I spent a better part of the morning cleaning the bathroom walls. As I might have talked about in a previous post there was a bit of mold growing near the ceiling in the bathroom since we moved in that has been a serious pain to clean. It’s semi-gloss paint, and in the past I’ve tried Windex, Clorox Bleach Cleaner, Scrubbing Bubbles, a mix of a little household chlorine bleach and a little water, dishsoap and hot water. It was getting quite frustrating, since nothing was really working. So today I was determined to tackle the problem again. I decided I’d try some of the concentrated orange cleaner that we use to clean the tile floors, and that actually didn’t do a bad job for getting the newer dark spots up, I spent a little over an hour with this and once I had gone over each area at least twice I got off my chair and looked around. It was definately cleaner, but you could still tell there was mold up there.
So, frustrated, I came upstairs to have a bit of a talk with Dr. Google. I went through all sorts of message boards that suggested all the things I had already done. I knew there was some sort of mold remover you can use, but apparently it’s not for painted surfaces. Then I came across a post that suggested a mix of at least half household chlorine bleach, half water. This was a MUCH stronger bleach concentration than I had used in the past, and definately stronger than they generally recommend you using. But I was really at the end of my options for getting rid of this mold that NEEDED to be removed. I decided to give it a shot.
I got out some nice plastic gloves and grabbed a sponge and some very bleachy water. To my delight and surprise it did the trick! So I spent about 45 minutes scrubbing all sorts of areas around the bathroom that needed it. Afterwards the whole bathroom stunk of bleach (well, still does) and so did I, and I took a long shower. I’m very happy with it all. Now we can consider going about repainting it, with mold resistant paint!
This afternoon I ate some lunch and sat down to do some more research about summer flowers, and weeds. I mentioned my search in IRC, and the woman I know who is a botanist has this week off, so she had some time to spend helping me out with my garden! I went outside and took a bunch of photos, then let her look through them so I could find out what was weeds and what was real plants. Turns out that everything I “wasn’t sure if it is a weed or not” is a weed. Tons and tons of weeds in my garden! So I think tomorrow I’ll go outside and pull lots of weeds. We had a nice long talk and she suggested a whole bunch of flowers that I can put in various parts of my garden, how exciting! Lots of purple and blues and whites that I think I’d really like, all perennials. She also suggested leaving a couple plots open for annuals that I might enjoy. I also got to ask her all sorts of questions about caring for plants after their flowers fall off (apparently daffodil’s can have their dead flowers removed when they die, but they need the green parts to continue to absorb sun energy to make it through the winter), and told me that tulip bulbs usually only last about 5 years, I had no clue! She also recommended that I pick up (or borrow from a library) the Pictorial Guide to Perennials by M. Jane Coleman Helmer and Karla S. Decker Hodge. I think I just might %)
Now to go make dinner. *wanders off*