(John get's the credit for the title to this post.)
So, I'm not the best homemaker, but I swear I did mop the floor. Occasionally.
/Ahem.
Yah, so I was mortified when I went to spot clean something that had spilled on the floor and saw the contrast of the light clean spot against the dingy brown of the rest of the tiles. (I had sort of forgotten that our tiles were light colored, the gradual darkening of the earth tones just didn't register on my radar.)
So me and hubby spent about 4 to 5 hours together on our knees the next Sunday, scrubbing each tile by hand (800 sq feet? not sure, but it was a lot).
OMG, we have a whole new floor!
And a determination to make it stay that way!
Anyhow, I guess this is sort of my two cents to add to the housework/gender-divide topic that Mel and Adam have already posted about. Typically, I do more of the cleaning (probably why the floors were so bad). But in that instance, my lover was down on his hands and knees, up to his elbows in it with me.
That was nice. :)
4 comments:
When our house was three years old we added more tile sections. We were able to match the tile and grout to the original but they were no longer the same color! Especially the grout.
My master bathroom tile has really taken a beating from hairspray fallout. Yuk.
I'm envious of your sparking clean floors! Any secrets or special products other than good old elbow grease?
numi- aw man! yah, we are thinking of pulling up the carpet and doing something like tile in one of the rooms... but I think for the reason you just mentioned we will put down some nicely-contrasting-but-not-matching color.
a splash of pine sol in hot water. that was it.
and grout IS problamatic... ours is still stained/splotchy in spots. I'm sure there is stuff out there we could use, but this was enough for now.
maybe next month we'll get down on our hands and knees with old toothbrushes and grout bleach... but our knees (and wrists) are still recovering from this first round.
The only way for us to match the tile was to put a dividing line of decorative mosaic (?) in between the two areas. We also turned the new tile on the diagonal to make it look "on purpose". If you would like a photo I can arrange that.
There is a grout sealer that we added the second time, but unfortunately the damage was already done to the first area.
All that said, I love my tile floors.
This is hilarious. I'm getting ready to move into a new house and I fear the cleaning that I will have to do here, especially under my stove!
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