DIY Carpet Cleaning

A few weeks ago we decided to clean our very light colored carpet.  It was very dirty due to all the traffic from the back door (our main entry) and I could no longer stand to look at it.  My Honey came to my rescue!

I learned a long time ago not to use soap to clean carpets from a professional carpet cleaner, she says it causes them to be sticky.  We knew we needed something more natural, so we decided on a combination of warm water, vinegar and Oxy Clean.

DIY Carpet Cleaning Mixture:
2 1/2 cups of vinegar
2 scoops of Oxy clean
Warm Water to the fill line on the tank

The clean water tank on this particular machine was about 2 to 2 1/2 gallons capacity. 

NOTE:  Although this mixture worked for our light colored carpet, I'm not sure about using Oxy Clean on darker colored carpets, so be sure to test it before you start just to be safe.  Yes, there will be a slight vinegar odor, but it dissipates in about 24 hours time.

We rented the Bissell Big Green machine at our local Lowe's for $24.99 plus taxes. Its a 24 hour rental.  This machine is awesome just in case you are wondering.  We will be using it again in the future.

You can see here how dirty our carpets were.  The left side is the cleaned carpet and the right is still dirty.  The light spot to the right is where I had cleaned up a pet stain earlier in the week.

My guy actually spent a full 8 hours cleaning our carpets.  They were filthy.  To be honest with you, we did not know just how light colored the carpet really was until after he was done.  You can see in this picture the vertical lines.....he cleaned the whole room in one direction and then cleaned it again in the opposite direction.  I'm so glad he did this. What a difference!

The next morning it was completely dry and he vacuumed the entire room just to fluff it up, it was so pretty and most of all clean. No more stains. Thank you Honey! :)

Some day we will install a nice wood flooring, but for now we know how to make our carpet pretty when we need to!

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

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Entry Hall Table Makeover

We wanted a hobby we could do together and make a little extra cash at. We decided on refinishing furniture.  This is our very first project. Let us know how we did! :)

My guy was in a new resale shop in our neighboring town and happened upon this diamond in the rough.  He paid $50 for her.

Our dining room table that we use daily is similar to this one and this look is what we want to have ours turn out like, so we experimented with this nice little entry hall table first just for practice.

We just assumed it was a dining room table when my honey brought it home and never knew it was an entry hall or foyer table until the day we actually placed the two pieces together.  She was a shorty!  It was in 2 pieces at the resale shop and it stayed in pieces for many weeks while we worked on it.  We were a bit bummed it wasn't a dining room table, but we carried on anyways.

There was lots of sanding to do and also some repairs of the base were needed.  It was cracked and falling apart.  It came with only 3 original castors.  Well, original to the person who refinished it before we did, I don't think it came like that originally, but maybe it did.  The table is a bit of a Frankenstein, but still functions perfectly the way they rebuilt it. Some new parts and some old parts were used.

I decided on a very dark top and a lighter base color.  The pretty wood grain just popped with all its beauty when I added the stain.  I used Minwax Dark Walnut #2716 stain and Minwax Fast Drying Polyurethane (4 coats) to make sure it has a very long life.

The bottom was first primed with Zinsser Primer Ultimate Stain Blocker, excellent for blocking previously stained surfaces. No sanding required, just add the primer and then paint.  For painting we used a small amount of a gallon of Valspar $5 bargain paint from Lowe's in a mushroom color and then antiqued it with an almost black antiquing glaze by Valspar in the color of Asphaltum #98278.  We sealed the painted parts with Valspar Clear Protector for faux finishes.

You can still see it's cracks and years of wear, but I think it gives the vintage table character. I love it! The only sanding we did was on the top. We love the roughed up look.  We bought 4 new casters for her. They started out a putrid lovely gold tone finish but we ORB'ed them and they looked wonderful and looked like they came with the table.  The center shot shows how the wood grain catches the antiquing.  The 3rd picture is the after top in the natural sunlight. Pure BEAUTY! :)

Lovely isn't she? I wanted to keep her but that was not what we had planned so she now lives with a new family.  We are in search of our next project now.  See the Fall vignette on the table up there?  It's Our Thankful Tree for this year,  to see that post, go HERE.

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

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Clover House and Easy Canvas Prints

Happy Sunday!

Have you heard of Easy Canvas Prints?  Yes, No...Maybe so? Well, those fine folks contacted me and asked if I'd be interesting in trying one of their canvas prints and writing a review about them.  Of course I said YES!  I already had today's project in mind so we made a print to go on our collage wall.  More about that further down in the post.

I worked on our wall collage project several weeks back, but I'm just now getting the chance to post it. I'm still not completely satisfied with the whole design, but I love the idea and the color!
I love to scan through Pinterest and there are a million and one ideas for collage walls, this is where I got my inspiration for our wall collage.

This is a very picture heavy post, but stay with me, I just wanted to show you the process I took to create our wall collage.

First I gathered several frames and mirrors I've been collecting from yard sales, auctions and thrift shops and arranged them how I thought I wanted them to look on the wall.

Then I grabbed my spray paint.  I used Valspar white primer and Rustoleum's Fern Green for my color of choice. Yeah, I said green....who knew it would jump out at me when I went paint shopping!  {FYI, I used a can and a half of the green paint.}

I removed the mirrors and glass and cleaned each frame really well. {Another FYI, be careful with the mirrors, they WILL cut you! Yikes! Ouch!}

I primed first. Just enough to cover with one good even coat. Let dry for the time directed on the spray can.

Then I added the color! WOW! Isn't it beautiful and bright?  I knew then this collage would add some color to our pretty much all white living room.

Here's all my pieces drying under the ceiling fan. I wanted to make sure they weren't tacky when I started handling them all for reassembly.

Ok, remember I spoke about Easy Canvas Prints at the top of the post?  This is our canvas print.  We found the saying on Pinterest HERE.  Then I created our print in Photoshop.  See how the upper right corner says "Auction Sale"...we love auctions, so when I saw this old ledger paper from Raspberry Road Designs, I knew I needed to use it for our print.

I added the vinyl hearts as an after thought when I was "framing" the print.  I wish I would have thought of them while creating the image.  Our canvas is 11" x 14", but they have all sizes, even really big ones if your heart desires.  It was less than 2 weeks from the time I ordered our canvas till the time we received it. FAST service!  I would definitely use them again in the future!

That's all for today. We still have loads to do, just not the time to do it right now.  But sometime very soon it will all get back to normal.  Some other day I will tell you about the framed "art" in the upper left corner of our collage wall. Can you tell what it is?


It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!
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Something New in the Living Room

 Happy Sunday!

We've been working really hard in the living room for the past few weekends and boy have we made some progress!
Let me tell you what all we've done since our last post.  My honey added the awesome entertainment center you see there on the right {above}, then he and his Dad installed the TV over the mantel and hooked up the surround sound system and I put a fresh new coat of paint on the fireplace box.  We also did some decorating, but we still have a ways to go.

This is a scary blurry picture we snapped while touring our home when we were contemplating buying it. Blurry or not, you can see the "old look".

This is after we took all the ugly paneling down and my honey's Dad textured and painted the walls. Oh yeah, there's my new printer sitting on the hearth that I got from my honey for my birthday! Thank you baby!

This is a shot of the demo taking place to install the new cabinet.  FYI...cutting into dry wall with a power saw created LOTS of dust! {And no, I still have not cleaned the ceiling fans for that very reason}

Here you see the freshly built cabinet installed into the space which happens to butt up to a tiny little closet in my craft room. This little closet is what allowed us to add the entrainment center for some much needed organization.  Although it took up some space in that tiny closet, I will hopefully be getting some much needed shelving added to the leftover space sometime in the future!

Here's the cabinet with the shelf braces and all painted up nicely with the same color as the walls.

Then my honey added the rough cedar trim which I stained to match the existing beams and trim already present. {Sorry I forgot to get pics of that step}

Isn't it nice? I love it and it helps to organize all the "little black boxes" we have.  I am very proud of my honey for doing such an excellent job on this cabinet.  He's pretty awesome for a DIY rookie!

There's our TV up there above the fireplace with all its surround sound buddies to accompany it and speaking of the fire place.....just look at the freshly painted fire box...looks lovely huh?  Please excuse our lack of outlets covers.  We plan on switching the plugs and covers out for brand new ones soon.
I love how our house is becoming a home.....it makes us happy!

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!
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