House Work: Clean Carpets

One of the first things on my agenda when we moved in was to clean up as much as we could! Aside from a pile outside, there wasn't much clutter left by the guy who moved out! He did, however, leave quite a bit of filth! Every space is dirty, from the ceiling fans to the floors... So since we're not replacing the carpets right away (aside from the living/dining room, more on that later) I thought it would be the perfect time to rent a cleaner and shampoo all the carpets, before we moved any furniture in... Made for an empty house for a little while, but it was worth it to have clean carpets without having to move anything heavy! So after a little internet searching, I decided on Lowe's version of the rental carpet cleaner, the Bissell Big Green machine. (link) I figured it would probably be less used than the big brand competitor, plus Lowe's is where we go for most our house stuff anyway... 

You can see here how dirty the master bedroom was, you can practically make out the outlines of the bed and dresser drawers! 24 hours later and we had a whole new space! (yes, the fresh coat of paint didn't hurt either!) It took forever, I spent the whole day doing our place, I put 5 hours on the machine! Every room had to be vacuumed before I could shampoo it, and in some rooms I guess I didn't do that great a job vacuuming first because the machine kept spitting out these clumps of wet fuzz, but that wasn't such a problem because the results were fantastic!

I really didn't have much hope, I mean the carpets are worn, and still are after the cleaning, but they look SO much better! I was so impressed after cleaning the master that I ran in and made a random pass on a dirty patch in the living room to show the muscle man how cool it was (I did the master first so it would dry quickly and we could finally move the bed over!) The photo(top) really doesn't do it justice, I mean it was amazing the difference!

I was so relieved the living room cleaned up so nicely, we are replacing the carpets with hardwood, but we were hoping to be able to re-use the carpet in the basement 'man cave' since it's currently has a concrete slab floor. So it looks like that plan is going to work, yay saving money! =D

Still lots of stuff to do to help the house situated the way we want it, but it's certainly a start! =) I think the bedroom is nearly 'complete', once we find a couple of pieces of furniture I'll post some after photos!