Nasty grout - be gone!

We have this hallway in the house that leads off of the living room, loops past the master bedroom and bathroom, past my office, and out to the side door.  In that hallway is this tile.

It's blue, with tan and gray flecks in it.  And at first I HATED it.  It is not a color that I would EVER pick myself and I really had planned on carpeting over it.  But then we painted that hallway and painted the trim and I started to kind of not mind it.  The colors all worked together a bit better.  I would still not pick it out myself, but it is okay to stay now.

But the grout was NASTY.  It was obvious that the previous owners kept their dogs in this hallway.  There are doors that close off the whole thing if you'd like.  And it smelled like dog in the hallway in a bad way.  The grout was dark, black really.  I honestly didn't know what color it was supposed to be, but I was sure it wasn't supposed to be black.

So I hopped on Amazon (since we live on this secluded island, Amazon is my best friend) and looked for some grout cleaner.  I ordered this:

You can buy it HERE on Amazon

And broke out my handy scrub brush:

This was the tile before:

Yuck....

I sprayed the cleaner onto the grout.  I used the stream option, not the wide spray, this way I was able to target just the grout and not waste any.  I let it sit for a few minutes and then scrubbed it with the brush.  And lastly I mopped everything away.

Well, I can't take credit for all of this.  My awesome husband actually did about half of it!  Isn't he the best?!

I couldn't believe how well it worked!  I wasn't sure it would lift any of the stuff that was caked on but I was pleasantly surprised!

Clean!  Though not quite dry.  It will continue to lighten.  The grout takes forever to dry, that's why I only have this one little picture.  This was a section that was semi dry to show you that the grout is in fact a light gray!  

I will update this post tomorrow with a pic of the whole hallway with dried, clean grout!

For sure recommend this cleaner if you too have nasty grout!

House Overview

I thought I'd better give a general introduction and overview of our Taylored house.

This is what it looks like on the outside

Yes, it was raining.  Yes, we live in Washington.

We are planning to paint all of the outside come spring when things dry out.  We're going for something like this with the coloring:

This is the view out the front door:

Now, some specs:

5 bedrooms

2 bathrooms

2,000 square feet (we are doing an addition that will be another 500 square feet)

Sits on .42 of an acre

We live about 2 minutes outside of town

And about 8 minutes away from the golf course where Justin works

Built in 1992

And we love it!

Anything else you'd like to know?

Closed! And a LOT of painting!

We have closed on the house!  Such a relief!  But now we have a TON of work to do before we actually move into the house.

We actually closed everything on Friday, October 19th and we literally started painting that same day.  Every single room in the house needs to be painted.  I don't know what the pervious owners were doing in that house, but it was so dirty.

We've been going over to the house every day for about 4-5 hours a day to work on it.  I'll be posting pictures over the next few days, but here is a little preview of what we've been up to!

BEFORE

This is the hallway that leads from the side entryway, past my office, and the master bedroom and bathroom.  I did actually like the color on the walls but there was a lot of chips out of wall, and it was, like everything else, very dirty.  So it had to be re-pained.  And I have no idea what was going on with the baseboards.  

 AFTER

New paint on the walls, a bit lighter color.  And the baseboards got a fresh coat of nice, bright white paint.  Ignore the nasty grout, that will be getting cleaned tomorrow hopefully!

BEFORE

For a 5 bedroom house, the kitchen is TINY.  It measures 9 feet wide, 8 feet deep on one side, and 12 feet on the other.  Way too small.  So, this is the biggest project we are undertaking.  We're blowing out the wall on the right and doubling the side of the kitchen, as well as adding another family room next to it.

AFTER 

The start of the demolition!

AFTER 

You can't see it well right now, but all of the ceiling wood is ripped out.  We will be reusing it after the addition is finished.  And we're not sure what is keeping that microwave up....  For now we're just not letting the kids near that area...

This is where all the cabinets went after they came off the wall.  Yes, things are a bit of a disaster at the house right now!

Closing the deal!

We got a call from the bank last week saying that the loan for our house was going to go into closing the first of next week, which is today and tomorrow!  Let me tell you, if you've never gone through the process of getting a mortgage loan (this is the third one for us), it isn't fun.  There are a lot of documents they want to see (especially if you are self-employed, as me and my husband are), there are a lot of papers to sign.  But it sounds like we are done with that part.

We are expecting to hear from the escrow company any time now.  They'll give us a call and then we can sign the final documents and hand over a big check!

It is all very stressful, all very crazy, but will be so wonderful when it is done!  We can't wait to start the work on this new house!