Monday, September 12, 2011 I Miss You, So I am Making Up For It...
Dear Blog, I miss you. I miss running to you every moment I successfully complete a project. I miss being silly with you. I miss reading comments and keeping track of what we get done around here. I am sorry. You see, life has been kind of insane - I can't believe it myself. My basement flooded. My ceiling is leaking in two rooms, my sewing machine broke twice while working on the guest room curtains, I had this really long road trip which I wanted to tell you all about, but when I got back I had a lot of work to do on Emily Henderson's Holiday Guide. Then I simply couldn't miss out at the amazing Brizo event with incredible designers and Jason Wu. I feel shameful because I have cheated on you with Twitter a lot these past days. Did I forget to tell you I am moving to LA in 48 hours? Oh yea....That's kind of a big one. Please forgive me. I promise to come back and tell you all about it. Like cross my heart, hope to die type of promise.
My guilt is taking over, and I would feel much better If I could share something that makes me happy and has assisted with tackling some of our problems around here. So keep reading because there is a story and a pretty sweet giveaway laced in these words.
Joey and I drove to St. Paul for his cousin's wedding (I will post all about that soon), and when we returned, we came home to this:
Has your ceiling ever had a massive zit? Yea. Gross. So while trying to figure out how that got there, and what is may be filled with (spiders? water?), Joey was the smarty pants and suggested the gutters may be overflowing and the water built up and pushed itself into our dining room ceiling. The gutter was gross, so he asked to use my 3M Tekk Painters Gloves, and which I grudgingly agreed. I love those babies because they kept my manicure clean while painting the guest room and didn't make my hands feel gross.
I have now officially given those gloves to Joey because "he needs them more". I don't know if you remember over a year ago I bought some gardeners gloves I used for everything?....I really love my gloves, I think I am going to steal them back. So after he cleaned out the gross gutters, we decided to pop the zit.
It was water. Better than spiders, but not awesome. So we let it drain, then pealed the paint back and sanded down the area with some 3M sandpaper to make the blemish less depressing.
As if we didn't have enough going on already, the raw looking paint made me think. Do we have lead in this house? It was built in 1930...
So we Grabbed our trusty 3M Instant Lead Check Kit, and played the roll of detectives a moment.
With our luck these days, I was pretty sure that the little swap was going to turn red. And if I can be serious for just one second:
Friends. Friends about to have babies, with babies, anyone, even if I don't know you and we haven't spoke: If you live in a place which was built before 1979 DO A LEAD CHECK. I tell everyone I know, seriously. Joey's cousin suffers from a hearty case of autism because her parents were lied to about lead paint in their child's room in a Brooklyn apartment. This is serious stuff people. We did our bedrooms before we moved in. You don't want to be sleeping next to this stuff. It's life changing in the worst way.
It's SO SO SO easy and quick to do. Buy the kit. Pop the stick. Rub for thirty seconds. Wait to see if it turns red. Done.
Let's just say we were over the moon happy to see that little swab stay yellow. Do it. Now.
3M has provided us with a lot of awesome products to test out, and we have been so happy with all of them. We used their Scotch Blue with Edge Lock to make the guest room walls looks crisp and professional while wearing our 3M respirators, their Sandblaster hand-held sandpaper blocks to help fix a huge floor foul, Joey loves the Tekk safety eye ware for when he uses his saw, and of course the painters gloves I am sneaking back. It's stuff you never think to buy, but truly makes a project easier when using quality products meant for the job. You can't DIY safety and efficiency most of the time.
Even though I say things like "use the stick thingie to rub the wall and see if it turns red" and Joey looks at me like I am a nut bag and asking him to start a fire on the wall, we seem to get things done at the end of the day. Speaking of which...have you been clicking the 3M links above? They will bring you to this magical place where you can win a $250 daily prize, or 2 $5,000 grand prizes to share your silly stories of communication while working on your house. Couples Speak, and you should be one! After all you are kinda sorta special if you are reading this right now, you can totally win.
Also....we shared how much these products have helped lower our blood pressure over the last few weeks despite the chaos and miscommunication and want to host a giveaway, right here, right now, just for you, the lovely MAHAH reader.
Giveaway info:
- Prize: A prize pack from 3M: 2 3M LeadCheck Swabs, 1 Roll of Scotch Blue, 3 Stages of Sanding (green, maroon, gold sandpaper), 1 gloves, respirator, eye wear
- How to Enter: Go here and Like the page come back here and give me a funny translation of some DIY miscommunication (real or made up!)
- Extra Entry: Enter the video contest and come back and share. This is for FIVE extra entries!
- Giveaway Ends: Monday September 19th at 9:00pm EST
- How Many Lucky Winners?!: One (1)
- Ships to: US Only
- Also: Please only enter once, with the exception of the extra entry. We select our winners using random.org and will select a winner by September 25th and notify by email, so use a real email address!
Reader Comments (3)
This did happen to me. I drilled holes in the Sheetrock so the water could drain and not cause mold....yuck. Sorry for all of your headaches.....home-ownership...it's always something!
moving to LA?!
As in.... selling the house and moving to LA? Or just temporarily?! Ah! Crazy news!
Despite all the chaos, I hope you're enjoying all the new & exciting stuff coming your way.
I know I'm excited to hear all the updates... when you have time... no pressure, no guilt!!
Are there really only two other comments on this giveaway? Am I commenting in the wrong place? Oh well...
I honestly don't have too many DIY miscommunications since my husband and I are renters... but we're currently battling a moldy shower curtain. He, of course, doesn't think it's a big deal or see the harm of mold... but I've tried everything short of bleaching the dang thing. Ugh.