Rubber Gloved and Ready for Combat

Last weekend's agenda was to battle the Kitchen. It was all planned out. Travis was out of town and I had somehow sweet-talked Mom and Mrs. Charmin into coming over and helping me clean all day Saturday. It was going to be a very productive weekend. So, what did I do?? I went out Friday night, made some really bad decisions that left me physically ill on Saturday morning, and I had to call off the troops because I couldn't stay vertical much less scrub 40 years worth of caked on grease and grime from my kitchen cabinets and oven.
Needlesstosay, Saturday was a complete washout.

On Sunday morning, I got myself up, gathered my buckets and every cleaning chemical I owned, and headed to the house to salvage what was left of the weekend. I got to the house, started unloading my cleaning supplies, and a little chariot sent from heaven pulled into the driveway. That little chariot was Mom's 4-runner. Inside was Mom & Dad and they were armed with bleach and ready for war!!
I could not have been more excited to see them if they had shown up with Publisher's Clearing House!!

We put on our rubber gloves and got right to work. By the end of the day we had cleaned an entire wall of cabinets, but our crowning glory of the day was transforming the stove. It was so disgusting that we actually debated on whether we should even waste our time trying to clean it, but with one can of Bar Keeper's Friend, two bottles of Mean Green, a couple of toothbrushes, a few buckets of bleach, and a lot of elbow grease, we had that puppy shining!!

Now I won't have to worry about breaking out in hives or a full-fledged panic attack everytime I step foot into that kitchen. Oh, the little things.

I, of course, forgot to take good before pictures but truly, no picture can show just how remarkable this transformation was. But here are a couple of after shots I took of our accomplishments:



Look at that baby shine...ahhh!



This is a before picture that really highlights the nasti-ness we were working against.

To Moma and Daddy -- thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!! You guys are awesome!

To Mrs. Charmin -- thank you so much for agreeing to help and being so willing to give it a good go on Saturday morning. I can only hope that I did not ruin your day by making plans and then cancelling them!