Rats Part II...

All I can say tonight is ick!!! My brave husband decided tonight was the night to explore the attic... The first warning was the rat poop showering out of the the hatch, then starting him in the face was corpse #1, which he removed while I went to the car to uh..get stuff..yeah... thats it. After that was dumped in the garbage can outside, he started removing items stored up there - old clothes, books and a walker covered in rat droppings. No original light fixtures, old photos, or anything fun, just junk. As he was reaching to grab some more stuff, he picked up corpse #2. That was followed a few minutes later by #3. At least we got rid of more of the filth, and te house is staring to smell better, although we have been having a humid heat wave in San Diego and its still pretty stinky in there.
I also started the brave task of cleaning the kitchen cabinets. From the pictures you can see it does not look too bad, as it was redone sometime in the early 1990's. However, there are no words for what I found in the first cabinet I cleaned. What I thought was dirt and grime was actually a 1/8 thick pile of dead bugs of all sorts, and I had to use a putty knife to scrape them off. I went through 3 green scrubbies on two cabinets, having also used a scrub brush to get the initial stuff removed. I cannot image how anyone could live in such conditions and not be deathly sick... Amazingly, with lots of scrubbing, hot water and bleach they came out really clean, and even the counter top and walls look decent. This will be an ongoing saga all week.. I can't wait to start on the drawers...<>.
After Steve was done with the rat removal, he ripped up the electric blue carpet and pad. parts of the wood floor are really nice, and then there are the rest... Sadly,we have now confirmed that all the wood floor in the house are trashed. . The good news is that our neighbor in Long Beach, who is a contractor, just renovated a mid 1930's home and got us several rooms worth of pristine condition quarter sawn oak floors that happen to be the same dimensions as the ones in the house. I spent two full weekends pulling nails and bundling it up, so its all ready for its new home. Unfortunately, its new home is not ready for it. We are going to carpet the house for now until we can get the center beam replaced an correct the sag. Oh well, at least we have it.
With that done, the mini blinds hung at the windows, it it starting to kinda resemble a real house.
I am hoping to take some time off later this week to get a head start on the bathroom. I went to Long Beach over the weekend and picked up the commode at Orchard Supply Hardware, but unfortunately, the Long Beach Store only had the tank in stock (when I had called earlier in the week, they had both). So I drove all the way to the Torrance store 20 miles away to get the bowl. I picked it up, brought it all the way back to SD, unloaded it from the car, opened it up to find it was broken. Needless to say, I was NOT a happy camper. Luckily for me, Steve and David are going up to LA tomorrow to look at a used car for David, and have graciously agreed to exchange it for me. Yay!
I also got a better picture of the front porch. Here is a before and after, and its really a huge difference!