The Great Cleanup

So after we closed we thought we would go over, meet my family and get the house cleaned up before moving stuff in. I had several days off, and the hurricane that had been including us in its cone had downgraded to a tropical storm and was slowing, so things were looking up. 

I might add that I had not visited the house (inside) since the first time we saw it which is 5 months prior to us closing. 

Let's just say that cleaning was an understatement. The place was disgusting! My favorite comment was from the lady's realtor in the closing... "She and her friends spent 3 days cleaning the place before she left". I'm not really sure what they did, but yikes!

So the lifesaver of the week was our investment in the steamer. Love it! The entire house is tile, little tile (that will soon be replaced) and black grout... after calling several places for estimates on having the grout cleaned, we made the decision to save the $2700 dollars and invest $500 in a steamer. While it has been great, it makes for long hard days of grout cleaning. Especially with the little tile. View steamer here.

(Dad and Nate cleaning tile below)

I wish I had a good before/after tile picture, but let's just say I had a bit of buyers remorse when we first moved in - especially with factoring in how dirty the place was and didn't take my normal amount of pictures. It wasn't until I was told me to snap out of it and enjoy the moment and take my pictures to remember everything did I start enjoying the process and taking pictures. So, back to the tile... it went from white tile with black grout to... WHITE GROUT!! I couldn't believe it.  

Needless to say, the cleaning took much longer than expected. About the entire week and we just brought everything in down to the wire of moving out of the condo.