a nice full Saturday....

 ...life just goes by like a breeze.  It was just morning, now it's almost bed time.  I made a coffee, sat down, it was time to leave to go work on the Yucky House, made a second coffee for the road, and off we went.  We stopped at Home Depot to pick up a rented hard floor cleaning machine.  It came with no instructions, so it was trial and error, mostly error, until we realized that the yellow button had to be depressed to suction up all the mess.  It was brilliant when we did get it working properly, those floors were so bad!  A mop would have just pushed the yuck around, don't you think? 

Before, and after...

They look a little better now!  

Evelyn and Nate...

The stove hood is clean, the stove is too, but the oven still has to be tackled.  

How about a little Before and After?  

This pictures doesn't even show the half of it.  I think someone recreationally dumped a whole bottle of syrup in the bottom, the bottom shelf of the door, and along the edges.  It was SO sticky.  

TA-DA!  So horribly awful to do, yet so satisfying.  The outside has been scrubbed and shined too, unbelievable how much greasy sticky mess was strewn all over.  The b b holes though, and the scrapes and scratches, and the stickers they put on...well, ?  I'll show you next time, forgot to take pics.  

Anyway.  They used the basement for their own personal dump.  Dog poop, garbage, you name it.  Drugs.  Seriously gross things too.  There was a large pile of food scraps and garbage, we couldn't figure out why someone would be eating sandwiches down there, but then we figured out they were throwing junk down the floor register in one of the bedrooms.  How convenient!  Emily, Evelyn, and Nate hoed it out, bagged it all up.   Grant was visiting from across the street, he kept us smiling with his cries of delight every time he found a penny.  

He's fine, but Paul did fall down the stairs today.  He was carrying the huge-0 industrial strength floor cleaner, when the handle gave way and the water gushed down the stairs, causing him to lose his balance, slip, and bump down half the flight, probably at least seven stairs.  He couldn't get up for a bit, I went and got Emily.  She's a nurse practitioner and better in a crisis than I am, just calm.  In the mean time, the water that spilled went cascading down one of the registers to the basement, right where Nate was standing...he came upstairs all confused as to why he was suddenly getting wet.  Paul is okay, scraped up and bruised, and if you know him in Real Life, please don't say anything to him, he would not love it:)

I was washing those stairs down, after that, and being mighty careful.  (They were so absolutely filthy, and we didn't want the floors to get all dirty from people going up and down the stairs). We had the stairs so nice before...we might just carpet them, not sure.  

Anyway.  We got a lot done today.  There is still so much to do, but we aren't going there tomorrow.  Church, then some family over after, a proper Sunday, which is wonderful.  

Camille was with some friends today, and is spending the night at a friend's house tonight.  Jon was chopping wood with Benjamin, and is with Rosi now.  Paul and I got home from working on the house, I made burgers and salads and heated up the last pork chop from last night.  (Last night we had chops, and roasted red skinned rosemary potatoes, roasted carrots, and baked apples with cinnamon and sugar, it was pretty good).   It's kind of quiet in here, and relaxing, and pleasant.  The weather turned back to winter with a vengeance, it's going down to 9 tonight (-12.78C), and super windy with snow, brrr.  

So it's cozy in here, and winter goes on...no spring for us yet.  :). Have a good evening!