Monday, May 25, 2009

All moved in... and our derailment

We moved into our new house on saturday. We are now 48 hours past the time we STARTED packing our truck, so just over 35 hours past when we finally had every last box under this roof.
We also had invited friends/family over for a BBQ today. We thought that in a day and a half (Sunday and Monday morning) we'd be able to unpack at least the majority of the downstairs. Hahaha, what fools we were.
Yesterday we had a derailment which resulted in a minor renovation of our closet. And by minor I mean "removal of animal urine" and by renovation I mean "lots of coats of paint".
You see, the previous owners had stunning furniture. You probably remember that from our photos before we moved in. Big beautiful dark wood bedroom furniture. Stunning, really. Although they probably spent a small fortune on said furniture, they apparently didn't give a crap what happened to it. Because they allowed their dogs to pee all over it.
When their furniture was finally gone (the day we took posession), we noticed brownish/orange circles where the legs of the bed, dresser, bench, and armoir had been. We thought (due to the color and the lack of overwhelming odor) that the stains were from the finish of the furniture rubbing off on the carpet fibers.
Once we got the computer in the bedroom, we realized we were sorely mistaken. While laying on the carpet, checking my email, I noticed that my allergies were getting HORRIBLE and there was a weird smell to the closest brown spot.
Sure enough, it was dog urine. Their dogs had apparently marked every leg of EVERY piece of furniture in their master bedroom. So we went on to spot treating and used both OxyClean/Woolite Spot Shot and then later, Resolve High Traffic Foam.Then we shampooed the whole room after vacuuming. For the record, I do not recommend this method as it bleached out the carpet, but atleast I can go into my master bedroom now without sneezing up a storm. We do intend to replace the carpet ASAP, but since it's a 19x15 room, it's going to cost a pretty penny (approx $600 including pad and labor) to install new carpet in there. So we just needed to make it livable for the time being. Then we noticed that duke (our dog) peed on baseboard downstairs. Just a squirt as if he was marking his territory. Mind you, Duke has NEVER marked indoors in the 7 years we've had him, and he hasn't had an accident indoors in nearly as long (5-6 years). So we started looking around and sure enough, there were dried yellow "drips" on the white baseboards. UGH. Nasty.
So Lily and I ran to Home Depot while Daddy shampooed the carpet, and we stocked up on Kilz and Paint. I decided, though, that if I was going to repaint, I was going to do it the color I WANTED, not the color that was already there. Granted, the main color I wanted wasn't TOO far from the color they already had, but i'm happy with the difference anyway. Their tan color was much more brown based and looked grungy/dirty. Mine is more peach based, and I'll also be repainting all the shelving brown :) After that, I'll move to the master bedroom before painting the kids rooms.
This is our before
MAT_0606

These are our after colors


I'll be back soon with some after pics :)


2 comments:

Robyn said...

Oh, no! What an awful story. That happened to my husband once, and since that experience he now refuses to ever live in a house that isn't brand-spankin' new.

Sarah Greenman said...

Ugh. At least it came up. I have the same allergies to cat and dog urine.