Clover House's Top 15 Posts of 2013 - A Year in Review

WOW! What a year 2013 has been! We've done so much but still have so much to do! It took a bit of gathering of information, but here's our top 15 project posts of 2013.  Just click on the link below each picture to be taken to the original post and all the good information!  Enjoy! :)

#1 HOW TO CLEAN AN HE WASHER

#2 A CLEAN SINK'S FRIEND

#3 RV FLOOR UPDATE

#4 RAISED BED GARDEN PART 2

#5 RAISED BED GARDEN PART 3

#6 RAISED BED GARDEN PART 1

#7 LAUNDRY ROOM REVEAL

#8 RV CABINET UPDATE

#9 CROCKPOT CREAM CHEESE CHICKEN CHILI

#10 FENCE PICKET A/C UNIT COVER

#11 TILING THE KITCHEN FLOOR

#12 DIY TACO SEASONING

#13 ORGANIZE AND BEAUTIFY YOUR CABINETS

#14 KITCHEN CABINET PART 3

#15 EASTER EGG WREATH

I hope you've enjoyed browsing our past year of the top 15 posts!  Did you get some good ideas?  I hope you pinned them! Thanks to all of our readers for making it such an awesome year!  Keep watching in 2014 for more great ideas, recipes, tips and tricks!  :)

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

I'm Linking to:
Sunday
Under the Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn
The Self Sufficient Home Acre 
The Chicken Chick,  Sew Can Do
Monday
Craft-O-Maniac, 
Between Naps on the Porch
DIY Home Sweet Home
Keeping it  Simple 
The Dedicated House
Skip to my Lou
Home Coming
Tuesday
Not Just a Housewife
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Sugar Bee Crafts 
New Nostalgia 
It's your Life
BeBetsy
Fluster Buster   
Confessions of a Plate Addict
A Stroll Thru Life
Wednesday
Clean and Scentsible
Lady Behind the Curtain
Family Home and Life
Ducks n a Row
VMG206
Herrban Momma 
Family Home & Life
Oh My! Creative
Thursday  
Bloom
The Taylor House
52 Mantels
Domesblissity
4 You With Love
Sweet Haute
Artsy Fartsy Mama
From My Front Porch To Yours
Friday 
Lil’ Luna
Tatertots and Jello
Five Simple Things
Craftionary
Diana Rambles
I Heart Nap Time
Crafts a la mode
Saturday 
Angels Homestead
Positively Splendid,
Or So She Says
Your Homebased Mom
What's Cooking with Ruthie
Made From Pinterest

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Tiling Our Kitchen Floor

We have the most beautiful kitchen and dining room floor now.....well, we think so! It's finally done and we all love it!  We ran into a big booboo that I'll share with you so hopefully it doesn't happen to you too!

In case you forgot or this is your first visit to our blog, we used 12 x 18 Italian porcelain tiles that we started off in the laundry room with HERE.

Here's where we left off back then.  Its been almost a year and we've learned to navigate that tiny height difference between the tiles and the linoleum.  I'm still "watching" for it!  What were we waiting for?  It's hard work people! LOL!

We had a few places over in the dining room area where the linoleum was lifting up so we wanted to cut that down so it wouldn't interfere with the way the tiles would sit.  Turns out, it all wanted to come up, so up it came!

See this big stack of tiles? It's a lot right?  We thought so too!  It was NOT even enough to finish the kitchen/dining room much less the rest of the small tiling jobs we have in the house (entry hall and bathrooms).  Since we were purchasing this tile on clearance, we bought all they had knowing it was being discontinued.  We just knew it was going to be plenty.  Oh boy did we figure wrong.  We are rookies after all and evidently along with the Lowe's worker...not very good with math! LOL!

Anyways, we got to laying the tiles working with just one row at a time, putting down the tile mortar, then laying the tiles and being sure to add the little spacers to assure our 1/8th of an inch spacing for the grout.

Though you can't tell with his long shorts, my honey has knee pads on.  Knee pads are a must when tiling floors.  Even with wearing knee pads our knees are still very sore.  How do babies do it all those months of crawling on there little tiny knees? Ouch!

This is the point we got to when we ran out of tiles.  I was beside myself with disappointment.  I knew these tiles were discontinued back almost a year ago so I knew I was in for a big task of  "finding a needle in a hay stack"!  I wont go into all the details, but in the in end a very nice lady at the Lowe's customer help center came up with the idea of purchasing the 18 x 18 tiles and cutting them down to size, so that's exactly what we did!

My honey cut 15 tiles down to the correct size.  By the way, they are not really 12 x 18 tiles, they are slightly smaller which my honey already knew before he started the task of cutting them down.  It was very time consuming to cut all those tiles down, but so worth it in the end.  There were lots of tricky cuts in the last tiles that fit into the bay window.  My honey made every cut just right to make it all perfect.  GREAT job honey!

Next was the grouting job.  Sorry, no pictures of that step.  We were both grouting so no one to snap pictures.  We used a sanded grout from Lowe's, the color is called Ivory.  While its still wet it looks brown, but when it dries its a creamy white color.  After we got it all grouted, we turned on the fans to help drying, even our vintage fan helped out!

After clean up and letting the grout cure for 24 hours, we used a grout and tile sealer to make sure if anything was ever spilled in the floor it wouldn't stain the grout.  You just spray it on, wait 5 minutes and wipe off what didn't absorb in.

5 minutes is a long time when you have 3 nosey cats and a dog who want really badly to walk across the kitchen floor!

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

I'm Linking to:

Sunday
Under the Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn, The Self Sufficient Home Acre , The Chicken Chick
 
Monday
Craft-O-Maniac, Between Naps on the Porch, DIY Home Sweet Home , Keeping it  Simple , The Dedicated House, Skip to my Lou
Married Filing Jointly,  Home Coming
 
Tuesday
Not Just a Housewife, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia,  Sugar Bee Crafts,  New Nostalgia,  It's your Life

Wednesday
Lil’ Luna, Clean and Scentsible, Lady Behind the Curtain.  Family Home and Life,  Ducks n a Row

Thursday
 Bloom,  Two Yellow Birds Decor,  The Busy B's,  The Taylor House.  52 Mantels,  Domesblissity,  Redfly Creations
Friday 
Tatertots and Jello,  Five Simple Things,  Craftionary,  Diana Rambles

Saturday 
Angels Homestead,  Positively Splendid,  I Heart Nap Time,  Or So She Says ,  Your Homebased Mom ,  What's Cooking with Ruthie 

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Part 1: "Tiles" and Tribulation of Our Laundry Room

Happy Sunday! 

We are currently working on our laundry room to make it beautiful and pleasant to be in while I'm enjoying my new found savings in our $28/year homemade laundry soap. We started from the floor up. Reminder: We are rookies!

We headed on down to our local Lowe's and picked out some tile. Several hours later we came home with these lovely 12 x 18 porcelain ceramic tiles.  We wanted something different from the standard 12 x 12 squares and so we chose these. Happily, they were on clearance.  We bought all they had.  YAY!

This is what we started with. Uhmm eeew!  On the right is the picture we snapped while touring the house before we purchased it. Old ugly discolored vinyl flooring.  On the right, we "tried" scraping up the vinyl.  That was pretty much just an exercise workout with not much vinyl coming up off the floor. It was stuck!

My honey decided we should just level the floor and start with a nice smooth foundation.  Leveling floors are not as easy as they make them seem in YouTube videos....just so you know.  At last we had a smooth service to work on.  As you can see above my honey laid out the tiles to get an idea on how they would look.

This is half way through laying the tiles and before the grout of course.  He is very precise and tries to make sure its all done perfectly.  Did you know that it's tough cutting those tiles manually? Yeah, I tried it a few times and seriously I don't know how he got it all done without his arm falling off from tiredness. He's my hero!  He's done most of the work. I mainly help in clean up and painting.

Speaking of painting.  This is a sneak peek of the finished floor and the wall color.  Please excuse the creepy looking sheet rock there, we will be putting down some very lovely fresh new base boards to hide all that yuckiness! It's coming right along.  My honey is currently working on the cabinets for the laundry room.  He's never built cabinets before, so this will be a challenge for him. I know he can do it though. Thanks honey!

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

I'm linking to these parties:

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