At first we just noticed a little bit of dust here and there. No biggie—I expected some mess. But then as we looked further, EVERYTHING was covered in dust.
Floors, baseboards, molding, appliances, inside cupboards (dishes, silverware, cups), everything under the sink (towels, cleaning products, etc.)… It just keeps going and going and going. I think it’s mostly tile dust from having to jackhammer the tile in the kitchen, but it’s still SO VERY disheartening.
This is what the sink and dishwasher looked like for the first two days. I first thought we could just do Rinse loads, but that didn’t take all the dust off…so we had to do actual Wash loads. 🙁 And normally cleaning would be somewhat easy…except everything was tossed in the garage so nothing is where it should be or it’s buried under piles of stuff.
And just when you thought you were getting a handle on it all, you’d discover more. The entire pantry and every box and can in it was covered, too.
The kids’ cupboard:
The lid drawer:
We found shards of tile (and dust, of course!) on top of the refrigerator!
And Owen’s door wasn’t shut, so every surface in his room was covered. The bathroom. Some of Katie’s room. 🙁
I honestly didn’t anticipate this much cleaning post-flooring-install. At least Tom had taken the day off so he was able to help—but that meant BOTH of us spent A FULL DAY cleaning—and there’s still more to do.
Apparently assuming our contractor would try to lessen the resulting mess was stupid. Though of course we didn’t expect them to have to jackhammer the tile out…but had we had any idea, we would have emptied the cupboards, too. Oh, and they apparently cut flooring in the house at one time or another, as the return heat/AC vent was FULL of wood dust. (I know they cut outside, too, because we saw sawdust in the grass and on the porch.)
This was our first foray into hiring construction stuff, but we did have some thoughts on what might happen—and this wasn’t it. They did attempt to wipe up some of the mess (the appliances, windows, and sliding glass door) but really just made it worse since it was done half-heartedly.
I am trying to look on the bright side in that we knew we’d have to clean the house before we list it and/or move out…but that would have been on MY schedule and I would have hired someone to come in and do most of it.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.