DIY Homemade Grout Cleaner

I should have done it sooner.  Really I should have.  What?  Cleaned the grout on my tile floors!  To be honest, being a first time home owner in the last 4 years, and growing up in a home with no tile floors....I just mopped them on a regular basis to keep them clean and thought we were good to go.  It wasn't like anyone walked into my house and gasped in disgust that my grout wasn't as white as white out.  When our Realtor first came into our home to evaluate he was pretty pleased with how show ready our home already was.  He mentioned a few things while there that if we start to have trouble selling that we could change, but for now he thought it showed really nicely.  One of those "things" that he mentioned was that he knew a guy who would clean the grout on our tile floor and it would look brand new.  To be honest...that was the first time it ever occurred to me to clean the grout.  

Gasp?!  You...Bridget?!  Not know that??  Well that's what I feel like ya'll are thinking right now, but give me a moment....ok I am over it.  Judge me or not....I really didn't know! 

Last week after having 15-20 showings, 1 second showing, and no offers since we put our home on the market....we decided we must be priced too high for the market so we dropped the price on our house and offered a carpet allowance to the new buyer to basically replace the carpet for free in whatever color and style they choose.  

This of course sent us both into freak out mode with thoughts of changing a million things with the million dollars we don't have in order to get our home to sell.  I settled on doing the one thing I could do by spending 0 dollars....cleaning the grout :)  

And let me tell you....if you are a newbie to grout cleaning like I, it is potentially the most gratifying household chore I have ever done.  My floors looked so pretty!  I was like a little girl staring at herself in a princess costume in front of a mirror....I kept running to the other room to ask Dave to come look at how awesome the floors looked :) 

Here is a picture of my kitchen floor

BEFORE

Here is a picture of the kitchen floor half way through...

And wow!  I was absolutely amazed at the difference it made!

AFTER

Impressed?  I sure was!  

Here is the recipe I used:

Homemade Grout Cleaner

Ingredients:

3/4 cup baking soda

1/4 cup bleach

Old toothbrush

1.  Mix baking soda and bleach together.  I ended up adding more bleach to this recipe to make it a thinner gruel consistency. 

2.  Using an old toothbrush spread the mixture onto your grout in a hidden corner of your tile floor (I scrubbed back and forth about 10 times to get the grout to appear white and new).  Let sit after scrubbing for 5-10 minutes before rinsing.

3.  Rinse well with warm water and old rag.  Make sure this isn't discoloring your floor before proceeding on.  

4.  Once you are sure there is no discoloration proceed on to the rest of the grout.  I ended up doing about 4-6 tiles at a time so that I could let the grout sit for 5-10 minutes on each one and then I would go back and rinse the 4-6 tiles before starting a new section.  This worked well and kept the process moving.  

6.  Stand back in awe and admire your handiwork!  

*My whole kitchen floor took about 2 hours (our kitchen measures 11 x 15).

*Depending on the size of your floor you may need to mix up more solution.

What are some of your favorite homemade cleaning recipes?  Come share your thoughts today on Full Heart Full Home's Facebook page.  Over the years I've found most of them do a fantastic job and I prefer most homemade cleaners to commercial cleaners.

Blessings,

DIY Birthday Banner Tutorial

So here it is, as promised....a DIY Birthday Banner Tutorial. After searching on Pinterest and Etsy and staring at birthday banners for awhile, I knew I could tackle making one myself, and quite honestly there is something about the love that goes into homemade things that is important to me. I know that this Birthday Banner will be important to Abbie one day. It will represent so much joy of "Her Day" during the year! I wanted to make sure the Banner I made was durable enough to last for years to come so I couldn't just make it out of tissue paper.

My neighbor has sewn each of her kids a birthday banner that they hang up every year. I loved that idea....but dangit....I just really don't like sewing. I like it to a certain extent but its the machine that gets me and honestly the competitive and perfectionist side of me hates that I am mediocre at something. Sewing itself isn't that hard but every time I sew the machine does something stupid and I have convinced myself its because of user error :) I think I might take a class someday when Dave is out of school.

Anyways....on to the tutorial....I hope that you enjoy!!!

First you will need some posterboard (as many pieces as you'll need for the size letters you want)- I needed (20) 6in X 8.5in cards for this project (HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABIGAIL...one letter per card). I bought the packet of 14in by 22in poster board and could make 4 cards out of one sheet...thus using 5 out of the 8 sheets in this packet (Cost about $2.50)

Next you'll need scrapbook paper in coordinating colors (I wanted mine to look girly but also very versatile to go with the many different themes Abbie may have for birthdays in years to come.

(Quantities you'll need for poster board and scrapbook paper vary...I wanted one letter on each card...I needed 20 letters: HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABIGAIL and mine ended up being 6inches X 8.5 inches. So you do need to do a little bit of math to figure it out but its not hard...I seriously just eyeballed it in the store. Scrapbook sheets are 12 inches square so I could fit two of my cards on them and I did buy a few extra sheets for the coordinating colors we will discuss later)- Cost 30cents each...on sale for 50% off at Hobby Lobby- I purchased 16 sheets total (Cost $4.80)

Next take two of your 6in X 8.5in poster board cards (you can make them any size you want to, I just knew I wanted them to be this big for what I wanted the end result to look like), and glue them to the backside of a piece of scrapbook paper. (I used rubber cement so I didn't get lines from the glue...you could probably use things like modge podge but I don't know much about that stuff. (Cost of Glue: $2)

Make sure all sides of the poster board are glued down really well to the scrapbook paper. Allow to dry for 5-10 minutes then cut them out. I rounded the edges of each of my poster board cards with scissors. To save time I glued all of mine at once and set each aside to allow it to dry. By the time I was done gluing the others I could start cutting apart the ones I had glued together first.

When you are done with all of your cards they should look like this. I laid mine out as a template for the order they would be in when I glued the letters onto them. Top row will eventually say HAPPY, 2nd row BIRTHDAY, and 3rd row ABIGAIL.

Next I took the extra sheets of scrapbook paper I purchased in solid colors that coordinated with my patterned sheets and cut the shapes I wanted out of them. I just cut out circles, triangles, and squares cause I don't own a fancy cricut machine and I can cut each of those out freehand :)

Then I selected a font I liked from Word and printed off HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABIGAIL. I think the font size was 250 or 300 in order to make it large enough to look good on the size of cards that I made.

Now glue your shape on the bottom 2/3 of your card. Glue the letter on top of that. Leave enough room at the bottom to make it look pretty or keep in mind if you wanted to add any extras to hang from the bottom of yours, that you will need room for those. I wanted to leave plenty of room at the top for mine because I wanted to lace ribbon through the cards to hang them.

Once I was finished applying all the shapes and letters, I punched holes in the top 1/3 of the cards, about an inch from the sides, and laced ribbon through them. I had a hard time getting the holes to be big enough for the ribbon to fold over, so I just punched holes out in a big enough circle to make the ribbon lay flat. They probably make some handy stamper that cuts this out automatically but I don't own one so that is what I did.

(Cost of Ribbon $1.99)

Tada! My birthday banner!!! It's so sturdy. The cards are very thick and I have no doubt that they will hold up for along time. I couldn't be happier with how it turned out!

You can modify your own however you'd like. If you have a girl throw on some more frilly ribbons and toule, you could even have borders or put stickers on or decals....its so customizable. This is just a template.

Total Cost was about $11.50)

Time Spent: An evening after Abbie went to bed...about 4 hours

Easy. Frugal. Most off all I'm glad I took the time out of my day even though our lives are crazy right now to make something that will mean a lot to Abbie later.

I'll be posting a DIY on how to make pinwheels soon so don't forget to check back! These will be used for her birthday as well. I was gonna just claim defeat and have someone make her cake but then I remember my mom always made our cakes every year growing up and that meant a lot to me. My cake making experience....well mostly decorating experience is minimal but you can't learn unless you try (probably should apply that thought to sewing as well....) so I am going to be giving a go at fondant in the next few weeks....I'm not doing the whole cake in fondant cause it tastes horrible, butI am going to try and make some figurines out of fondant to decorate with...we're doing a Love Bug theme, cause that's my nickname for her :) Oh and speaking of...

just when you think she can't get any cuter....BAM she does! I just love her to bits! Happy Bannering!!!

DIY Birthday Banner!!

I was so excited I had to share what I finished today....Abbie's Birthday Banner. It's durable enough to be stored and used over and over again in years to come. Yes I know...her birthday is in 2 months, but life is nuts in our house right now and I wanted to get a head start. I'll be posting "How To's" for this soon! Isn't it adorable!? I am so happy with how it turned out!