More House Stuff Done

So yesterday was day two of moving, and splorp! and I got going fairly early with two car loads of boxes.

His job was to install the curtains, while mine was to clean the bathrooms, caulk the hall bathtub, and then vacuum carpets and run the carpet cleaning machine over them.

splorp! had some difficulty with the curtains, never having hung them before yesterday. We bought blackout curtains, and they turned out very nice. Plus they do a LOT to block out the light and heat, making the bedroom much more comfortable.

The cleaning of the bathrooms went quickly. I think the house was professionally cleaned before it went on the market, but still, that was several months ago (back in late June), so there was dust and minor grime in the sinks and on the floor. And anyway, who knows how many people went through the house and what was on their shoes and what they may have tracked in from outside in that amount of time.

A small bit of excitement and swearing when I went to dump the mop water in a toilet. I was trying to tip the water out of the bucket and still hold the scrub brush and wash rag in the bucket, when all of a sudden the rag went right by my hand and into the toilet ... where it proceeded to go right down the drain with the rest of the water like it was regular toilet tissue!

splorp! came over to investigate why I was using such colorful language, and when I explained the rag went right down he asks if I can feel it at all. Nope. Cannot reach anything. Test flush on the liquid setting (small amount of water). Not backing up. Heavier flush, with the other setting (more water). Still not backing up. So, it's gone. It may come back to us later in the form of slow draining and a call to the plumber. We'll be watching that closely for quite a while.

After the excitement of the washrag episode I proceeded to caulking. I know the basics of how to do it, but have never actually done it. It's now done, but let's just say it was much messier than I expected, and now I want to buy one of those Pro Caulk thingys before I have to do it again (which may be sooner than I like, because I need to caulk the seam where the kitchen counter meets the backsplash).

On to vacuuming, which was not exciting. Then the carpet cleaning. The cleaner looks like a giant vacuum, but with more domed areas, and lots of plastic. Sort of like this thing I stuck in here to the right.

Anyway, my Aunt bought the cleaner thing a while ago, used it once, then hasn't touched it for a year. She said it worked well, cleaned great, and here's the instruction book, have fun.

I could not get the stupid thing to work! No matter what I did, the water would never reach the spinning brushes. The floor remained dry, if somewhat brushed.

I read the instructions carefully, read them again, took it apart at the water well and cleaning solution reservoir, put it back together, had splorp! read the directions and try it, and the stupid thing still just would. not. work.

We gave up and called it a day.

Today splorp! and Dad made two trips moving stuff to the house, and apparently after the first trip Dad just turned on the power switch and it worked perfectly. Perfectly! Like he had the magic touch or something.

I hate it when that happens. Makes me feel like a moron, but splorp! assures me it was just one of those things that happen. Promised Dad did nothing differently than we did, but somehow this time he got water to come out properly.

Whatever.

So splorp! cleaned the carpet in the main room, which is the main thing I wanted to tackle, and my bonus is that he did the cleaning, and I didn't have to.

For the next several days I will be packing boxes at night and packing splorp's car so he can drop off a load after work each day. He works only 2 miles from the house, while I am closer to 20 miles away, so we'll limit our moving to what he can do in the trunk of his car.

Until Saturday, which is the big move day.