Ants on fire

          This is a kind of silly post, but if you know me,  I have a fear of ants, and that means this is serious business.  Basically, I was in a car accident one time and ended up covered in ants.   I had about 300 ant bites.  Yes, it was terrible.  But I also had a concussion, so the bites were not a huge deal.  However, the feeling of ants crawling on you (sorry, if you now feel ghost ants on you, I do) is horrible.  If there are several ants on me at once I freak out.  I can't handle that. 

((I was going to post a picture here of the bites, but lucky for you, I can't find any.  Also, you don't want to see that. I looked up pictures of ant bites and well, it's nasty.   This is Zazzle the friendly ant, popular in parts of Australia, found by me on Google))

Anyways....

Our lovely new home came with a rather large yard.  It's somewhere at 1/3 to 1/2 an acre. [When Daniel mows it, he swears its an acre. ;)  ] So in the heights of August there were several MASSIVE ant hills in our yard.   We tried ant killers and that just caused the hills to move locations.  We tried corn meal/grits.  Nothing worked.  So having a pinch of GA redneck in our blood we decided to burn those suckers out. It was pretty fun. 

 

While Daniel was inside painting ceilings or something I went outside with the old oil/gas mixture from changing the oil/gas out on the lawnmower.  I poured it on the mounds and then lit it on fire.  I did use a long handled lighter.   My parents were there and so my dad came outside to "supervise," although I think he had more fun than I did.  :)

Notice the smoke billowing out of the hole that  I made to our the gas/oil in.  It was really cool to watch, although difficult to capture in my picture.

We let them burn for several minutes before we doused them with water.  We also watched over them carefully.  As you can see these were in the middle of the grass, not in the woods or in the mulched garden area. The grass didn't catch fire because it was green and actively growing.  However, when the fire got close to edges I poured water around the edge to give it extra protection.  

**note:  I do consider myself a responsible adult.  Having two people however, is advisable.  Have a hose handy and make sure you aren't burning near pinestraw or any very dry grass.  Also, a no-brainer but don't try this close to the house.  Be smart people.**  

So, has anyone ever tried something like this? Do you have any helpful hints for getting rid of ants?  I am sure we will have more this year!  I want to make sure we can play safe in our yard with our dog!  Let me know your tips and tricks in the comments!  

Love,

Sarah

Here's my soapbox

       I'm just going to put it out there.  Don't smoke.  Please, there is tons of research out there saying it kills you, slowly.  With all the knowledge people have available about how bad it is, I honestly have no idea why people even start smoking.  It always kills me when I see a kid (you know, the ones who hopefully are at least 18 but look 15 or 16) smoking.  I think to myself, "don't you have anything better to spend your money on?" If you smoke to calm your nerves you could probably cure that problem with counseling or Dr. visits that would be cheaper than the 10+ years it took you to figure out you should never have stopped smoking.  

(image from Google)

        I love you all, even if you do smoke or have in the past, but please do yourself a favor.  Do your spouse or significant other a favor.  Do your children or future children a favor.  They love you and want you to be around for as long as possible.  It's not too late.   Our bodies are amazing and they can "heal" from smoking, it's possible.  

        I am sorry if anyone reading this feels I am speaking rudely or out of turn.  It comes from a place that cares about the human race and the health of others.  I saw what it did to my great-uncle who died of lung cancer.  It was tragic. 

        So, the secret I have been hiding about our house is that the lady who lived in our house before was a heavy smoker. dun. dun. dun. She smoked inside and we had to clean away the evidence.  It was nasty.  [If you must smoke, please go outside!]

OK, I am done.  Now I will show you why I feel so firmly about it.  Photographic evidence. 

The dining room-before.

These photos are from our dining room. It was where I started cleaning.  We scrubbed the baseboards, walls, windows, doors and trim with a TSP, vinegar and water solution.  When there was a tough spot we used baking soda to have a little grit.  What is TSP you ask? It is Tri-Sodium-Phosphate.  T.S.P.  It was the chemical that we read will get rid of strong odors (smoke) and strong stains (tar and nicotine build-up).   We found it at Home Depot.  

These are pictures of the cleaning process.  You can clearly see where I cleaned on the baseboard vs. where it hadn't yet been cleaned.  In person it was very clear on the wall too.  You might be able to see it above, but you might not.  Just know it's there.  I know, it's disgusting.   The dirty part was sticky and so dust and dirt was very good at sticking to it. [No wonder lungs get so dirty, that's the same stuff that gunks up a smoker's lungs]

This picture I took while I was scrubbing and wiping the wall.  You can see after I applied the TSP/Vinegar solution how the walls were "weeping" the nicotine and tar.  If you ever have to do this project start from the top and work your way down.  If you do it the other way you will end up doing it twice!  I know from experience. ;)  

This is what my water bucket looked like after about 10 minutes.  After about an hour it was quite a bit darker.  It was so satisfying to dump it out! 

 My arms and back were so sore the next day, so very sore.  It took a ton of "elbow grease" to get these stains off.  We did this in every room of the house.  Every wall all the trim.  It was disgusting.  However, we did, eventually, get the smell out.

***I think it's worth it for you to know now that we painted all of these surfaces after cleaning them.  We cleaned them first because the paint wouldn't have stuck to all that dirt and we wanted to get as much of it out of the house as possible so that it wouldn't "leak" out later [we heard that happens sometimes.]  I will post later about using Kilz on the whole house, but for now know that painting all of the surfaces was vital to getting the smell out.***

We used another crazy trick to get the smell out.  I read that bowls of charcoal would absorb the odor.  Well, we didn't have bowls so I put a few chunks on napkins/paper towels all around the house and in all the cabinets.  All our helpers and visitors asked if we had a giant rabbit. hahaha. Curiously, we are still finding them here and there.  Our dog had one in his mouth the other day, hopefully he didn't swallow any! (eeek!)

Well that's it. That's how we got the smell out of our house and my soap box (I promise you won't have to read many of those.)  See ya next time! 

Love,

Sarah

"Clean it up Cinderella"

While no one was ordered around while cleaning the house, I am pretty sure that all of us, or rather, all of the females at one point felt like Cinderella.  No, not in the princess-y way, in the "I am so sick of cleaning someone else's mess" way.

When we bought our home it was pretty disgusting.  We didn't buy it because of what we saw, we bought it because of the potential we saw.

A little background about our house:  It was a reverse mortgage.  This means it was bank owned, but not because the previous owner couldn't pay, because they owned the house outright and asked to start getting money out of the house.  So basically, the bank paid her and when she moved on (we aren't sure if she died or went to a nursing home) the bank owned the house.  So like a foreclosure the house was managed by a group that was paid by the bank to cut the grass and make sure there weren't squatters, but they didn't really clean at all.

Ok, so we needed to do that before anything else could happen.

The first couple of days it was magical and wonderful.  Then we noticed how nasty everything was.  When you'd turn a light on your fingers would feel sticky and gross.  YUCK.  So, Cinderella got to work.  You can't see the tar on this light switch but, you'll just have to trust me.

I can't tell you how many hours and days we spent cleaning.  I forgot.  I blocked it out.  I don't want to know actual numbers.  I do know it was hard work.  For me, this was the most grueling part.  It was the part that we had to do before anything else upstairs could be done.  While this was hard work, we had amazing help from our families!  Both of our Moms scrubbed things down and made sure we weren't going to miss any spots.  Especially the windows.  It seemed like my Mother-in-love was endlessly cleaning windows.

Here they are working side by side, sorry for the dark photos, it was SO sunny out!

They got every window frame and the outside!  The frames were hosed off and wiped down. 

Even though we ripped out the carpet (eventually), I think we vacuumed it.  We left the windows open so that we could get air circulation.  At this point we hadn't turned the AC on yet.  It was August in GA and it was HOT and HUMID but we were only there for 4 or 5 hours a day so it seemed wasteful to cool the whole house. 

Daniel and Joseph helped clean too! (There were others who shall go un-pictured but who also helped us so very much!)

We washed the walls with a vinegar and water mixture or dish soap for tough grime, but more on that later.   Sorry this post is so boring but I am saving my major Soap Box to sit on next post.  It's a doozy.  This was a major process though.  It took a lot of time and effort.  It was good to get to know all the nooks and crannies of the house.  I think we would have cleaned any house we bought, but definitely not this intensely.  If you don't already know why we cleaned so much, you should know I am holding on to that secret, but next post I'll share it!  Stay tuned. ;-)

until next time,

Sarah

The Concrete Staining Saga: Part 2

Today I am going to share the actual staining process with you!  This was definitely the easier of the two steps.  So if you didn't catch the last post and want to catch up on the stain prep part check that out here.

*Before I start I want to say that we had some fabulous help on this project.  Joseph, Daniel's mom and Jeff were all a HUGE help on this.  Also, this is a wonderful marriage builder, especially if you are quite particular or hangry.  You know your Mother-in-love loves you when she can stand to hear you fighting with her son about the way stain is applied to the floor.  She is a wonderful woman.  You'll see more of her in my next post! While I'm at it, all of our friends and family were so supportive and helpful with all of our house projects! We owe them so much thanks!*

Alright, on to the concrete stain,

First, we prepped the walls by taping up some brown kraft paper on the lower part of the wall.  Sorry for the horrible picture below, but I think you can still see the paper taped to the wall!

Next, you mix up the acid stain. We just followed the instructions on the bottle.  With something so specific, I wouldn't play with the proportions.  Some might not even need water added, but ours did. We put it in this sprayer we bought.  This is almost exactly the one we have, might be a different brand.  It was really easy to use though.  The color we used is called coca-cola.  We got it at JR Industries in Woodstock, GA.  There is likely an equally wonderful place near you that sells concrete stain.    

As you can see, this was a two person gig for us.  I don't think you need two people, but it definitely made it easier.  Daniel pumped it and made sure the pressure was high enough that the sprayer worked properly.  I used the sprayer to get an even coat.  I was quite liberal with the application, I didn't want to miss any spots.  *Make sure you plan your starting spot with your exit!  Don't back yourself into a corner!  We choose to start near the far corner almost opposite the stairs, then worked our way along the back wall.  After finishing one "row" we went back and filled in some holes.  We were nervous that there were some oil spots that didn't come clean during the grinding process and they were kind of beading up instead of accepting the stain.  I just put more stain on those areas, but this probably wasn't necessary because the way the stain set in wasn't a solid color anyway so it was barely noticeable when completed.  I didn't fill in the holes everywhere because we were worried that we would run out of stain and we wanted to finish this project that night!

If you look closely, you can see that the stain almost looks green in one spot.  Well, that's because it is!  When it reacts to the (air, cement, water?) it bubbles and turns green then turns the red-ish orange that it's supposed to be.  Not sure why it does that [I wish I did, sounds like a cool science experiment] but it turns out looking quite lovely!  

This is what it looked like right after we finished.  You can see the thinner spots dried quickly and then other spots looked like little lakes.  

We left it for a couple of hours to dry.  And in fact, we left it 24 hrs, because we didn't do the final step until the next day.  

The final step Daniel did solo.  This reduced the amount of feet that could leave permanent marks in our new floor.  In the last step Daniel sealed the floor with a clear sealer we also got at JR Industries.  This was an easy roll-in-on process.  He did two coats.  The floor now has a nice matte shine to it.  It isn't glossy and slippery but it still has some sheen. :) 

^Daniel hard at work ^

A view of the matte finish. 

Waiting on the floor to dry.  The view of our "completed" basement. 

I use air quotes because everyone tells us (and I know this to be true) a house is never done. 

But for now, this is a great start! 

We are very happy with the results! What do you think? Would you try something like this? Do you think it would have looked better in a solid opaque paint? Should I have used glitter? ;) 

Tell me what YOU think! 

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Sarah

The Concrete Stain Saga: part 1

The Second project that we did was also in the basement.  If you missed that first post about our Adventure with Drylok click here.  


Our second project was to use concrete acid stain to cover up oil stains in our floor and seal out moisture coming up from the ground underneath the concrete.  Daniel works at a Jewelry store and they have a stained concrete floor.  We both think it looks really awesome!  (I have seen some that have glitter in them, but I couldn't convince Daniel to sparklify our floors) 

Isn't that pretty? (picture from Google search)

The beginning of this and most DIY and home renovation projects is simple:  CLEAN. Clean the surface thoroughly.  Oh-ho-ho my friend, easier said than done. Easier said than done.  If you have ever tried to clean something that is really old, and porous, you'll understand.  You can't clean ALL the dirt off of 50 year old concrete floors.  You'll drive yourself mad.  But, do your best.  I think we could have gotten more dirt off the floor, but we got a lot of it and the rest is sealed up like a time capsule.  

First we swept the floor.  Then swept it again.  Actually, Daniel swept, he is really great at it.  I sucked up the dirt.  Luckily, we had a shop-vac.  Sweeping is boring so I didn't take a picture of that.  

Next up....The Grinder (read it again in a baseball announcer voice) :)
This process involved a diamond tipped grinder.  OoooOooo Fancy.  Nope not really, this thing was a beast.  [And as my knowledgeable, diamond informed husband told me, they may be diamonds, but they aren't jewelry grade, they are not a good color or clarity so they use them on machinery etc.]  We rented the Beast from Home Depot. (Our store of choice) And it's this great big machine that looks like a floor waxer except that it tries to rip off your arms. Alright, I am exaggerating, a little, but only a little. 

This was after when we were cleaning it. 

 So Daniel and his friend and co-worker Joseph rented the beast after work and started grinding the concrete basement floor.  

This is Joseph.

This is the grinder at work.  Honestly, I wasn't strong enough to steer this thing. 

The goal of the grinder is to scuff up the floor so that it will accept the stain and remove any surface stains.  To do this you have to add water to the floor in small doses so that it stays near the grinder's wheel.  If you don't have enough water the Beast can overheat. We added water with a hose that was fed through our window,  but you could easily use buckets or whatever was easiest for you. 

During the grinding process we met with a small hiccup.  Remember how I said we didn't get up ALL the dirt? Because you can't really get up ALL the dirt?  Well add water and concrete dust to really fine old dirt. What did you get? mud? Lots of mud? Lots of soupy icky mud? Well, you would be right.  This wouldn't have been a big deal except that we couldn't see if all our hard word was paying off.  It was impossible to see any scratches in the concrete until it was dry and clean.  So we had to stop and reassess.  

We got back up.  Another shop-vac to help get up all the mud and someone holding the hose full time.  The mud-sucking was the most time consuming part.  If your concrete is newer, outside or if you can clean it better before hand I think the mud would be less of an issue.  I will say that there is going to be mud even if you have brand-new concrete, because the grinder is essentially a giant sander and we all know that when you sand something you get dust and dust+water=mud.  After we finished grinding the whole basement we went back through with the hose and shop-vacs and rinsed the floor.  Let me tell you, all of our backs hurt and all of us wanted to throw those shop-vacs out the window.  While we are talking about it, two things about those shop-vacs: 1) surprisingly, the smaller one sucked up the water/mud better and 2) it was really hard to get just the right angle so the suction would kick in but eventually with practice it worked. 

This is what it looked like when we were done.  We weren't able to get ALL the water up, so we just let the little puddles air dry.  

When it was all dry, it looked like this. ^^^ If you look closely you can see the circular scratches.  We were so proud of those scratches and glad to see that all the work and frustration had been for a reason! 


Ok, I think that's enough for today.  God bless you if you read all the way to this point. :)  This isn't the most thrilling project out there.  Read the next post to see why we did all this: Concrete staining! 

See ya later,

Sarah

P.S. I love comments. I love to know who's reading and hear your thoughts and opinions! Thanks a bunch!! YOU'RE AWESOME!