Fixing Ceramic Tile Chips for $5

For all of you out there that have lived with builder grade ceramic tile floors…this tip is for you. We built our first home and waiting for a year and half for it to be finished. We selected all the materials and upgraded many things but our tile floor was not one of them. After we sold that house and moved into our current house, I concluded the previous owners who built this house, did the exact same thing.

We have basic creamy colored ceramic throughout our kitchen and mud room. Unfortunately, in our situation, builder grade materials meant cheap ceramic was used. We are pretty careful and do try to avoid dropping things on the ceramic (obviously no one wants to drop anything on ceramic floor!) but we have noticed over time little chips have been appearing. You might ask how we noticed these chips...well they look like dirt spots. Since my floors tend to be dirty on most occasions, these spots were very noticeable.

Since I am in no position to tear out all the flooring, let alone the damaged tiles, I needed to find a solution to combat my ever growing ceramic tile chip population. What did I come up with? Porcelain chip repair paint!!! In Canada we have a product called Porc-A-Fix. 

I am not sure if you all have it in the US, but I know Rustoleum makes a very similar product. What is it is a really small bottle of paint (similar to nail polish) that is used to touch up appliances, sinks and bathtubs. It comes in a variety of colors, so chance are you can find the one that is pretty close to your floor color. At under $5 per bottle, it was worth it for me to give it a try.

My floor color varies between cream, taupe, beige so I was went with the bone color. I tested the color on a spare tile I had in the garage that the builder left behind and since my floor has a variance in color, I really was able to hide the repaired chips very well.

It was very easy to do since the paint comes with a little mini brush in the bottle. Simply paint it over the chip and let it dry. This paint tends to have a gloss to it, so I applied it a bit at a time to avoid a really shiny spot. I also ran a fine grit sandpaper over the painted spot when the paint dried to scuff it a bit to cut down the sheen.

Here is my after:

To be honest I don’t even see them anymore when I am standing. If I get down on the floor or look very closely I can see the spots. Keep in mind that you might not get an absolute perfect match, but in my opinion, if you get pretty close to your floor color, it is far better than a light tile with large black spot on it.

Here is the before and after again. Before:

After:

Much better! The best part is this is permanent and will withstand my infrequent washings :)

Do any of you have chipped ceramic tile? How have you addressed this problem?

Out Damned Spot! Out I Say! Best way to clean grout

If you are like me, you have Pinned a hundred different cleaning recipes and techniques, but never got around to trying them. So I will for you. I am going to do a series of posts comparing conventional cleaning methods with some of those I found on Pinterest and in the blogging world. If there is one you are curious about, send it to me and I will see if I can do it.  What do you think? Will any of you be interested in seeing if the frugal, DIY method actually works? I am curious.

I have to say at the beginning, I am truly embarrassed to show you some of the pictures that I have taken for this post. I would prefer to hide them in a folder on my computer and not share them, but I think each and every one of you out there who has tile and grout in their house will appreciate this. So I will share my dirty little secret...my kitchen tile grout.

I am by no means a clean-a-holic, but I do try to keep my home generally clean. Would I eat of my floors? Absolutely not. But I never thought they were as dirty as they were until I moved my island. We had a large family gathering (my daughter's first communion- I will share more on that after I do a few of these posts) so I thought I would turn our island sideways to use as a buffet in our kitchen. Well, when I did that I found out what color our grout was suppose to be.

Do you see the clear line where the island sat? How disgusting. I clean my floor often with one of those amazing Bissell steam mops (I do love it) and although I knew that it didn't clean my grout line well, I had no idea it was this bad!


So, off to the internet I went and found a four grout cleaning methods people raved about. Here are the four different techniques I tested:

• Dawn dish soap and peroxide -recipe below ($1 for soap and $2 peroxide- but probably costs pennies for the amount you need)
• Magic eraser ($1 per eraser)
• Baking soda and water/lemon juice (Pennies if you have it on hand)
• Zep grout cleaner (Home Depot $6)

 

 

Dawn Dish soap and Peroxide

Recipe and Method:
1 part Dawn dish soap (I used the pot scrub type)
2 parts peroxide

Mix the two ingredients in a container or spray bottle and apply directly to the grout. Leave for a few minutes and scrub with a brush.

I found the Dawn dish soap and peroxide combination, AKA miracle cleaning solution, did a very good job! It did not take much scrubbing or time to see the results, but I found the clean up after to be a little sudsy. I used a toothbrush to apply to the grout but I think a ketchup squeeze bottle might work a little better. For a general, every day cleaning of your grout, I highly recommend this method!

 Magic Eraser

 Method:
Dampen your magic eraser and run along the grout line.

Although this method works well for a small spot, it chews through your magic eraser really quickly. I would not recommend this method for cleaning an entire room because you would need so many magic erasers. It does leave little particles of the magic eraser along the grout line that are annoying. I recommend this technique for spot cleaning.

Baking Soda and Lemon Juice

Method:
Dampen grout line with lemon juice and sprinkle baking soda. Leave until dry and scrub with damp brush.

 

To be honest with you, I do not recommend this method for two reasons: firstly, it did not work nearly as well as any of the other methods and secondly, it was a horrible mess to clean up. Granted I was a little heavy handed when I sprinkled the baking soda but I was only doing a small area and I was cursing trying to get the grit off the floor. So trust me, don't try this at home.

Zep grout cleaner and whitener

Method:
Apply solution to grout line (it has a little spout to help apply to the line). Leave for 3 minutes and gently brush grout line. Wipe clean. 

I loved this Home Depot product and the results it produced! I don't love that fact it is a chemical and you need to wear gloves when using it BUT if your grout is as bad as mine...this is the product for you!

The dirt literally just flakes off the grout with hardly any scrubbing. It is fast and has dramatic results.

Here is the order I recommend the four products:

1. Zep cleaner (heavy duty clean needed)
2. Dawn dish soap and peroxide (every day clean)
3. Magic Eraser
4. Baking Soda and lemon juice

Once I get all my grout cleaned with the Zep product, I will reseal it and then use the dish soap/peroxide method to clean in the future. I think the Zep is a little too harsh for every day cleaning but it is needed now to get my grout back to its original state.

Here are some before and after photos (as I hang my head in shame at the before photos):

 But look at this after! I have done this entire area with the Zep cleaner. AMAZING!!!!

I hated my kitchen tiles because they were a dirty white color (not white and not cream), but when I cleaned the grout and it was lightened, my tiles now look more of a creamy taupe. I am soooo happy with the results.

So what do you think? Have you had great results with a grout cleaner? Do you have any tricks to clean something in your house? Please share!

Up next in Out Damned Spot! Out I say- removing permanent marker from a white board. All of use with kids have experienced this problem at least once.

Have a great Sunday.
Stephanie

FANtastic Beer Steins on my $0 budget

I can't believe I can say this...I have not spent a penny in 1 week! We had some returns to do from Christmas gifts this week and we were fantastic to return the items but did not buy anything after. Even the kids returned a couple of items and they took the money and have saved it for another time. I would like to say they are learning to save, but I know this is not 100% true. I have to admit that teaching my kids to save and value money has been one of the toughest things we have been trying to deal with lately. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them. Please share how you have taught your kids to value money.

We have already noticed that the amount of time we spend together has increased. We spent today as a family playing outside (our weather is ridiculously warm), reading in the sun, doing a couple of crafts and taking down the last of the Christmas decorations. My husband and I both commented how wonderful today was because we didn't run around shopping.

I made my own bread and hamburger buns today and used up a few small items in the freezer (we had hamburgers and hot turkey sandwiches for lunch) but we are starting to run out of fresh vegetables and milk, so I will have to stop by the grocery store quickly tomorrow.

How are all of you doing? Are you saving a few dollars? Are you also spending more family time?

Here is my $0 budget post for today.

Have you seen the NFL beer steins on Pottery Barn's site? They are FANtastic (hee hee hee) and if your football team is in the playoffs it makes you want them even more. Well at $24.00 EACH!!! they would have to have some gold content in order for me to feel they were worth buying. But as soon as I saw them, I knew I could make them for nothin.

Source Pottery Barn

Source Pottery Barn

I should now share a picture of my husband's beer stein collection but I won't because it might make you think he has a drinking problem, which he doesn't :). Well he has lots of beer steins! So I grabbed 4 of his favorite shaped steins and snuck away to my craft room.

I designed the team logo using Sure Cuts a Lot and cut it with vinyl I had left over from my marble tiles. Yes, I could have used contact paper but I really didn't want to mess up one of the beer steins so I used my good vinyl.

To be honest with you, the larger steins with the handles would work easier than this shape since it was difficult to get the vinyl to lay flat on these.  But these did work out great, I just had to cut the vinyl and overlap it carefully to create the circles.

I used a flat knife that I have to cut 4 straight lines to quarter each of the circles. You could use an exacto knife or a pair of scissors to do this too.

I used my painters tape technique to transfer the vinyl to the glass.

Be sure to lay the logo down first and then carefully the circle around it. Remember the circle will be bunchy, so you will need to carefully separate the vinyl where you cut it and overlap it. You can get a perfect circle this way, just be careful not to damage the vinyl otherwise the etching cream can creep under.

You can see the outer part of the circles are bunch and bubbly but that does not matter. You just need to make sure the part that will be in contact with the glass and etching cream is flat and tight on the glass.

Lay the glass on something to prevent it from rolling. The etching cream can run, so you want to make sure the glass doesn't move.

I used Armour etch to etch the glass. My instructions are covered with a million warnings so I have had to learn how to use this from trial and error. I now stir the etching cream before I apply it. This seems to make it give a more even etch.

I apply the cream using a cheap foam brush. I apply it really thick and evenly over the entire area to be etched. Be sure to not get any on the other part of the glass. It will etch almost immediately.

I recommend letting the etching cream sit on the glass for 20-25 minutes. I don't know what the jar says to do, but I did 4 of these glasses, 1 for 15 minutes, 1 for 20 and 2 for 25 and I found the 25 minute ones looked the best.  Once the time had elapsed, I scrapped the etching cream back into the bottle. I was told to do this by a fellow blogger and it seems to work. I then take the steins to my laundry sink and run them under warm water to get off all the excess etching cream.

 Peel off the vinyl and wash the glass with dish soap and you are done.

They took some time and were a little finicky to make, but they turned out great and cost me zero dollars, so well worth it.

 

What do you think? Not bad for nothing!

Have a great spend free weekend.

Stephanie

Dry Erase Chore Charts and Kitchen Magnetic Board on my $0 Budget

I will be honest with you...it has been only three days since we started this $0 spending month and I almost forgot twice. On New Year's day we were driving home from a family function, it was 5:30pm and the kids were starving. I was tired and just didn't want to cook dinner so I recommended we head to the local drive through....NO! I remembered at the last minute and we steered clear.

How is everyone else doing with their $0 month? It isn't too hard for us at this point because the freezer and pantry are full, I just need to remember :)

Along with our $0 month, we are starting our New Year's resolutions. Every year, we sit down as a family in the week leading up to New Years and discuss what we will work towards together. The kids decided they would like to try to save some money this year towards a few larger purchase, so in order for this to happen, we felt they need to be more consistent with their chores.

So we worked together to create a chore list for each of our two kids along with our family rules.  In the past I have used the template that ModEcoKids created but that site seems to have disappeared. So I had to start from scratch. I downloaded two free Word background and created two chores lists that were tailored to each child. Please remember that my kids worked with me to create these lists. So don't yell at me because my daughter is emptying the dishwasher and my son isn't. She is older and wanted to do this :)



Here is my daughter's chores list:

 Here is my son's chores list:

 Here are the family rules we created:

Since I have no budget to laminate these and they will probably change frequently, I used two sheet protectors to make the chore lists reusable.

 I removed the binder three holes at the top of the sheet with my rotary cutter.

 Slide the chore chart into the sleeve and you are done.

 Simply use dry erase markers and you have a reusable chore chart.

When the kids have completed their chore that day, they check off the box.

Using an old message center (you know those large frames with a white board, cork board and mail pockets) I created an island magnetic board. I had it laying around the garage because someone wrote on the white board with my beloved Sharpies.  I used the exact same method as I did last year when I made a magnetic board for my daughter here. It was very easy and cost nothing since I had the frame, fabric, duct tape and metal flashing on hand.

I secured the frame to the cabinet with those 3M removable adhesive stickers. I wanted to be able remove it in the future with no damage being done to our island.

I love the fabric and had purchased it ages ago to make pillows for our family room. I obviously have not made the pillows yet, but I still have some left over so there might be one or two to come.


So this is where our chore charts will be kept for us to see on a daily basis. (sorry the pictures aren't great. It gets dark really early now :) )

How does everyone else deal with chores in their house? Anyone have any tips or tricks on how to get their kids to do their chores without having to remind them a hundred times?

What do you think..will this work?
Stephanie