Before and After Envy Series: Basement Blues

Oil to Fireplace...

Welcome back to the final Before & After Envy series post for this month!

I've had so much fun sharing all of these talented home makeovers that I would like to extend an open invitation to any other readers and bloggers out there who would like to show off their renovations. The Before & After Envy series can be an ongoing series whenever new rooms and makeovers are available. Contact me if you're interested in joining the party. Because every home makeover deserves a little chance to be envied.

Today's post comes from my sister-in-law, Lisa, and my brother's basement renovation inspired by an energy bill crisis and developed into a gorgeous, comfortable family room.

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Hanging Salad Garden

Last year, I began a quest to turn my black thumb into a green thumb, or at least an evergreen shade of black.

This would take some time. Time to earn the plants trust again, to prove the dead philodendron was a fluke of bad lighting or that it wasn't my fault that I forgot to water that peace lily for three weeks.

So far, my efforts at greenery whisperer have started to pay off. For the first time in my life, I gardened. I was the grower of my own food, and it was glorious!

Everything tastes better fresh. Even my least favorite veggie was so tasty that I found myself pacing the garden in the backyard, watching, waiting for that moment when it would stop being a plant and start being food.

Since last year went so well, I got ambitious and expanded the garden by adding a hanging salad garden.

Before and After Envy: 5 Tips for Home Renovation

The Classy Man Cave...

Welcome back for the next entry in the Before & After Envy series, where I stare admiringly at the amazing renovations my friends have pulled off in their homes. Last week, Shannon talked about how to update a half bath from the 80's look to a very modern style.


This week, April will be joining us to share 5 tips she has learned while updating her basement into a lovely, casual family room and Penn-State-themed man cave with her husband. April reminds us that on home projects, your mindset and expectations can be just as important as the hammers and nails.

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Before and After Envy: Half-Bath Remodel

The Ugly Duckling...

When decorating a home, there is always a risk that your look will one day become dated. This problem is only made worse if those decisions were made by the previous home owner and if those decisions involve white ducky wallpaper.

Today, we're joined by my friend Shannon Hemauer as she shares her journey of ridding her half-bath of the dreaded duckies.

Before and After Envy Series

You may not be all that surprised to hear. It is a common affliction among us late twenty-somethings after all.  I have a case of house lust.

My husband and I live in a cute little rental with our very own garden and creek in the backyard, which certainly could be all we need in life, but I can't help longing for more.

It's not just because I want more space or because I want to invite more than 10 people into our house at a time without ticketing them at the entrance. I really long for the house projects.

Month-long DIY projects gone awry with floorboards torn up, drywall spackled, paint splattering everywhere! (Did I mention that some people find me odd?)

You see, I have helped family members and strangers alike to renovate, redesign, and rip the ever-loving pieces apart of their homes to remake it into the masterpiece that suits their needs and their aesthetics perfectly. Living in a rental where we aren't even allowed to paint the walls gives this level of freedom a fuzzy optimistic glow.

While I'm sure the suffering of tip-toeing through storage boxes, wading through dust, and driving to the nearest friend's house for running water aren't nearly so glamorous as they sound, renovation still has the appeal of brave trial and error, experimentation, and a side of practical, creative expression that I very easily obsess over.

So while my house lust may not be satisfied for a few more years, I can still dream and drool over what my creative friends and family have done to their homes.

Which brings us to this month's series: Before and After Envy, featuring people I know and the beautiful ways they've destroyed and recreated their homes! Join every Friday this month for a little featurette of their before and after.

Myth or Miracle Cleaner Series: Scrub Your Bath Tub Like Martha

I grew up in the generation that associated Martha Stewart less with domestic perfection and more with Saturday Night Life sketches and jailbird punch lines. I'm thinking that I may perhaps owe her an apology...

At the beginning of the month, I asked for suggestions for a Mystery Homemade Cleaner to be featured at the end of the month and Kim Vealy from the Soliloquy of Food & Such was good enough to suggest a bath tub scrub made from baking soda that she learned from Martha Stewart. 

Since I had unfinished business with my old rental bath tub with 20-some years of stains that weren't quite eliminated by a basic homemade cleaner, I thought I'd give this heavy hitting bath scrub a try.

So, I put Martha's scrub to the test to see if I can't clear away that yucky stain without calling an exorcist...it was considered my final option.

Myth or Miracle Cleaner Series: Shower Head De-Clogger

Little problems are sometimes the most annoying. Noisy neighbors, a spot of mold growing underneath what was a perfectly good head of lettuce, clogged shower heads. 

Keeping it in perspective, most little problems come with an easy fix. While a clogged shower head certainly isn't a dire problem, there's no reason not to remove the little annoyance of errant water streams sputtering into my face interrupting a relaxing shower when the fix is so easy.

For this next post in the Myth or Miracle Cleaner Series, where I give homemade cleaners a try to find out if they are too good to be true, I'll tackle my sputtering, clogged shower head with a soaking method suggested by Frugally Sustainable. Let's give it a try!

Myth or Miracle Cleaner Series: Clean Dreaded Toilet with Baking Soda

Welcome back to this month's series on Spring Cleaning using ingredients and supplies in your kitchen cupboard.

Cleaning the house with baking soda, vinegar, and other items from the pantry claims to have the advantage of saving money from all the household cleaners you won't need to buy and to be greener and more environmentally friendly than the toxic chemicals found in the average cleaner.

While most of the all-natural cleaning methods worked wonders, today I'll share about a dud: cleaning the toilet with baking soda.

The claim, according to blogs like Life Hackery, is that you sprinkle 1 cup of baking soda in the inside of your toilet and voila! It's shiny white, clean, and odor-free. With no scrubbing, you'll be able to wash away stains, grime, and dirt.

Such a claim just had to be put to the test!

Myth or Miracle Cleaner Series: Shine Your Stainless Steel Sink with Baking Soda and Vinegar

Step 1: Remove all dirty dishes so you can actually see your sink.
Step 2: Shriek at the grime and mess in your sink!
Step 3: Return all dirty dishes to the sink and walk away. Perhaps open a bottle of wine and pretend you don't have a sink anymore.

The kitchen sink is like the eyes to the soul of the kitchen and shows a very public face for guests. It should give a good first impression.

But evil things grow in the sink.

The kitchen sink takes a lot of abuse and if you have an older stainless steel sink, this abuse is very evident with smudges, hard water deposits, coffee stains, scratches, and sometimes rust stains that make you want to run screaming from doing the dishes to update to your tetanus shot. You don't have to call an exorcist, break out the bleach, or even buy expensive cleaning products to chase away the demons.

Today, I tried out a recipe for a DIY homemade stainless steel sink cleaner that claims to buff and shine the steel like new. Our sink has seen better days, since our older rental hasn't always received TLC, so it will be the perfect guinea pig to test out The Happy Home's tutorial for cleaning and bringing the shine back to a stainless steal sink.

Myth or Miracle Cleaner Series: Clean Your Bath Tub with Vinegar

Hello, my name is Sara. And I am a Pinterest addict.

Pinterest lists tons of cleaning shortcuts and homemade remedies: dozen uses for vinegar, clean your kitchen with baking soda, etc. I've often wondered if these DIY cleaning methods work, if they are better than store-bought cleaner, and if it's worth the extra effort for a little savings in money.

One of my goals here on Tried & Twisted is to test out new projects and to share if it's worth your time and effort. This month's series is all about DIY cleaning methods.

The first challenge for my Spring Cleaning series: Homemade Bath Tub Cleaner!

You may have seen a graphic floating around on Pinterest promising dramatic results by a simple cleaning method of combining vinegar and dish soap. Just spray on, spray off, no scrubbing, and the shower is instantly clean. It will even take soap scum off of shower doors, so it claims. Let's see how that theory works out in practice.

Myth or Miracle Cleaner: A Series for Spring Cleaning

Life doesn't always work out the way you'd like. There are disappointments, broken expectations, dashed dreams.

Much like cleaning products. The infomercial promises amazing results, the before/after images astound, and then you try it on your own house and it doesn't quite work out like that.

It's disappointing experiences like this that cause trust issues.

Being a skeptic has made me curious about the all-natural, money-saving, DIY home cleaning methods which circulate on blogs and Pinterest like a good meme. They promise a simple process of mixing together a few common items from your cupboard to create an instant clean!

Do they work? Are they better or more convenient than store-bought cleaners? Can you actually save money in the process?

This month's series is all about DIY cleaning methods. Not a glamorous series -- certainly not as appetizing as macarons or as pretty as a craft. But part of the purpose of my Tried&Twisted blog is to test out new projects and to share if they are worth your time and effort.

So in preparation for Spring cleaning, allow me to test out these "great" ideas for you so you can save your own time, money, and a little elbow grease.

Check in with me every Friday this month as I put a new DIY cleaning project to the test.

• Vinegar Bath Tub Scrub
• Baking Soda Toilet Cleanse
• Vinegar and Baking Soda Stainless Steel Sink Scrub
• Vinegar and Baking Soda Shower Head Soak
• Mystery Topic?

You may have noticed that I listed a mystery post. Here's your chance to get involved -- tell me what DIY cleaner you've seen on blogs or Pinterest that you'd like to see tested out. I'll pick a tutorial from your suggestions for the end of the month.

Update: The winner for Mystery Topic is Bath Scrub!

See you on Friday!