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Renovation + Cleaning = fugheddaboutit…

I love a clean house.  I hate cleaning.  And yet I still love a clean house.  Conundrum??  Absolutely.  This is why I have a wonderful cleaning lady who is absolutely worth every penny I pay her to come and clean the house once a month to help keep me on track.  Problem solved!  However, I haven’t really been calling her lately because it is *just* not worth it.  The trash, the dust, the demolition – no, it’s REALLY not worth cleaning.  Let me show you the dust pile I collected from the front hallway DOWNSTAIRS after one day of bathroom renovating/drywalling, etc.:

This is downstairs, people!  A full floor away from all of the mayhem.  And sure enough I got just about the same amount of dust the next day too.  It’s also spring, which means it’s Maggie shedding time, so that certainly adds to the dust bowl.  Le sigh….oh, it’s *so* not worth it to clean, but we can’t leave it dirty every day – drywall dust, pollen, dog hair, etc – makes for a very itchy nose, lots of sneezing, and dog paws don’t like getting impaled by errant nails and drywall screws.  So we’ve given ourselves a few “chores” at the end of the day just to keep ourselves sane:

  • About an hour before we think our energy is going to completely tap out, we stop what we’re doing and clean up EVERYthing at the end of the day.  Typically, it involves Dr. J or I splitting up and one person starts in the bathroom and the other person starts in the garage.  We clean up everything we possibly can and slowly work our way to a middle ground, vacuuming and mopping the whole way there….whistling optional…
  • Yes, we vacuum EVERY.SINGLE.DAY now.  With the shop vac and the Dyson, I’d say they’re getting a pretty hefty workout these days.
  • Dr. J and I had an agreement when we started this project that I wanted our master bedroom to not become a tool graveyard if at all possible.  It helps keep things feeling serene and restful, which is kind of important in a bedroom.  Aside from the random glove and/or beer bottle, the bedroom has NOT been overrun by tools and supplies, which is SO great.
  • We dust our bedroom and keep our closet doors closed, drawers closed and all of the other bedroom doors upstairs CLOSED whenever we are working in the bathroom.  If I can get the above pic worth of dust DOWNSTAIRS, then you know it can get all over the upstairs bedrooms too.  May as well save the trouble of dusting eleventy billion surfaces in the house…
  • The upstairs is mostly chaos.  The hallway is all covered up with paper,

  • …there are tools and supplies stacked ceiling high in our office, we have a door laying on its side in the guest bedroom, the guest bath is overflowing with toiletries and temporary storage solutions while we camp out there for a few months:

  • and the master bath is in a constant state of repair and disrepair.  Though we do keep it covered most of the time so we don’t have to look at the mess:

  • All in all, it’s a mess.  However, we have been very diligent about keeping our downstairs living room and upstairs room of requirement tool free!  So at least we always have two places we can retreat to each night to wind down and relax.  It’s good for us and, let’s admit it, it’s good for Maggie, too :-).

So there ya have it.  Remodeling is a b$%^&.  But the results are oh-so-amazing.  Stay tuned later this week and we’ll update with yet another video of the ever-evolving bathroom remodel.  We’re FINALLY starting to see things put IN the space as opposed to TAKEN OUT.  It’s such a good feeling!!!

We’re remodeling our master bathroom and it’s a doozy!  You can click on the following links below to see what it’s all about: The Bathroom begins…, Demolition Day 1 and Day 2 and how we got rid of all that trash! Our budget and a tile preview and a little look-see into what MY view is when my hubby is installing electrical and a video view of what all of the demolition looked like before we started installing things. Stay tuned for more updates!