Scrub-a-Dub-Dub

These past two days have been busy days.

Barbara came over yesterday, and the two us worked at cleaning the kitchen. Barbara manned the broom and mop while I cleaned all the other surfaces.

Even Carol was over, helping out by weeding the front embankment.

In addition to cleaning, I brought out all of my plants on to the front porch, with the exception of the colorful coleus which I had grace the kitchen table.

I replaced the glass windows in the front and back screen doors with screens so that we could have some fresh air circulating.

After all, yesterday was a gloriously warm and sunny day. It would have been a shame to keep all that marvelously fresh air out of the house.

And I even repaired the broken tubular wind chime.

Today I spent nearly six hours flat out cleaning the front porch.

The front of the house was appallingly grimy. And I could not allow all that grime to stay ~ not with the open house that's scheduled for this coming Saturday. After all, I want this house to make a good first impression before people step foot into it.

My original intent had been to spray the sides of the house with a bleach and water solution in order to lighten the color. After all, that trick worked very well on the mildewy ceiling in the bathroom.

As I sprayed the diluted bleach solution, I could see the transformation taking place before my eyes. However, the bleach was also reacting with something on the shingles and woodwork. So, even though the front of the house did look much, much cleaner than it had before, there were also these large orange stains all over the place.

I could have been a lazy bones and left it at that. But I was simply not comfortable having all these orange stains all over the house.

So, with the failure of my "work smarter not harder" approach, I was forced to concede to my defeat and look for a more effective way to tackle those stains.

It looked like I was going to have to work harder after all.

Instead of just a spray bottle filled with diluted bleach solution, my arsenal now consisted of a spray bottle of Greased Lightning, scrub brushes, a bucket of clean water (that had to get dumped and changed frequently), two sponges, and a rag.

I sprayed on the Greased Lightning, scrubbed like mad, then rinsed it off with the clean sponges.

For the most part, the orange stains came off the shingles. However, it was a different story for the white painted woodwork and gingerbread at the top of the porch. The paint was so deeply cracked all over the place that the scrub brush just could not reach into all those tiny crevasses. And the brush could not reach into the narrow spaces of the gingerbread.

Finally I gave up. I've done all that I could, and I was getting tired. I decided to focus my remaining energy on scrubbing the deck of the porch.

With all the scrubbing done, I grabbed a hose and sprayed down the house, trim, gingerbread, and deck.

Soaking wet from the wind blowing the sprayed water all over me, I decided to call it a day.

I put away my arsenal, ate a hot Italian turkey sausage, and took a much-needed shower.

With all this work, I think I can safely say that I earned my keep today.