Final Walk Through

After hearing horror stories concerning final walk throughs of base housing, I had talked to several of my friends who were older and I knew had not hired someone to clean for them.  I really didn't want to deal with the stress of not passing an inspection.  Armed with the wisdom of older, wiser, and resourceful women, my engineer and I set forth to prepare for handing our home back to Big Blue.

Most of the items on the list were pretty straight forward.  Making needed repairs and cleaning were a given.  But when the pre-inspection came, I was floored by what was added to the list.  I felt that our home looked really good.  Baseboards and up were spotless.  Despite frozen temperatures, the windows were clean.  All cobwebs in the basement were down and the cement floors were swept.  But when the lady from the housing office told me that I needed to mop them???  All I could think about were the filthy feet we had after walking through the basement the first time after we moved in.

Those floors weren't the only thing that had me shaking my head.  Our house was not spotless when we moved in.  Though in passing shape, when I wiped out the cupboards before unpacking, I did not have a clean rag at the end.  Nor was the tub in the condition that I felt it needed to be in.  Taking a very deep breath, I took the long list of things we had to do in order to make it pass inspection.  At this point, my engineer and I felt the demands would never end.  Nasty, disgusting movers...and now this!

After looking around the house, I decided to cheat...and cheat in a very big way.  Though our floors were in OK shape (they had been scratched up when we moved in), I decided to use the Orange Glo floor kit...and hit ALL the floors in the house.  Using Orange Glo was an explicit NO NO in the housing manual.  But knowing the hard life those floors had lived before we even moved in, all I could think was that it wouldn't hurt.  So the renegade in me took action. As my engineer worked in the kitchen, I aggressively cleaned one room after another up stairs...finishing it off with doing the floors.  To be honest...they looked BEAUTIFUL!!!  Closing each door for the last time, I checked items off my list, one after another.

All the while, our Angel was downstairs playing with my engineer, thoroughly enjoying the echo effect in our painfully empty home.  She had been such a good little girl in the midst of the chaos.  We had one suitcase that was dedicated to toys, so she was busy enjoying what little she had.  Feeling like an awful parent, leaving my daughter to completely entertain herself for such an extended period of time, my engineer and I both worked to finally get out of the house.

I cannot tell you the feeling of satisfaction that I felt when I finished off the floors downstairs.  With an intense feeling of accomplishment and relief, I remember looking into our home from the front door as we walked out, the snow and ice crunching beneath our feet.  Exhausted and fed up with the past week, we headed to billeting, where, like almost all military families, we ordered a pizza from Anthony's Pizza...the global military last supper when moving out.

The next day was our final out.  Walking through the spotless, pristine house, the inspector was amazed at how clean and beautiful everything was.  She kept talking about how beautiful the floors were and how it had been a long time since she had seen floors in such wonderful condition.  Let me tell you, my smile must have been that of the Cheshire Cat...for I seriously felt like I had gotten away with something.  Finally handing over the keys, that first base house was handed back in better condition than it had been when it was given to us.....

only to be fenced off and torn down....shortly after we left.