Toxic Wasteland

The boy's former bedroom has been preying on me lately.  Both boys have moved out of the house for now and their old room has been unoccupied--except by dogs--for the last few months.  It hadn't been cleaned in ages.  And the smell!!  It has two perfectly useable mattresses in it, and I have company coming.  So today I tackled the unthinkable and actually started shovelling out this space.

I was only half-joking when I told my husband that I was going to need dynamite, or that being a little extreme, most likely a haz-mat suit and a shovel.  The first order of business was to get rid of the beds.  I managed with Ariana's help to muscle them outdoors to sun and air out.  They will be sprayed with vinegar and ruthlessly vacuumed before being allowed back into the house.  There may also be a judicious application of chlorine...

Next we started picking up the mess on the floor.  I now know where all the socks went...We threw out several trash bags of rubbish.  I'm tempted to put a box by the side of the road with a sign on it saying "Found--free dirt.  Help yourself", but I suspect it's all my dirt--dragged in on dogs' feet. 

Then I attacked the bunk bed frames.  They had become extremely wobbly over time and the boys had reinforced them with strategically placed 2 x 4's.  That created quite a challenge because I couldn't simply separate the beds into their components.  After some fairly useless banging with the hammer, I finally took a wrench to the carriage bolts attaching the frame to the headboards.  That worked.  I could remove the metal and then we took out the headboards still attached.  These will NOT be coming back into the house...

The mini-blinds were broken beyond repair and are now gone--waithing to be replaced.  I still have to finish scrubbing the floor, shovelling out the closet and rearranging the dressers--minus all the trash on top.  And there you have it...there's nothing left that a little paint and a few minor repairs won't fix.  (I think I'm going to paint the walls a very pale gold--the room is on the north side.)