How to Clean Stainless and Chrome and Keep it Streak + Spot-free

It's Project Sell-the-Townhouse and we are cleaning, de-cluttering, and wrapping up projects.  Tuesday was my birthday, but the day was spent knee-deep in basement detritus before I sped to work for an evening class.  A dusty day, followed by a late night, culminated in a not-so-special birthday.  My students asked if Handy Hubby did anything special for me and they were seriously unimpressed by his gift (he gave me the extra slice of bacon when we had our lunchtime BLTs).  I think these kids learn too much about marriage from romantic comedies.  An extra piece of bacon shows he cares.  Plus we bought a house, which is a fabulous B-day present and weird timing, because we also bought the townhouse a few days before my birthday.

While trying to give the townhouse its best clean ever, I stumbled on an amazing product for cleaning stainless steel and chrome.  Do your faucets get water spots?  All of our bathroom faucets are relatively new, but they always look hazy from water spots - even after they have been cleaned with all-purpose bathroom cleaner.  They just look permanently filmy, which was driving me nuts because they're new and I want them to show their newness.  I've tried so many Pinterest tricks - I even rubbed lemons on them (what an ineffective mess)!  But this CitruShine cleaner makes them look so damn shiny, and it even helps repel water so they stay relatively spot-free.  I just sprayed a little on a clean, dry cloth, wiped them down and BAM!  Shiny new faucets.

Here are some photos so you can see the before and after:

The right half is cleaned with Citrushine, the left half is cleaned with Mr. Clean.

Obviously, this transformation is awesome for re-sale, but I'm totally adding this cleaner to my regular cleaning arsenal.  I can't wait to tackle the taps at the new place.  Even though I've been asked to by readers, I rarely share tips for cleaning.  But this cleaner impressed me so much, I ran from room to room making Hubby watch the transformation, each time yelling "Look, look!  It looks NEW again!!".  After a week, they still look shiny (a few tiny water spots, but nothing compared to the dull mess they were before). 

If I apply too much, they can feel greasy so I quickly learned less is more.  I was not paid, perked or asked to gush about this stuff.  I went out and bought it, fueled by a mix of last minute panic and desperation, like everyone else ( it's called "Citrushine Stainless Steel Polish").

No Dream House, Then Yes Dream House. It's Ours!

Here's the short answer to the question everyone has been asking: yup, we did buy the lovely lakehouse!  It was unplanned, unexpected and a completely nutty whirlwind that we're still swept up in.

Here's the longer answer:

On a Monday (May 20) : Hubby sends me a link to a stunning lakehouse.  We had talked about selling our townhouse next spring and moving to a home on Lake Superior, but our plans were still up in the air.  We both really, really like this house, though, and quickly realize how few lakeside homes come up for sale.  One of us suggests the crazy idea of buying this one while we have the chance.  We ponder.

Tuesday (May 21): We decide to speak to our bank about whether we even have the funds to buy this house.  More importantly, if our townhouse doesn't sell quickly, could we carry both mortgages?

Wednesday (May 22): I call the bank, make an appointment for Thursday.  Meanwhile, I ask my Mom to call the sellers (it's a private sale) to schedule a viewing because the house is in our hometown.  The phone number leads to the seller's daughter, who doesn't have the key.  The seller now lives in another city, but a neighbour has the key.  My Mom calls the seller to schedule an appointment but no offer is made to see the interior.  My Mom is invited to tour the outside.  What?!  The seller says another woman expressed an interest three months ago but after five showings, lots of empty promises and legal fees, no offer has materialized.  He claims he owes her nothing.

Thursday (May 23): The banks gives me an unofficial YAY to giving us a stupid amount of money in addition to our current mortgage.  I brag a little when the banker asks, "any other debt, besides the mortgage?"  "NOPE!" I say and grin like this:

Via

Meanwhile, my Mom and Dad tour the property.  It is beautifully landscaped, they report, including the shore.  It's on a bay of Lake Superior, but it's shallow, perfect for swimming, canoeing and kayaking.  The house is solid as a rock and in pristine condition.  Guest house is larger than thought!  Mom says buy it.  Dad says finish your PhD first.  I start cleaning the townhouse and contacting real estate agents in Ottawa.

Friday (May 24): We call the seller, tell him we want to fly in and see the lakehouse at the beginning of June.  We need to sell our house, but want to put in an offer to buy his.  He says "great," but seems noncommittal.  I decide to loop in a buyer's agent.  Once the agent is on board and tells the seller what our offer will look like, the seller says the price is right but doesn't want our condition of selling our house.  We say fine, we'll waive that condition and ask for a longer closing date instead (90 days).  He says max 60 days.  Eeegads.  We say fine.  Meanwhile, he says the other woman has gotten more serious.  We suspect he used our interest as leverage.  We say we can fly in sooner to view it and will present our offer as promised, no surprises, when we arrive.  He doesn't feel comfortable with us not having seen it.  Our realtor asks if he'll give us the chance to tour the house and present an offer before deciding anything.  At least let us and the other woman present offers before making a decision.  He says yes.  Sweet!  But then the realtor calls back.  He's backed out.  He doesn't even want to entertain the idea of our offer or facilitate our seeing the house and he is going to go with the other buyer, who still has not listed her house and hasn't submitted a formal offer in writing.  We are stumped!  So is our realtor.  Sometimes For Sale by Owner goes weirdly, he tells us, and reminds us of the importance of an agent.

Saturday (May 25): We spend the day saying "I'm sad.  I loved that house."  We convince ourselves that the house was wrong for us (a bit of a longer drive than I wanted, a 5 foot high basement only good for storage, really horrible timing).  The days pass and we're relieved not to have to prepare our house for sale, because we still have the big bad laundry room to contend with, the basement to declutter, the back fence to remove, the garden to tend to, the garage to clean, the bedrooms to swap and a million or so odds and ends we've lived with for four years.  Our realtor says other lake homes might open up in the next months, so we make a list of things to tackle in our house so we can (slowly) get ready for sale, in case another gem appears.  Whew, we think, we've got time and this has lit a small fire under our bums to get things done, without launching us into full blown panic mode.

Thursday (May 30):  Panic mode.  I'm eating my cereal and checking email when our realtor calls!  The deal fell through with the other woman and we're up to bat.  Ohhhhhkay.  Lucky seller, that we're even still interested because his snubbing us would have turned off other people!!  Our realtor pushes us along to move fast.  Too fast, in hindsight.  Hubby's unreachable at a conference in another city, and it's up to me to make decisions.  We put together an offer and with a series of scanners and fax machines (fax machines!) we manage to sign the offer in two different cities and submit it to our realtor in a third city.

Saturday (May 31): The day after Hubby returns from his conference, I leave for Victoria for a three day conference of my own.  Four layovers and 13 hours.  I deliver my paper the next day, then turn around and fly home 6:45a.m. the next day.

Monday (June 3): Exhausted, I return from Victoria after a 12 hour flight.  I touch down around suppertime.  We can't sleep.

Tuesday (June 4): We head to the bank when it opens, to start the official mortgage approval process.  After our appointment, we drive straight to the airport and we fly to our hometown, eat a bagel melt, then drive straight to the property for a viewing and home inspection.  Home inspection reveals a truly well built home with amazing bones and quality building materials.  Viewing reveals more updates than I planned!  But the lake is amazing and the home has a great layout with spacious rooms and open concept that I can work with.

Wednesday (June 5): I fly back to Ottawa bright and early, so I can get to work on time that night.  Hubby flies later in the day and I pick him up at 9p.m. when I'm done work.  We can't sleep.

Thursday (June 6): Well water tests come back good, the bank says YES (officially, this time).  Our conditions are waved.  We've bought a house.  We start tearing around the townhouse, finishing up projects, cleaning, organizing.   We log long days prepping. 

Saturday (June 8): We marvel at how little time it took to finish the laundry room that we spent 18 months ignoring.  Stupid us, it looks amazing.  Details soon. 

So, that's it.  We bought a house when we weren't even really looking for one.  But it's gorgeous, with so much potential.  I'm meeting with realtors this week to list the townhouse (sniff).  I'm worried it's too late in the season and we won't sell.  Right now, we're in overdrive trying to finish projects to list before June is over, because April, May and June are supposedly the busiest months for real estate in Ottawa.  We haven't stopped to tell many of our family members yet, but we will once things calm down a little.  Did I mention chapter three of my dissertation was due a week ago?  It's 30% written but I'm too covered in paint, dust and marble cleaner to focus.

Stay tuned for plans for the new house, and photos from projects we're wrapping up here - in addition to photos of the townhouse staged for sale!  For now, here are some photos of the new place, some you've seen but some you haven't.  A few I snapped super quickly during the viewing, while others are from the listing.  Maybe I'll do a video tour when we move in?

There's a lot of work to do, but I already have a vision . . . and a Pinterest board.

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Unusual, Small Scale Planter Ideas

I have a collection of vintage McCoy planters that boggle the mind of everyone I know because plants hate me and I feel the same.  At one time we had many plants, including a thriving Hibiscus (Hubert, RIP), many cacti, a jade plant, African violets, etc.  They did well in our old apartment, because utilities were included so in the winter we kept it positively tropical.  Once we moved and started paying for heat, things got a little chillier (I bought a pair of indoor boots and I wish I was kidding).  Plus, the lighting is different here and many plants acquired real estate a little further from the window.  Combine that with a lot of traveling, including my four month stint abroad, and the plants slowly died one by one.  One of two may have been put out of their misery before their time.  Hubert the Hibscus just passed away last week (natural causes) and the grandma who gave him to me (and created him from a cutting TWENTY plus years ago) is going to murder me.  Only a much, much smaller jade plant remains (he's the Benjamin Button of my plants, getting teenier each day).

The lone survivor got smaller digs because I found a cute glass vessel thrifting that I thought would make him look less sad and lonely because the scale is more proportional to his tiny nothingness.  I know he should have drainage and blah, blah, blah but the little guy should be happy I even remember to water him. 

This teeny glass "planter" is melting my heart (and looks great with my Iittala collection below it).  Look how many cute ideas there are for when a wee plant is all someone can manage . . .

Tea cups, Corks, Wood Egg Cups, Tin on Saucer, Tin Can, Copper Caps

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May is Done. Did We Have Fun?

It's June!  My Birthday is right around the corner . . . in my rear view mirror is another month that went by in a blur.  I spent this weekend at Congress, presenting a paper on my (never-gonna-be-finished) research.  I had quite the milk run on the way to Victoria, BC: four stops and 13 hours.  Yikes!!  Prepping for the conference didn't leave me a whole lot of time for projects, but I tackled some fun things in May anyway.

I love how these simple frame makeovers completely modernized two thrift store paintings and filled up the townhouse walls with even more original art, for about $20.00 a piece plus a couple of cans of paint and primer.  Ever wonder if you're sitting on a famous something, worth millions, after a thrift store purchase?

Mom and I finally mended a sweater of hers with the sweetest felted wool design.  I love this project because we saved a beautiful cashmere sweater (cha-ching!), but it's such a cute idea just for decoration.



I swapped ideas with a German blogger, and shared her fun idea for making keys look a little snappier.

It seems I wasn't content to craft alone this month!  Erica and I plotted these easy DIY knotted cord bracelets for weeks before I visited her, and they blew up on the interwebs, resulting in a crazy number of new folks coming to the townhouse and a dizzying number of Pinterest pins followed.  These scream "summer" to me, so maybe everyone was just in the mood for something summery?

Another DIY project was featured in Ottawa at Home magazine!  Time to think up something simple, inexpensive and original for the fall issue . . . no pressure or anything.

After mooning over mint, I painted a sentimental table.  It's not as bright as I wanted, and I haven't totally gotten used to it, but it looks perfect with the chair so for now I won't fiddle with it.  Fiddling normally leads to ruining, so I'm going to just put down the paint and walk away.

I never remember to photograph recipes because normally Hubs and I make food when we're already ravenous and it barely makes a plate-pit-stop on route from pot to pie hole.  I am amazed we even have taste buds from all the times we've burned our tongues!  But when styling photos for a Marimekko oven mitt review (still love them), courtesy of EQ3, I snapped this quick shot before we wolfed down the yummiest mac and cheese ever.  Here's the recipe!  Ow, hot.

Speaking of happenings in the kitchen, my Pyrex collection grew a little!  See the collection, plus what other goodies I treasure-hunted, here.



On a serious note, I tested out a high tech (and oh-so-pretty) smoke detector.  I was only concerned with the looks at first, but now I've realize it really is a much better unit to have for safety.

There were more projects I wanted to accomplish this month (the bar cart is painted and waiting patiently in the garage, along with a fancy new tool, some furniture and cans and cans of paint), but I was a little distracted with thoughts of our dream house.  I plan to share the nitty gritty details (and more photos) soon.  Who will I be, if I'm not Townhouse Tanya???

I'm really looking forward to June, even though my heart flutters a little at the length of my (growing) to-do list . . .

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A Sexier Smoke Detector

I'm serious about fire safety and what's fabulous about our condo is that they share my concern and make everyone test the smoke detectors in their townhouses annually.  Unfortunately, smoke detectors generally aren't easy on the eyes.  Ours in particular, although not even old, are bulky, beige and strictly un-paintable, so when I received an offer from First Alert to try out a slim new model, I jumped at the chance!

(I can't show you an "after" photo from the same angle right now because the doorway to my office is packed knee high with student mid-terms, projects, piles of books and three purses.  It's a scary greeting each morning).

The model we received is the new First Alert Designer Series 2 in 1 speaking alarm in white (yay!), which is slim and low profile.  Hubs and I have systematically gone through and replaced every 1970s light fixture (even the ceiling fans!) in the townhouse with fresh new fixtures, but it's been so disheartening to install them beside the sad smoke detectors that were already there.  The smoke detectors were strategically placed, so it was safest to keep them there, but jeez, were they ugly! 

The new smoke detector (which you can find at Lowe's and other home improvement stores), in addition to disappearing nicely into the ceiling (it's less than half the size of the old one), is also a lot more technologically advanced than our old unit.  First Alert has a Patented Smoke Entry system which provides a direct path to the sensor based on the way smoke travels, which means it's more sensitive to smoke but, here's the best part, it results in fewer false alarms!  Plus it detects Carbon Monoxide as an added safety bonus.  Steam from our shower used to set off our old alarm, but we've had none of those false alarms in the two weeks or so we've been testing this smoke detector. We also like that in can be programmed so that a voice tells you where the fire/smoke is, what the hazard is, or whether the battery just needs to be changed (instead of chirping maniacally for shower steam, battery change and fire interchangeably).  There's a video that highlights all of the features, you can see it here.

Although I've hated our smoke detectors and complained before, I was lazy about changing them (especially because it was really an aesthetic thing and they work just fine), but learning about how much safer this new model is makes its slimmer look icing on the cake.  It's definitely townhouse-approved.  But now I want a few more . . . 

I was provided this unit for review from First Alert, but was not asked, encouraged or paid to write a positive review.

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Thrift Store Art - Refreshed for the Townhouse

When my parents were visiting, we made many-a-trip to the thrift stores (my poor Dad).  We even found a new-to-me Value Village when he ripped his only pair of pants and we had to make an impromptu Moore's run.  It was at that Value Village that I found two lovely paintings, both of water, that made me smile.  This weekend, I removed them from their frames and gave them a blast of glossy white spray paint before reassembling them.  Both frames were a little beat up (and dated) but now are refreshed.  One day Hubs and I will make new frames for them (see here for one tutorial, and here for another), but right now paint was all I had time for.  It's a cheap fix that made them both look modern, cheery and townhouse-appropriate.

One made its way into the office, replacing a small sculpture my Grandpa made (it will find a new home). The other is adding more zingy colour to the bathroom, replacing a black and white photograph that hung there previously.  Things are looking grim on the lakehouse purchase (competition - details soon), so these two paintings might be my only "waterfront view" in the foreseeable future.  At $20.00 a piece, these are the better deal (less headache, too)!

In the bathroom, I love the extra jolt of turquoise to tie in the colour from pretty much every other room.  My DIY yellow painting has a hint of turquoise and the new painting has a hit of yellow, so they work nicely together.  Plus, (is this too much information?), when I have a bath, the water crashing against rocks is my new view.  Seeing as this is a windowless bathroom, I'll take what I can get!

How to take frames from blah to bright:

• Using pliers, remove the nails holding the painting in place
• Lightly sand the frame, to remove any sheen
• Wipe clean with a damp cloth, allow to dry
• Spray with primer (I chose a stain blocking primer - Beauti-tone STOPZ)
• Allow to dry overnight
• Spray with Rustoleum Painter's Touch in Gloss White
• Allow to dry for 48 hours to fully cure 
• Hammer in finishing nails alongside the painting
• Install eye hooks and picture hanging wire

This is a photo of the back before I disassembled it, but I did the same thing: using finishing nails to hold the painting in place (mine are straighter!) by hammering them into the frame alongside the painting:



And that's it!  P.S. Check out this post on how to pick the right frame for your art - it might give you some DIY ideas!

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