House Made

I looooove, love, love Christmas. LOVE IT!! Presents, great food, family and friends, holiday fun and frolicking: all good things. What I don’t love is freezing, sideways-blowing, highway-backup-causing rain. And that, my friends, is what we get in the winter.

We can’t seem to get a weeekend with 2 dry days in a row so we haven’t be able to make further progress on the front tile. But do you know what project is NOT stalled by rain? Christmas lighting. HA WEATHER! I shake my fist at your inability to thwart me!!!!

I didn’t even care that I got wet.

Under the gutter, hanging the gutter, tearing the freaking gutter from the house and stomping on it. Potato, potahto. So the completely un-sexy and un-fun job of hanging the remaining gutters on the house has been extended. Oh yes. I did this to myself. I finally got the missing gutters up and once that was done decided I can’t live with the existing configuration and will have to change that too. Much to Beth’s consternation this means that even though we completed the original gutter chore, we cannot cross it off “The List” because it’s not, technically, done.

I offered to let her draw a ceremonial line through the list item then add a new gutter-based chore to the list. She accepted this. Progress has been duly recorded.

Beth here.

We have long been struggling with the bathroom grout.  Ever since I discovered the brown disgustingness between each of our tiles was originally white, I have needed it to be white with every fiber of my being.  We thought seriously of sawing it all out and re-grouting, but some of the spacing was so tight, a grout saw wouldn’t even fit in.

We scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed with muriatic acid, which greatly helped and definitely cleaned, but it did not restore the grout to a blinding whiteness that I craved.

Enter Tile Guard’s Tile Grout Coating and four hours of my life sitting on the bathroom floor going over the grout with the tiniest sponge you’ve ever seen.  This product’s fan-freaking-tastic.  It’s spread over the grout lines with no consideration if it makes it onto the tile itself.  After it dries for four hours, the excess is just mopped up, and the paint remains behind on the grout.  A quick polish with a dry towel, and then grab a kleenex to mop up the tears that erupt at the sight of beautiful, clean-looking grout.

Look at it when I was halfway through and marvel at the difference between the old, gross-looking grout and the new, beautiful white grout.  I see your eyes welling up.  Here’s a tissue.

Have no fear about the grout remaining this white.  I have now applied two coats of sealer.  I declare the chronicle of two girls’ attempts to whiten their bathroom grout over.