Possum's Gate

Travel back in time several months with me to our fourth weekend over at our house and of Course, it's Christmas, so it's a really busy time of year. I'm determined to have a lovely holiday with family despite being so busy with our house renovation, and starting my sorting and packing for our upcoming move. I decided we would have one last big holiday where we would break out all the decorations at our old house, which included a trip to our local cut your own tree farm, for the most beautiful tree!

So far I've been able to get over to the house one or two afternoons a week, and on Saturdays, which really doesn't translate in to much time to actually get much work done. Most of my time there has been spent on sweeping up, and tearing out broken things, and getting a handle on this enormous task ahead of us. I have put plastic up over holes, and tape over broken windows in a quick effort to block out some of the cold, water, and critters.

Speaking of critters - I'm not sure I've shared our adventures with the animal domain yet. I'm not sure how I missed talking about this! Crazy because its something we have been joking about since our first whirlwind tour of the house in October. Wow! Could it have been that long ago, really only several months since we first walked through the house?

One of the "interesting" features of the house were the old piles of strange looking curled up poo on the top steps of the main staircase, and of the attic steps. Also, the unmistakable smell from the back bedroom upstairs, which we have since dubbed the "pee room". Yes, you guessed it, the same animal had made almost the entire wood floor in only this room - thankfully - its pee spot. Wow - think cat urine smell and multiply it!

After our tour I went home to google animal poop - yep - and discovered our home invader was an opossum, or more than likely, many. Since buying the house in November, we have not seen any fresh evidence that they are still living in the house. Just in case- we have set a trap in the attic - hoping we are clear!

So top on my priority list , which is a mile long, was getting that pee smell out! My first order of attack was research. I read all kinds of articles, and watched videos, and decided on the method I would try first. Catch my next blog to see what method worked best, and how the pee room turned out.