Scrub.

I had blogged that we have been here four months about a month ago - but I miscounted - Tomorrow marks the four month mark, I guess with everything happening so fast it seems like we've been here a long time. David continues to work on the outside while the weather is good, he's been completing the decking and the siding, the roof will probably wait til spring. Yesterday I spent the entire day cleaning, I do that every 2 or 3 weeks because when you're constantly under construction and living in part of the house it's hard to keep it clean and organized. At this point we're utilizing about half of the kitchen, one bedroom, bathroom, living room and dining area, the rest of the house is various stages of completion. Storage is limited, David pulled out most of the kitchen cabinets and counters, the attic and eaves upstairs are full of rat and mouse poos (we have the doors blocked shut til we can get to it), etc.... so a lot of our stuff remains in containers until we get a little further.

I get asked a lot about the cat pee, people seem to think if a house is saturated in cat pee it's done for. It's not. There are a lot of products on the market that work well, the only difference between you and me is I buy it by the gallon and I have a method that takes a couple of weeks to complete - but it's very effective. Some of it is just scrubbing - I hand wash all the floors because it saturates them better. We use no sponges - that just pushes it around and then you have that filthy sponge to deal with. I have a stack of about 2 dozen microfiber washcloths which work wonders and you can toss them in the wash when you're done. Our mop is a spin mop with a replaceable head, we've found those work the best along with constant emptying of the water bucket - nothing grosser than slopping the same dirty water over the floor. And I've seen vast improvement, yesterday I only emptied the bucket four times - when we moved here it was closer to a dozen. And my favorite - lemon oil - in a bottle not a spray. I wiped down the entire bathroom with it yesterday - it brings out the shine in everything and smells so good!

People from the neighborhood stop by to see the progress, I'm hoping by Christmas we'll be fairly completed, I'd love to have all the neighbors over to see it. It is weird sometimes sitting at the dining room table knowing that four short months ago this was not a place anyone would have wanted to sit - the bugs, the dirt, the smell - and now we have friends over for dinner and Brandi and the girls are going to try to come for Thanksgiving which I'm so thrilled about. They will be visiting ME, in MY house - how great is that!