What lies beneath...

First things first, we have to get every horrible thing in this house OUT. My 5'3", 100lb self isn't capable of too much heavy-lifting, so I left carpet removal to the hubby while I tackled nails, screws, bath fixtures, doorknobs, chair railing, etc. Unfortunately "dirt" falls into my category as well, and as Bryan pulled up the carpet we found more dirt that we would have even thought was possible!

Not only that, but we found pet stains, and caked-on, who-knows-what from years of carpet shampooing....(definitely made us think long and hard about hiring steam-cleaners rather than renting shampoo units ever again!) Our first instinct was to "simply" (ha!) replace the subfloors....my contractor dad was quick to inform us, those weren't subfloors, there were the only floors and ripping them out wouldn't be much short of a nightmare. So on to Plan B...cleaning.

First we vacuumed....you can see in the picture the lines from where the vacuum has been and where it hasn't. It was really quite unbelievable, we emptied the shop-vac 3 times in the first round alone, and we're talkin about a BIG, 16 gal shop vac, and we're talkin raw, unadulturated dirt.

Next, Bryan scrubbed the caked-on nastiness with a dry brush, and I followed beside him, vacuuming again (we wore masks for this whole ugly task)

Then, I made a solution of half soapy water and half distilled white vinegar (soap for the obvious cleaning properties, and vinegar because it is a natural deoderant, not to mention ultra-acidic and therefore an excellent cleaning agent as well. If you don't clean with vinegar yet, you should! It will leave a streak-free, non-toxic, shine on your hardwood floors and countertops, and even remove crayon from painted walls!), and we took turns scrubbing again. While one of us would scrub, the other would follow beside with the shopvac using the squeeqy attachment. We went through over 5 gallons of vinegar, but it is amazing how much dirt we were able to get up!

Finally, we used 10+gallons of Kilz 2 to seal the plywood floors so that no lingering nastiness could seep into our soon-to-be lovely home. Below is a pic of me sealing a bedroom that will eventually be padded and carpeted, but the above room will have a layer of paper and hardwood.

Ta-dah!!! This is the same room you saw 3 pictures up...can you believe it!?! We're still weeks away from the finished product, but this is already super gratifying!