In The Shower....With My Clothes On....

Never before have I spent so much time in the shower with my clothes on.  This house we bought has three full bathrooms inside, another one outside in the guard shack as well as an outdoor shower to use after a day at the beach.  Since the house is close to 30 years old, the showers have probably not been cleaned in that long.  I started with the shower in the master bath since that would be my primary one.  A tanish peach color, the tile was coated with white soap scum and darkened sections of filth.  I tried vinegar first with a scratchy pad, then bleach.  Then Clyde tried putting the scratchy pad on an orbital palm sander and it worked until the pad fell off.  So I suggested the sander with actual sandpaper since by this time I really didn't care if the tile got scratched as long as it got clean.  The next day we tried muratic acid and even that didn't work to penetrate the filth.  There was no easy way so I had to use a combination of all these things and sand off the dirt in small sections.

After a week of scrubbing, sanding and wiping the three showers are clean but not perfect.  We went through boxes of sanding pads, a full gallon of vinegar, a gallon of muratic acid, bleach, paper towels, gloves, goggles and other cleaning products.  Tile is some tough stuff that seems resistant to most everything.  Now I plan to pick up some car wax to coat the tile with to prevent a build up of dirt in the future.  And while I was scrubbing Clyde was working on the electrical putting in new three pronged ground plugs.  And since none of the bathrooms had any outlets that was a must too.

So we've worked hard and long at the house, arriving home by dark to wash clothes, shower and crash on the couch before heading to bed to rest up for the next day.  We still have more scraping to do in the living room and dining room before painting that wall.  And Clyde still needs to cut the hole in the wall between the kitchen and dining room to open that up.  The only painting left to do is in the kitchen, living room, dining room and back and side hallways.  The kitchen walls are covered with dirty white tile so more tile to scrub for me too.

Next we need to buy ceiling tiles to replace all of them, after painting the rails or grid that hold them up. And since we need over 200 tiles we're not sure if we'll find that many of the same pattern at any one store. Also trying to find a floor scrubber to tackle a one-time heavy duty cleaning on the floor tile.

Our friend Sharon came over yesterday to harvest our tamarind tree to show us what great sauces can be made from them.  She loves to cook and we don't have time these days so we'll let her do the work and we can taste the results. 

Still waiting to hear from our lawyer for another trip to the city to sign and pickup the final documents on the house.  They are being processed in the public registry and should have been completed by now.  This week is Easter week and businesses are closed from Thursday on, so not sure if it will happen early this week or not.

So lots going on with us even though I haven't found time to blog about it.  But just bare with us and before long we'll have more tales to tell of our adventures......along the gringo trail.