances were all broken (they had taken a baseball bat to the fridge, broken the door to the dishwasher, and the stove was in pieces); the carpet & pad were SO trashed; all the window screens needed to be fixed; all the doors needed to be replaced because they were full of marker, scratches, and holes; the sprinkler system had 3 broken valves; the toilets were even cracked---yes, that was crazy; many light fixtures were broken (the glass); they had ripped out the tub surrounds & glass doors; the flooring in the master bath had to be replaced; a broken window; most door jams were broken & needed to be replaced; and many many more things I don't even remember now.  We immediately got to work.  Greg had already headed back to work in Colorado so I was on my own with thankfully my family to help.  My sister watched the kids for many days; I couldn't have done it without her.  I think most nights I got around 4-5 hours of sleep, if that.  The goal was to get it done as fast as possible and get it on the market as soon as possible.  Summer was almost over and we had missed prime real estate time already in the year (if there is such a thing right now).  Here are a few pictures during the process...

 Looking so much better already...

 My hair needed some serious attention after all the painting.  I went white a little early.  :)  I think we went through around 35 gallons of paint.  Maybe more.  Every square inch of the 3200 sq. feet is painted; ceiling, walls, trim, closets, doors, cabinets.  Everything.  Thank goodness for a good spray gun.  It saved me so much time on the ceilings, closets, trim, etc...

Cavin taking out the toilet.  LOL  It was good to have him around to have something to laugh about :)  He was always cracking jokes and keeping us smiling. 

We didn't want the kids to know all the details of what was going on, but Emma is 6 and she caught on quickly what was going on for the most part.  She wrote them a letter.  Thankfully it is over and the kids did have a lot of fun @ Grandma & Poppy's house.

Thankfully I had so much help from my family during all this. We were able to fix everything and the house looked better than it did before the renters moved in. All problems had been fixed the right way and the house was SO stunning it was hard to leave! Almost everything in the entire house was new. New doors, lights, counters, toilets, faucets, carpet, paint, doors, knobs, windows, roof, and so many other fixes. Here are the after pictures. We were so proud!

It's for sale.  Just sayin...  :)