#5 the clean-up - downstairs

i'm not going to mince words. my mother was a hoarder. she admitted it in probably may of this year. and thank god she did, because it made my life easier when it came to starting to clean out the house. the first thing she said to me, when i arrived here after a 2 day drive from virginia, at 2133 at night, was "if you say one fucking word about the house, you can get right back and your car and go back where you came from."

that was the first thing she said to me after not seeing me for ~8 years. ooookay.

i didn't keep any of the first few photos of the filth i took. i don't know why. but it wasn't really until mummy went into hospital that i got to work cleaning the house, because she wasn't there to stop me from throwing things away. so, here are some before and after photos of what i've done so far, up to and including tonight.

sunporch
this has the possibility of being a beautiful room to hang out in. eventually, i'll be ripping up the carpet and laying down tile in the blue stone family. and i'll be painting the walls light blue. this is the first "room" you enter upon coming into my house. this is what you used to see:

this is pretty much what you see now:

kitchen

by far the most disgusting of all the rooms. the wall cabinets were falling off the walls b/c they weren't installed properly, which was mummy's explanation for as to why all the cans and such were all over the counter. as you can see in the 2nd "after" photo, a trimmed 1x2 fixed the problem temporarily.

{idfk why this is uploading rotated, it's not rotated on my computer and i can't rotate it here... cock your head to the right)

living room

i've been sleeping on the couch in the living room since the night i got here, so in a way, this is like redoing my own bedroom, but eventually i'll live in the master bedroom. but anyway, til then... please keep in mind i have NOTHING to put my clothes in right now but enormous ziploc bags, and plastic bins. eventually i will have dressers and closets, but right now they're full.

the first picture was not the "beginning" but rather what mummy came home to after her first stay in the hospital. 

after patching the ugly-ass "buttery" wall

after painting everything but 2 patched holes.

note the fly-strip. very common in coastal maine homes.

finished painting!

just finished the alcove tonight - high-gloss white paint in there.

better view of the alcove's white. mind the mess, i'm in the middle of doing shit here.

bathroom

even though i started in the bathroom first, i've saved it for last, because i've had to halt work in there until a contractor can come in (he's coming friday). i started peeling off the hideous wallpaper, only to discover and even older, more hideous wallpaper. as you can see below. the 2nd layer was actually put on with wallpaper PASTE. i had to run over the papers with the paper tiger, then steam a 3'x3' are, then scrape away wallpaper, and just repeat until i got down to plaster wall. things came to a halt when i realised i'd have to do the ceiling too, and there's probably mold up there, and i'm not peeling down ANYTHING that might be holding in toxic mold. a professional can do that. but here's pictures of the progress until i had to halt:

and the referenced water damage:

the bathroom will have the most extensive renovation, based on how much the homeowner's claim will pay for replacing the water damaged stuff. i'm going to replace the cabinet and medicine cabinet, the toilet, and if possible, pull out the drop in tub, rip out the pipe chase and put in a clawfoot tub, and i'd also like to replace the floor since half the tiles are missing, and i'd LOVE to get those tiles off the wall, and venetian plaster the entire bathroom. we'll see. 

the upstairs portion of the house has yet to be touched, really. 2 hours of emptying 1/2 a dresser into the trash is all that's been done, so upstairs will be its own post (next).