Preparing to Paint

Since we bought our paint un-tinted a week early during a huge sale at Home Depot (where we saved almost $100 on 17 cans of paint), we were super excited to get started painting the second we got the keys.  We realized once we got inside though that there were some things we needed to get done first.  

There were lots of palm tree stickers in our bathroom and also sunflowers and butterflies surrounding the front door, so we spent a lot of time removing dozens of those.  Unfortunately, some of the palm trees did not come off very easily or cleanly, so we spent a lot more time that we thought we would have to on getting rid of these beauties.

Next, we went around and untangled all of the blinds cords as all of them were a jumbled mess like the one pictured below.  I think this might have actually been intentional...not sure why anyone would choose to do this, but I don't see any way that 6 feet of cord could have tangled itself into a 6 inch knot so it must have been on purpose.  Yes, weird, I know.  After untangling the cords, we removed the blinds from the window in order to prepare for painting.  We also walked around and pulled out nails, screws, and whatever else was stuck in the walls out to prepare for painting.

After that, Jared worked on filling in all the holes.  These people went crazy with nails and screws, so Jared was rather busy.  I would say he filled at least 20 holes in each room with some rooms needing as many as 50 hole fillings.  The picture on the right below is definitely the wall that had the most damage in the whole house!

After that came time for some cleaning.  I wish I had remembered to take pictures of the showers before I doused them in Tilex because I am not kidding, from the faucet height down, the grout in both of the showers was completely black.  Before we bought the house, we had a tile guy come by and quote what it would cost to get them back into good condition and he quoted us at almost $1K.  Thank goodness I tried the miracle called Tilex because after three applications and not even one second of scrubbing, the showers are almost back to perfect condition.  It really was amazing - we were not expecting it to do anything, but figured we should at least give it a try before we took the time to scrape all the grout out and redo it or hire someone and pay who knows how much money.  The Tilex we used was the Tilex Mildew Root Penetrator and Remover aka miracle in a bottle - HIGHLY RECOMMEND this product!   CLR (Calcium Lime Rust) was our other miraculous find.  Not being from Florida and not having ever dealt with hard water deposits on all of the glass in both showers (both showers have glass enclosures), I had no idea how to get rid of all of the white streaks.  I tried every chemical I could think of that I had ever used before and nothing could take it off.  Instead of feeling defeated, I decided it was time to do some research and spoke to a true Floridian, my dear mother in law, and she told me that the only way to go was CLR or Lime-A-Way.  We quickly ran to the store and grabbed some CLR and mixed up a potent formula in a glass bowl and Jared (with his cute little dishwashing gloves) went into the showers and just covered the glass in that stuff.  We let it sit for a while and saw great improvement.  We have not had a chance to do it again yet, but I am very confident that this chemical is indeed going to be able to take off years and years worth of buildup!  After we get all of that done we are going to need to scrape off all of the sealant they applied improperly to the grout and scrub the bottom of the tubs because they are still pretty filthy.

After doing all of that, we vacuumed out all of the kitchen drawers and cabinets (yes, they were that filthy) and then scrubbed them down inside and out and also scrubbed all of the dirty and oily hand grime off from around the door handles on practically every door in the house.  Looking forward to doing lots and lots of painting now that we are all prepared!

J&L