Stairs Wars...Empire Carpets Strikes Back.

Here's how my stairs started out:

Humiliating though it may be, you can really see the ickiness of the stairs in the last pic. This is why it was a no brainer for me to attempt this DIY project. I needed to replace the carpet anyway. In the end, if I mucked it all up I wouldn't be destroying good carpet.

So, I started tearing out the carpet. Little by little. This was by no means a difficult project just time consuming. And not all that time consuming really. I was just lazy and took my time. So what I did in 3 weeks time could probably be accomplished in 3-4 hours. I just did a small patch (about an hour) every weekend. Nothing exhausting. Still I was pretty disheartened by what I uncovered. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

To take out the carpet I only needed a few tools.

1.) A mini crow bar
2.) box knife (only for starting the cut of the carpet)
3.) Needle nose pliers
4.) a small plastic cup I could put nails, staples, tacks, etc in

That's it. And the elbow grease. It was simple work just yanking up the carpet. Just ripped it out of staples and off the tack strips.

 

 Ewww for lurking stains.

I rolled the carpet up as I went. It was nice that they didn't use 1 big piece but cut the carpet into increments of about 4 stairs per section of carpet so I never used the box knife except at the beginning.
I rolled up each padding too.

And the staples weren't bad (I've heard some horror stories about staple after staple after staple taking hours to get every single one out).And no glue so that was good too.

Though I did have a nice surprise on the landing. They left a little present under the carpet. Oh for the shoddy work of builders.

 Yep. They left a razor blade underneath. Guess it wasn't that important to pickup after themselves.

And this shoddy workmanship is what is sooooo frustrating. Cuz when I started on the longest part of my stairs (the "down" part of the stairs after the landing) I found this:

(and this is a pic of a pic off my iphone so yeah. Deal.)

A nice wide gap. About 1/2 an inch to an inch wide. I was a little scared at that point but I soldiered on. And I wasn't rewarded because here's what they all looked like after all the carpet was up:

*Le sigh* I don't know what I expected. I mean, I guess it was too much to hope that they could cut the appropriate F-ing measurement to each riser right? That simple mathematical step was just too.much.to.ask for. Who knew?

So, now I'm left with some options.
Trim, trim, trim is my best friend. I can cover it with quarter round trim butting up again them like so:

I'm gonna have to get trim anyhow because of the gaps in the side remember? Obviously not in that Gawd awful Honey Oak. I'd just get plain white so I could paint over them.

My other option is a facade. I've talked to a few guys at work and they suggested just getting a 1/4 inch piece of wood cut to the length I need and glue it to the stair's riser. Then it's ready to paint. I like this idea for the seamlessness of it but there are a few problems.
1) Cost (cuz I'm cheap-I'm pretty sure quarter round will be cheaper than a few sheets of wood)
2) Cuts. I would have to make a bajillion cuts to achieve the exact measurement of each and every riser which is about 15 stairs and lets just say 3 cuts per riser = 45 cuts. And I don't have a circular saw or any nifty power tools that can bust this out in 10 min. This would be an old fashioned hack saw with a lot of pencil markings on the wood. Of course, I've heard HD will make cuts for you so....maybe it's still an option. But if any of them are even slightly off this could really f-up my day if I have to trim something back, or it's too small or whatever. I realize that, with a 90 degree angle of stairs, each riser should be equa-distant  but...*cough* shoddy builders *cough, cough*. Do I wanna take a chance?

Okay, I know I'm thinking out loud with you guys so forgive the run on sentences above.
But that's where I'm at with my stairs. Plus, I still have to sand the bejeezus outta them so that'll take awhile (ugh, sanding!).
Wish me luck.

Good bye Summer...Hello Fall!

No more lazy days. I mean, for my daughter.

School has started and you know what that means? For her it's the end of sleeping in, playing late, then sleeping in again. And I'm sure she's devastated. But me? To me it means... crisp fall mornings, apples and cinnamon, falling leaves, mums, pumpkins, hot chocolate by the fire pit, college football, Halloween *le sigh*.

Of course, I don't have those things living in Florida (you know what I mean) but a girl can dream.

Spartans...A current invasion.

Remember how I said sometimes working with a bunch of police officers (aka. guys) was fun? If you don't remember, here's a refresher.

The other day I passed a cleaning sign in the hall and did a double take. Here's why:

Ah, boys.

Pinterest...not just for pinning!

Okay, so I've been on the whole band wagon for pinterest for some time now but let's be honest. Pinterest is a lot of day dreaming. If you don't know what it is here's a brief idea from their website (pinterest.com):

"Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes."

Basically, it's a bunch of pictures that you (or others) have pinned and you can click on to get to the original linked site to reference information. So, say you're looking at that recipe for brownies (mmmmmm, brownies) and you want to remember it for later. Well, there's a button you can click to pin the picture (always need a picture to pin something) and then it saves it on you're Pinterest board. And you can make all kinds of different boards. Plus, you can search other people' boards too to get ideas. I have different boards for different categories...one for home, DIY stuff, recipes (yum), MEN (double yum), funny quotes...you know just anything you wanna remember. It's your own stash of inspiration pictures. It's addicting.

Anyhow. I've tried quite a few things on pinterest so I wanted to share. Just little DIY things here and there.

So, this is a pinterest post through and through.

1).  Eye Makeup remover:

 

Quick recipe I found for makeup remover (even does a good job with my waterproof mascara).

Ingredients:

1 C water

1½ TBSP Baby Shampoo (tear free)

⅛ TSP Baby Oil

I had baby oil but not shampoo so I bought a little trial size 1.00 shampoo. Mix all ingredients and voila!


2) DIY flip flops:

These were only 3.00 total to make. I used a shirt for the fabric because of the color and the flip flops were just cheapies from Walmart.

Cut off the flip flop tops like so: Okay, I thought I had a picture of this but realized that I do not. So, whatevs. Cut off the rubber part of the flip flops. The straps.

Then make 4 strips about 3-4in wide and 12-15 in. long from your fabric. Insert 2 strips into the thong part of the shoe. Tie a secure knot (should fit in the bottom of the sole comfortably) like so:

Then about an inch above the top of the shoe, tie another knot. That inch is were it goes between your toe.

Separate and put each strip through holes on sides and tie knot off. Like so:

Done! Can do this with all kinds of fabrics and colors. It won't be fall here in Florida until about, January so I've got months and months left of flip flop weather.(and yes, I know these are crappy photos. And no, I don't seem to really care right now).

3) Nutella brownies:

Easiest friggin' recipe in the world! Only 4 ingredients (3 if you don't count the nuts that were added as the 4th since it's optional).
Ingredients:

1/2 cup Nutella spread

1 large egg

5 tablespoons all=purpose flour

1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

Mix Nutella and egg. Add flour. Put in muffin tins (lined, unlined but greased, you know the drill). Sprinkle with nuts. I had pecans so that's what I used instead of hazelnuts. Bake at 350 for 11-12 minutes. Awesomeness ensues. Eat. Then hide the evidence when you realize you've eaten like, 7 of these in one sitting. This is why there is no pic (they were MINI brownies okay!? Sheesh.).

4) Book Nails:

With my obsession of reading this is perfect for me.
1. Put on nail polish and let dry. 2. Dip fingernail in alcohol-basically any will do, vodka is suggested. 3. Press a strip of newspaper big enough to cover the whole nail on to your alcohol soaked nail. 4. Pull off slowly and be really impressed with yourself. 5. Paint top coat if desired.

Here's what mine looked like:

Not as crisp as the inspiration pic but it was my first go and turned out pretty okay. I loved it.
Oh, and I used rubbing alcohol rather than liquor since it worked better than the rum I had on hand.

There are so many other things I want to try from pinterest but those are just a few of the cheapie things I've found just by browsing others' boards. I'm truly in love and if you need any inspiration of any kind then Pinterest is the place to go to find it!

Pow-uh Hungry!

Since this weekend I've definitely become drunk with pow-uh. I must.must.must.have.pow-uh.

So... I power washed my front walkway too.

I know this must be monumentally boring for all you pro power washers who've done it over and over ad nauseum.

Here's what my walkway looked like prior to washing (ignore my poor dying plant, 'mmmkay?):

Look at all that gunk!

You know why power washing isn't so bad? Cuz you do almost nuthin'. And the rewards are plentiful! That's a dream come true for a lazy person like me. I exert next to no energy and in return I get clean sidewalks. Lurve.

See? That's all I did. Point a hose, wave it back and forth, maybe write my name in the grime- and that's it. Oh, and listen to my Ipod. Yup, blissful.

Look how pretty:

Gorg.
Yes, I must own me a pressure washer fo'sho'.

The Power of Poseidon...

OMG, my HOA is a PITA. (Mom, I'll wait to continue while you google those abbreviations).

 Understand now? 'mmmkay. We received a nice little letter stating that we needed to clean and restain our fence. Admittedly, it did need it. But demanding politely reminding us via a generic letter that I not be lazy and do work? Fuhgetaboutit.

Except, then a friend at work said she'd let me borrow her power washer so I didn't really have an excuse after that (drat!). Plus, since I'd never used a pressure washer, this was my chance to size it up and see if I should buy one. Can't argue with a free chance to use a power tool (of sorts) and get something done that was long overdue (even if those PITA HOA were the only reason I was doing it).
Anyhow, forget my blah, blah, blah-ing... on to pictures!

Here's the before:

We have a corner lot so our fence it quite a bit longer than most. Which is a bitch. So, I was only able to do the outside (read: the place the HOA will see) this weekend. But I hope to get around to the inside fence so it's all uniform.

I started power washing and geez! what a difference.
It looked beeee-u-teeeful! I was soo impressed. Just straight water and it looks magnificent. Here it is after only 1 section.

I felt like Poseidon, the greek god of the sea, wielder of water...

I just had to add this pic in. When I searched pics of Poseidon I never imagined I'd get one like that ^^^^^^.

Ummmm...nice trident Poseidon.

See how easily I can get distracted? It's a wonder I was able to do the whole fence (outside). 

Okay, after it dried for a day we put a clear spray of Thompson's waterseal:

 It looks soooooo good now. Like a whole new fence. Take a look-sie:

It looks uh-mazing.

A word of advice, while the power washer does all the work for you, this was very time consuming.  I only washed the outside (still have to do all the backyard side). It was split up between 2 days and took me a total of 10 hours to power wash. The clear finish was easy, only taking about an hour to spray on and follow up with a brush.

We bought a 10.00 pump sprayer from HD. Looked similar to this:

Made the application very easy. You can find it next to the sealants in the paint section.

Look at the difference now in my fence compared to my neighbor's who butts up against us in the rear (okay, how can I write that sentence without having a lascivious thought?).

Looks awesome.

Even our little lizards approve.

See him at the top of the post?

This makeover cost approx. $40.00 for 2 cans of sealer and the sprayer. Oh, and a batch of brownies for  my co-worker who lent me the power washer. But now I'm so addicted to power washing I might just have to buy one myself.