The "Bug House"

Mike and I have had a lease/purchase home for a little over 4 years. The tenants that lived in there were supposed to purchase the home after 3 years. Well, the 3 year mark came and went and they were unable to get the loan. This past June we find out that the family had just up and moved, owing us 2 months rent. A few days after we found this out I went over to the house to see what kind of shape it was in. It was so......I can't even find the words that would do it justice. Definately not a place I would wish on my worst enemy! The smell was so awful, I could barely stand to be in the house. And the cockroaches were so bad they were falling from the ceiling.

Our summer was pretty much spent in fixing up the house so we could sell. We started in July and literally just finished on Tuesday. We worked on it every spare second we had. Even the kids helped out. Mike taught Braxton how to cut and lay tile, and Hailey helped with painting. (I'm still trying to get paint out of her hair).

When we first started working on the house, Hailey started to refer to it as the "bug house", because of all of the bugs.....so that's what we've called. Although now that it's clean and we had an exterminator come there are no more bugs. Here are some before and after shots.

the kitchen....there was caked grease everywhere! And roaches in all of the cupboards and drawers and crawling all over the floor. Who wall papers their stove?

The after shot. We did everything ourselves, we even taught ourselves how to lay hardwood floors.

Mike added on extra cupboards. I'm so glad I married someone who's so handy.

this is the family room. The carpet was so gross I didn't even want to walk on it with shoes on.....and they had taken the light fixture.....and it wasn't this color when we rented them the house.

amazing what some paint, new floors and a nice light fixture can do.

The Bug house

The house after some TLC