Last night, we were able to remove (almost) everything from the room, tear out the tile baseboard and give those nasty floors a good scrubbin', all while laughing about how terrible the floor really is. I guess I thought that, by some miracle, scrubbing the floors on our hands and knees and then using magic erasers over the whole thing would result in a change of color. C'mon! We were on our hands and knees! But, as it turns out, those tiles really are light blue with dirty brown accents. To add to their beauty, they are sliced to fit the slope in the floor that leads to the drain--which is why we can't use stick-on tiles and these large tiles should have never been used in the first place. The good news is, most of those cracked-on-purpose tiles are underneath the washer and dryer. Also, the floor is squeaky clean...which is always good news. Tomorrow we'll have much more exciting progress to share--like paint!
Since I could never leave you with boring details about cleaning floors and no details about ripping out the tiled baseboards (also boring), I'll hop on the "we decorated" train, too. While I am still not ready to break out the spider webbing, bats and crows from last year (we might just save those for the week of our costume party), we are continuing to add hints of the season around the house. Most recently, I picked up some misfit pumpkins for the open shelving in our kitchen:
I love the warts and non-traditional shapes and colors of these. LOVE them. Every time we go to the store, we like to play who can find the ugliest most unique pumpkin. And then, one day, I couldn't take it anymore--we needed some misfit pumpkins in our house! They are really beautiful. Even the warty guy. The open shelving felt like just the right place for them, so I put away the stuff on the top shelf for now and filled 'er up with these happy, festive guys who feel like they have personalities, right?
They fit our keep-it-classy-not-crafty holiday decorating style perfectly. Between our new pumpkin misfits and Mr. Skully on the credenza, I'd say we're...getting there.
But if you could smell this place right now (I got our Leaves candle from Bath and Body works going), the autumn mood around here would be a lot more convincing.
And with that, I'm off to narrow down 50 paint swatches. Who else is decorating!?
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Katie, we picked up this product yesterday! Can't wait to give it a try and share the results early next week. Thanks for thinking of us.
I also had nasty tile in my bathroom that we didn't want to spend the money to change out yet. It was stinking nasty though. I HAD to do something to get us through until we had the money to demo it! I found this post from livelovediy http://www.livelovediy.com/2012/08/how-to-restore-grout.html. I followed Virginia's directions and the white grout completely transformed the room! Just a thought for you?
Those ugly pumpkins are kind of cute haha! I know what you mean about the floor! Our first apartment had brown/tan tile and it just looked gross. No matter how hard I scrubbed it never seemed clean!
Everything I read says the floor has to be level. We have quite the slope leading down to the drain. I would love to use the peel and stick but from what I read, it might not stick with our grade.
I'm confused about why you can't use vinyl tiles? It seems like with the curve in the floor, the space is the perfect candidate for vinyl. They make some awesome peel and stick tiles now - you can even grout them!
So smart to decorate before you had Ellie. I think this might be the first time I'm not jealous of your weather. 70s are perfect for me.
A pink pumpkin and candles?! I'd say you got it all.
I bought a pink pumpkin last week, too! I love it. And I am also burning some fall candles. My house smells divine. That's about the only good thing we've got going for us right now. :)
I love warty pumpkins!! I love the tall white and yellow/orange one. We pulled out the Halloween decorations before I went into the hospital! The bats look extra good in our new place. I have this something spice candle and it is amazing. Talk about instant mood booster, especially when it is still 85 degrees out. Cool down already!!!!