Wood Floor Questions Answered

Some of the most often asked questions I receive are about our wood floors.

I’ll be a good blogger and answer some of those questions today.

What is the type of wood floors do you have?  They are BR111's Brazillian Cherry (Solid Wood).

Do you like your floors?  We love them!  We love how the color has changed over time. They started light and have darkened over time.  We would definitely install them again.  Brazilian Cherry is a hard wood and it has held up great for the almost 4 years that we have lived in the house.

I like the look of wood floors but I’m afraid my dog would scratch them to pieces.  How have they held up against Ike?  Ike is a little dog (24 lbs) but he’s also crazy.  He tears across them when we get home at night or whenever we have company.  We are starting to notice a little wear at the bottom of the stairs and around some corners.  The wear is all the dog.  The scratches aren’t extremely visible though.  I only notice them when I am cleaning them.

Your wood floors always look so clean.  How do you clean them?  First, they aren’t always clean.  I’m just slowly learning to not put disgusting pictures on the blog.  The gross ones always end up on Pinterest.  We generally have a clean house but I can only clean these floors so many times in a week.  My time is better spent…blogging.  The summer is the worst.  Sweaty man feet and dog drool could keep me busy for days.  I try to relax a little more during the summer.  We are outside more.  We use the deck more.  My husband sweats more.  The dog drools more.  Life happens.  It just means I bust out the mop and Bruce’s floor cleaner a little more often. (We purchase the floor cleaner at Lowe’s.)

Look directly right of this photo….running dog prints.  Pinning the following photo will result in bad karma.

Any other wood floor related questions?  Are you a wood floor fan or do you prefer fluffy carpet or tile?  Anyone else struggle to keep the house clean with a sweaty life partner and drooling furry friend?

Burlap “Wallpaper” How To

Yesterday I shared with you that I “wallpapered” burlap to the back of my office shelves.

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to do to the back of the shelves.  Paint was an obvious answer but that seemed like a lot of work. And very committal. I hate commitment.  My husband is a lucky man.  I know you can repaint but I chickened out.  I also couldn’t decide on a color.  I know some people mentioned yesterday that they would have chosen a bright color.  That’s just not us.  We’re very neutral people.  I probably would have chosen brown.  Boring.  Whatever.  We’re a pharmacist and an accountant.  Crazy party people live here.

I then saw a post on How About Orange about using fabric as wallpaper.  It seemed easy enough.  The other positive was that if I didn’t like it I could just take the fabric down and wipe up the paste.  I was digging it.

I told Nate about my plan.  He gave me that “Are you out of your mind crazy woman beast?” look that I’ve been getting a lot lately.  (I think he is going to put a Pinterest block on my computer.  Seriously.)  I put up a good front and acted like I totally knew what I was doing and this project would be a piece of cake.

And surprisingly, it was.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Fabric cut to your appropriate dimensions. 
  • This was probably the hardest step of the whole process. 
  • I’d check out Chelsea’s tutorial for cutting burlap here.  She pays better attention at Joann’s than I do.  Or maybe her local Joann’s employees are a little friendlier than mine.  Just saying.
  • Cornstarch 
  • Water 
  • A brush  (I used a foam brush but any brush would do.)

Bring ~4 cups of water to a boil.  While you are waiting, mix ~1/2 cup of cornstarch with a small amount of water.  Just enough to dissolve the corn starch and make this milk looking sludge.

Add the cornstarch mixture to the boiling water slowly while whisking.  I love whisking.  Seriously.  Favorite kitchen utensil.

Boil until thickened (~5 minutes).  Let cool.

I cooled my paste just so that I could handle it without scalding myself.  (I’m super patient.  I think my impatience was okay in this case though because this paste turns to sludge fairly quickly.)

I removed the shelves and then brushed the entire surface with a thin layer of the paste.  I found that I didn’t need a lot. A small amount would hold the burlap.  I did find that I needed press a small section for a few seconds to get the burlap to stick.  Burlap was a decent material to chose.  I am horrible at cutting and burlap is hard to cut.  It is, however, very stretchy and forgiving.  If my cut was a little off I could just tug and make it work.

Once the area was completely “wallpapered” I put the shelves back in, styled them pretty, and waited for Nate to get home to show him that I this was not the giant DIY disaster that we both expected.

I’ll keep you posted on how this holds up.  How long will it stick?  Can I really remove it easily when I change my mind about in this room in 6 months?  Someone has to be the guinea pig, right?

Who’s going to slap some fabric on their walls now?  Do it!  Anyone else going to soon be banned from Pinterest?  What’s the craziest pin you have attempted?

Wall Mounted Televisions

Some of the most often asked questions that I receive from this blog are  "How do you have your televisions mounted on the wall without cords?  Where is your cable box?” 

These are very good questions.  I now finally know the answers after bugging Nate approximately 20 times on how “we” did this.  (If you’ve been reading long enough you’ve probably realized “we” equals “Nate” a lot more than it actually equals “we.”)

First up, the easy question.  “Where do you keep your cable box?”  I’m all over this!!  We only have one.  It’s in the living room on a shelf…

Nate installed a tube that runs from behind the television to the side of the fireplace.  This tube guides the cable wire which allows us to use the cable box in the living room.  It’s not a perfect solution but the boxes blend okay.  (We need to get off our lazy hineys and organize those cords!)

“How did you mount your television without the wires showing?” 

We had this little advantage called building our own house.  When building, we tried to think of every place possible that we would like to hang a television.  In these areas, we installed an electrical box and cable outlet…

“How do I do this in my house if I didn’t build it?”

Our answer to that is….call your electrician!!  We did a lot of the electrical work in our house but we are offering zero advice on electrical issues on the blog.  You will need an electrical outlet installed in the wall where you would like your television hung.

They also make a cover for cords.  This cover will “hide” the cords from your floor electrical outlet to the television.  You could paint it to blend into the wall.  Not a perfect solution but much better than a bunch of exposed cords. 

There you have it.  Our television “secret”.  Any further questions.  What are your favorite television shows? 

The funny thing about this post is that I am typing this while watching Big Brother on antenna.  (I will need to publish it at my in-laws later.) A storm hit our area on Tuesday and stuck our cable box which equals no cable television and no internet (gasp!! The horror!)  Just an FYI, if you have Mediacom and you want your cable service fixed sooner than your phone quoted date of 3 weeks (yes, they told me on the phone (twice) that the soonest they could send out a technician was 3 weeks!! No blogging or Pinterest for 3 weeks.  Seriously?)  So I tweeted a nasty message on the Twitter (I call it “THE Twitter”), received a response back in about 3 minutes, and magically they will have a technician out this afternoon.  I am now a fan of the Twitter.  And I won’t write a super nasty post on the evils of Mediacom…unless it isn’t fixed later…