How to remove spots and stains on carpet

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When renovating our house, we opted to use hardwood floors in the living room and hallway, and carpet in the bedrooms and office. This was opposite of the way we purchased the house as it had carpet in the living room and hallway, with hardwood floors in the bedrooms and office. After shopping around at several bayshore contractors for good quality carpet, we ended up using Home Depot as they had higher quality carpet, with cheap installation. We were quoted roughly $2100 for full house installation (both berber carpet and the thick berber padding) and the removal of old carpeting and pad. Going with the same configuration at a San Francisco Bayshore contractor was around $2500 and they didnt carry the the soft name brand carpet we wanted).

Anyways, we opted to get a rather light uniform carpet color (Color is almost white – which may have been a bad choice considering were thinking about having kids sometime soon) and within the first year of having it, weve stained it several times. I then decided it was time to invest in a carpet stain remover and went to Target to do some shopping. I brought home a product called “Spot Shot” and decided to give it a try (I got mine for $3.29 for a 14 oz can). Out of all the other options for carpet stain removal, I opted for this one because of two main selling points:

What Spot Shot looks like...taken from their web site (shhhhh)
What Spot Shot looks like…taken from their web site (shhhhh)
  • The ability to remove OLD STAINS from pets, greasy foods, motor oil, red wine, blood, grape juice, show polish, cola, mud, coffee, and lipstick (I liked this one because the stains have been sitting in the carpet for a while now).
  • The ability to do so without scrubbing and rubbing. You just have to blot the area after use.

I did pick up another product called Oxi Clean, but it comes in a powder form and you have to mix it with water and rub and scrub…Im too lazy for that (its a sunday!), so I went with Spot Shot as you just shake the can and shoot it (there might have been a subconscious pull for me to select this one, me being a man and all).

Here is a picture of the spots I was trying to remove. The spots dont really show in the pictures, but they were noticeable and would not come off with just plain water and a paper towel.

Before Spot Shot

Before Spot Shot

After Spot Shot

After Spot Shot

The directions tell you to just spray the stuff on the stain and to not oversaturate it. I covered it pretty well with the liquid and let it sit for a few seconds. Then I used a clean LAP pad (clothlike thing they use to wipe up blood in the hospitals…my wifes sister is a nurse in the OR) to blot out the stain. To be honest, I did scrub and rub a bit to see if i could get it to work faster, but I dont think I needed to. The directions mentioned that I might need to repeat until the stain is removed, it was just barely noticeable after the first application, so I did it twice. After the second application, the stain was gone.

Overall, the product reminds me a lot of brake cleaner, just spray it on and wipe it off (it actually evaporates fast though). I even used it on one of my kitchen table chairs and it removed an old oily stain. Im pretty impressed with the way this product worked, and no longer stress too much about when we have kids, as this stain remover should do the trick with anything they get on the carpet. I guess this post turned into a Spot Shot review…

So with this done, when my wife comes back, ill show her how awesome I am and get more love points!

How to refinish marble floor tiles and make your wife think youre hot stuff

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When renovating the house we purchased in 2008, we installed the marble floor tiles ourselves…This was a mistake, or rather, we made a lot of mistakes. We used 1/4″ grout spacers, used grey thinset for very light colored marble tiles (the grey thinset will show up in your grout lines), and used sanded grout (because of the 1/4″ grout spacing). After everything, all the work which was needed to scrape away the grey thinset outlining the tiles, the scratches which were produced from the sanded grout, and the lack of cleaning up the grout residue from the marble in a quick fashion left our tiles in bad shape. Really bad shape. They were now dull, had scratches, and did not reflect the finely honed polish which they were supposed to have.

Having them professionally refinished was not an option for me as im terribly cheap and did not want to concede to being defeated by lowly floor tile, so I embarked on what ended up to be one of the coolest lessons learned since starting work on the house…How to refinish marble floors for less than $100 and make them look as good as new.

So heres how you do it:

What youll need

1. Get a liter of Dia-Glo Diamond Buffing Compound for Marble (available online or any professional flooring shop). I used the “M” variant for marble ($30). I got mine from keystone tools in San Francisco (http://keystonetools.com/)

2. Get a variable speed angle grinder which uses 5/8 attachments (or if you want to do this all within 2 hours, rent a floor buffing machine from home depot pro). I had one laying around in my garage, but you can always buy one at Home Depot or Lowes and then return it after. A word of caution – you do not want to get your rpms up too fast. I had a variable speed angle grinder and kept my rpms around 5,000.

3. Get a 4″ velcro loop attachment (which uses the 5/8 fitting) to use with the angle grinder ($10). Its a little disc attachment which has little hooks on it (like velcro) to grab onto velcro disc pad attachments (also bought from keystone tools)

4. Go to Home Depot Pro and go to their tool rental section. Look for a white polyester buffing pad. It will be a big circular disc. (Costs about $6). Cut a piece of the white polyester buffing pad in a circle shape to fit the angle grinder velcro loop attachment. Stick it onto the attachment and make sure it stays put (the hooks will grab onto the polyester fibers).

5. Get a shop vacuum to suck up all the water and compound mixture.

6. Tile/Stone Sealant to finish the job and keep your tiles from getting stained and prematurely dirty.

Preparation

1. Section your floor into smaller work areas. I did small 5 x 5 ft sections to make work cleaner. I used rolled up towels around the 5′ x 5′ perimeter to limit the amount of kickback spray from the spinning motion that the angle grinder generates. If you dont do this, the milky colored spray will get everywhere.

2. Wet the section of the floor with water and cover the tiles with a nice layer of water (I found more was better as it provided lubrication for the pad). Add a small handful of buffing compound and mix thoroughly (just spread it around with your hand). Make sure the water/compound mixture is milky and pretty dissolved before buffing. USE GLOVES when doing this as the buffing compound is acidic and will dry up and irritate your skin.  I didnt and it dried my hands for 3 days. Also made everything I wore smell sour even after several washes (do not wash your work clothes with your other laundry, they will end up smelling sour too).

Refinishing

3. Use the angle grinder with the nylon pad to go over your tiles one by one. Let the angle grinder do the work and just hold the sucker steady. It will take a bit of getting used to at first, but youll get the hang of it. I spent at least 30 seconds on each tile to make sure the scrapes, scuffs, scratches were buffed down and smoothed as much as possible. Keep the grinder moving in small circles to polish the tiles evenly.

4. After you have finished the sectioned area, pour clean water over the area and mix it around making it wet again. Use a shop vac and suck it all up. Then if necessary, rinse with clean water and suck that up too.

5. Move onto the next section until every tile is done.

Cleanup

6. Use a clean wet towel and wipe your floors so you can get as much of the leftover splash and residue from the buffing compound off the floors and fixtures. Then go over your tiles once again with a dry towel.

Finishing

7. Finally, after your tiles and grout lines are dry, use a stone/marble sealer (I got a jug at home depot…$30) and seal your tiles. Two coats are sufficient and your floors will look as good as new.

My floors after polishing (I didnt have a before picture, but I can assure you there wasnt even a reflection)