We're Homeowners! Let the remodeling begin.

Oh, where to begin. Mike and I closed on our house today at 1pm. This was an interesting process, it felt a bit like something out of a movie. We arrived at the county clerks office downtown and stood there like two lost sheep, unsure of what to do next. A nicely dressed woman came up to me and asked, "Are you Sarah?" A few moments later a man came and asked us if we someone else. Finally our representative from our attorney's office found us. It was bizarre. We sat down, signed what felt like a million papers and then waited, and waited, and waited. Our deed finally came through and we were done. Two months of waiting and finally our house was actually ours. No more midnight drives by the house, no more afternoon runs past the house, it was finally ours. At this point, we were so famished, we didn't really care about going to the house, we just wanted Olive Garden. We ate our celebratory lunch and headed on over to start our work.

Our first order of business was to meet with Elia, the "picker" we hired to come take away the junk freezers, washer and dryer the seller left in the basement. Elia was quite efficient and before we knew it we were standing in the kitchen thinking to ourselves, what did we get ourselves into? The house smelled like cat pee. Quite awful. We pondered our game plan until some of our friends came to help us out. Bill, Joe, Kevin and Marc showed up and helped to remove/demolish the wood stove and the mantel.

While the boys were working on that, I started removing the carpets upstairs. We were surprised to find that the hardwood floors under the carpeting was in pretty good condition. The number of cat urine stains under the carpeting was quite disturbing however. Mike's mom came over as well and took up residence cleaning the bathroom. We all thought the bathroom was a lost cause and was going to have to be completely redone, but Laurie managed to get it sparkling. Based on the amount of soap scum and mildew in the shower the previous owner couldn't have cleaned her shower in the last year...disgusting!

The guys managed to get the wood stove out without too much of a hassle and quickly started on cleanup from the concrete and stones that were everywhere. Once that was done, Bill and Joe took off, but Marc and Kevin stayed and helped to finish ripping the living room carpets out and joined me in pulling staples and carpet tack strips out of the floor. This was a pain in the ass. I have two blisters from it and Mike sliced his hand open. We continued to prep for tomorrow's long day of work by washing the walls in the living room to get them ready to paint.

As Mike and I were getting ready to leave, we took a good look around and are happy with our purchase. Already it looks like a completely different house inside thanks to the help of our awesome friends we got a ton accomplished. Thanks guys!

I took before and after pictures but I don't have the transfer

cable for my camera. I'll see what I can do to get pictures up ASAP. :)