Diary of a Bad Homeowner, Part II:

I forgot to mention another project I've been working on!

The house-flippers who did strange renovations (and chose strange paint colors) installed beautiful tiled floors in the bathroom, kitchen, and entryway.

Then they failed to seal the grout between the tiles.

Being a had homeowner, I had no idea that grout required anything but the occasional scrub. Over the ensuing years, then, our grout went from a beautiful off-white to. . .

This. It's horrible, I know. I'll have you know that this is after some good old fashioned elbow-greased hand-scrubbing. Sadly, that dirt has permanently fused with the grout. The only way to remove it is to remove the grout. But you can. . . cover it. I found a product at my local Home Depot (after perusing for hours because I'm a girl and I feel weird asking for help there which is dumb because every time I DO ask for help they make me feel awesome and empowered but hey that's my hangup to get over, huh, and besides 2 hours in Home Depot sans children on a Saturday is 2 hours of wandering bliss, right?) that was a latex paint AND sealant for grout. Easy peasy, right? Just grab a paint brush, paint the grout, and meticulously clean the sealant from any tile with which it comes into contact.

Voila. Look at the upper part of that picture -- see those beautiful grout-lines? Amazing.

Okay look, I'll be honest. I started this project in March of '09. Maybe even February. I did the kitchen and it was beautiful. Then I put everything away and vowed to do the rest later. It occurs to me now, though, that I have about 6 months to do these sorts of projects before I run out of spare hands to do these sorts of projects, so I finished the rest of the tile in the house.

I feel pretty awesome.