If you have looked around in Home Depot or Lowe’s in the flooring department, you have probably seen the peel and stick twelve inch squares.  I do remodeling and cleaning for someone and look for easy and quick remedies to correct the messes that tenants have made.

These tiles range from 36 cent to 99 cent per square at my Home Depot.  I particularly like the parquet-looking squares which were 75 cents per square.  There are real dark looking wood and then the lighter wood.  They are so quick and easy to install and if one gets damaged in the future, you just pull it up and put another one down.   Just be sure to fit them together snugly (like a puzzle fit)  so they don’t have room to slide yet not so tight that the flooring will buckle.

Cutting the squares is easy, too.  Just use a box cutter and cut across the top of the square.   All you need to do is score the top and then bend the square and it will break apart.  I have a large wooden cutting board that I lie the square on and then use a ruler to make the straight line.

I put the peel and stick squares in my bathroom this past weekend and it cost less than 20 dollars.  I was struggling to make the perfect cut around my toilet and bathroom cabinet so my husband volunteered to remove both.  I am so glad he did because the job looks perfect now.

Be sure and remove the baseboards.  The baseboards can cover a multitude of errors.  lol

Have fun…I love my new look in my bathroom.

I have been really busy lately, thus the lack of writing on this blog.

I have been doing some interior painting and my husband was trying to help.  I realized there are some tips I gave him that I could share with others.

First, painting is rolling paint on the wall….not scrubbing or pressing real hard.  When he painted with a brush, the brush looked like he had been scrubbing with it.

Another thing, when you start to roll paint on the wall make sure you start in the center of the wall.  If you start at the top or bottom, it is harder to spread the extra paint.  Your roller is full of paint and you need to spread it evenly.

I put newspaper down around the bottom of the floor.  It worked well because if I dripped paint, I could just lift the newspaper up and throw it away so I didn’t step in it and then track it on the carpet.  Also, I found I could push down on the newspaper around the edge and get down further on the bottom of the wall where the baseboard was going to cover.

The black sponges (that look like fudgsicles except smaller) work great for the trim work.  They get into the small little corners and work really well for window frames, too.  There are at least three different sizes and one fit perfectly for the inside of the window.

Keep a wet paper towel or two handy, too.  If you do drip on the floor or carpet, immediately wipe it up.  The semi-gloss latex scrapes right up off the floor if it turns into a dried spot. But the carpet needs a lot of water to get it up and not leave some residue.

That’s about all for now…I love painting.  Everything looks so fresh and new.