Tackling the Mess of Home Improvement

Cabin fever is not far away.

A rainy, cold week has defoliated my trees. My garage is a mess thanks to all the leaves that have blown in through the open garage door. Now that my time indoors is increasing, I'm finding little notes around the house that will soon be rolled together for my winter "honey do" list.

I suspect the final list will look something like this:

Paint the living room.
Replace a tiled entry floor with hardwood.
Replace a fiberglass shower stall with tile.

Each of these home improvements means I'll also have a mess to clean up. So, I'd like your advice on how to tackle some of the challenges.

When it comes to painting, It seems nearly impossible to get masking tape to stick to the top of a baseboard. Cleaning paint off stained woodwork is a real pain.

Removing tile is a filthy job. The dust and tile chips fly everywhere, and before you know it, my eyes are watering like I'd just watched the movie "Rudy."

The same holds for cutting tile.

From Shag to Plush to Frieze

I remember when my parents bought their split-level home in 1975 complete with three-inch shag carpet. The vacuum roller brush would occasionally get ensnared by the long shag fibers. Once you unraveled it, you'd go back over the carpeted floor with something that looked like a garden rake to remove the footprints you left in the shag. It's amazing. You can actually see the ring in this lovely purple shag shown here.

The plush and berber carpets that overtook shag are rapidly giving way to longer-fiber frieze. With all of the attention focused on allergens in the home, some question whether that's a good idea.

There's a study that suggests it is. The Carpet and Rug Institute's study found that carpet has the beneficial effect of trapping allergens at the floor, reducing the level of particulates that can be inhaled. You can see the study findings at www.carpet-rug.org.

The challenge is maintaining that carpet with frequent deep cleaning. Because they're up to five times more powerful than an upright vacuum, consider installing a central vacuum to clean long-fiber carpet.

Carpet, Tile or Hardwood?

There’s no doubt society is in an argumentative mood. One of the most interesting arguments involves carpet versus hardwood or tile. Want to have a family feud? Just bring up the subject of putting in a new floor and watch the fur fly.
Whatever you wind up installing in your home, maintaining your floors is one of the most important and most frequent cleaning tasks you have.
About 60 percent of U.S. homes have carpet. People like the warm feel when they bounce out of bed in the morning and the way it eliminates echoes so you can enjoy the surround-sound, or the fact that it’s a cushioned surface where you can wrestle with the kids. But there’s a growing debate whether the carpet in your home may be hazardous to your health.
Environmentalists Karen Ashton and Elizabeth Salter-Green of the WWF published a book in 2006 titled “The Toxic Consumer – Living Healthy in a Hazardous World.” In it, they state that typical synthetic carpet can hold up to eight times its weight in dirt, allergens and other substances that may contribute to health problems. If you have a dog or cat in the house, you can understand how dirty the carpet can get.

For that reason, keeping carpet as clean as possible should be a top priority.
Tell us how you tackle this important cleaning task.
And stay tuned, we’ll talk about the challenges of other floor surfaces later.