The good, the bad and the ugly

The first half of August was one of the most stressful times in a long time.  We have been renting our first home in Daybreak for 8 years now.  We have had fairly good luck with our renters but these last ones were a nightmare!  They did pay their rent on time but they destroyed the house!  They didn't clean the house before they checked out and they ruined a lot of things including the wood floors.  They didn't treat the house with any respect and their kids didn't either.  As you can tell, I'm still a bit upset by the whole thing and it was more than 6 months ago.  

Because the house was in such a bad state, Corbin and I spent 9 days straight, working 12 hours or more each day, painting and cleaning.  We did have a professional cleaner come clean the kitchen and bathrooms which helped a ton.  I really have never been so tired and sore in my whole entire life!  I gained a new respect for people who do manual labor for their full time jobs.  It is exhausting!  We even had the kids come and help us clean baseboards, wash windows, and other odd jobs.  It was quite the experience for them seeing how dirty a house can get when people don't clean.  I loved how grossed out they were because I could teach them how important it is to do chores weekly.  The cleaning ladies even told me that it didn't look like the tenants had cleaned the whole 3 years they were there.  Before painting the kitchen I had to wash the ceiling off because there were 1/4 inch strands of grease hanging from the ceiling.  So gross!!!  Jaden was so grossed out washing out the pantry that he almost threw up.  Hahahah!  I was grossed out as well but I was laughing my head off at him!

By the end of the 9 days of cleaning and painting, we had a good looking property again!  It felt amazing to see it go from disgusting to clean and pretty.  I sure hope the new renters keep it this way!  So far the new renters are so much better with paying promptly and are so much easier to communicate with so I have high hopes that they will leave the property in a much better state!