Archive for February, 2010
Our Home’s Recently Expanded Color Palette
Paint can pretty much be chalked up to a learning experience around Casa Petersik. From painting all of our home’s trim with flat paint right after we moved in (baaad idea, use semi-gloss!) to picking a different color of the rainbow for each room (not the way to make a small house flow!) we’ve pretty much made every mistake in the book. And over the last almost-four years our walls have definitely “evolved” as we learned what we liked (and a whole lot of what we didn’t).
We decided to use a handy little floor plan (created thanks to Floorplanner) to demonstrate three “stages” of our home’s ever changing color scheme to show that homes don’t usually “magically come together” overnight. Sometimes it takes some experimentation and a bit of repainting (and repainting again) to get ‘er done. But with every little change that you make you’ll be inching towards the home of your dreams- and just like the right dress can theoretically make you look slimmer and bring out your eyes, the right wall color really can turn any house into a dream home (all for about $30 a room and an afternoon of your time).
Here’s what we meant when we mentioned that we picked nearly every color in the rainbow for our house’s original color scheme right after we moved in…
Color Scheme: THEN
From an orangy-yellow in the den to an easter-egg-ish pastel green for the living room, our choices really ran the gamut. And we even went with a bright robin’s egg blue for the third bedroom (which was formerly the dining room) and the half bath. Of course looking back those were odd choices for two of the smallest rooms in our house. In short: when this color scheme was in effect, it felt like you were entering a different house every time you stepped into a different room instead of feeling like there was an overall cohesion and flow to our modestly sized ranch home.
The funny thing is that the only color that we chose to use twice was the bold turquoise color in the 3rd bedroom and the 1/2 bath. Now we understand that in a small house you want continuity and rooms that feel like they flow- and not like they’re chopped up with different color schemes- so we routinely repeat colors or slide a shade or two darker or lighter to keep things feeling related throughout our entire home’s floor plan. Then we chose to repeat the soft blue-gray bedroom color in the kitchen while keeping the rest of the house subdued and neutral, and stood back and admired how the creams, sandy tans, and soft gray-blues worked together to create spaces that felt varied and interesting without evoking that chaotic and unrelated vibe.
Color Scheme: MIDPOINT
Only the master bedroom and the sunroom escaped the repainting massacre that took us from the “then” paint color breakdown to this “midpoint” diagram above. And while it may not look exciting on screen – it totally made the house feel bigger, more connected and a lot more grown up. What we had done was accomplish a more toned down and agreeable whole house palette, but we still ached for something a bit more interesting and textural (nothing too high contrast, but just a few unexpected paint color applications to keep things feeling fresh) so we did a few things to take our house from serene and soft to serene and soft… with a bit of a twist.
Color Scheme: NOW
It wasn’t anything too major, but we definitely made a few noteworthy and fun little tweaks none the less (and the few changes that we’re about to list earn us BY FAR the most paint color compliments, so it really does pay to go that extra mile):
1. We painted the ceiling of the blue-gray master bedroom a softer more subtle blue-green tone to create a dreamy ambiance that far surpasses the magic of a white ceiling. Read more about this project here.
2. We added playful tone on tone horizontal stripes to the half bathroom in a few hours one evening (for under five dollars). Best time and money we ever spent. Read more about this project here.
3. We took the full bathroom from the same color as the living room and guest bedroom to a soft khaki green color (since they were all in such close proximity this added a nice varied feeling to a layout that was feeling a bit tan on tan on tan before). And we even carried the same wall color right up onto the ceiling for a seamless effect. Read more about this project here.
4. We chose a cheerful pear color for the walls of the newly created nursery and added a splash of soft aqua on the ceiling (the blue ceiling tied into the master bedroom and the kitchen while the green walls related to the nearby khaki green bathroom and a slew of green accessories throughout the house). Read more about this project here (and see additional photos here and here).
And we’re not done yet. Homeownership is an ever evolving process, I tell ya. Next on the agenda: nixing our white ceilings. We know they’ll feel higher and a lot less stark and jarring when they’re better integrated into our home’s palette. In fact, we’re planning to paint almost every single one in either a lighter tone of the wall color (they’ll still feel lifted but not quite as stark), the same exact hue as the walls (if the walls are light enough this really blurs the bounds of the room and makes it feel a lot more expansive), or even a contrasting or complementary color (we’ve always wanted to paint our tan sunroom’s ceiling sky blue).
So that’s where we are at the present time when it comes to our home’s state of paint affairs. And since we know you guys love all the dirty details, here’s a quick rundown of our casa’s current colors:
- Master Bedroom: Glidden’s Gentle Tide (walls) and Glidden’s Cool Cucumber (ceiling)
- Second Bedroom: Glidden’s Sand White
- Full Bathroom: Benjamin Moore’s Dune Grass (color matched to Olympic’s Premium No-VOC paint)
- Nursery: Mythic’s Autumn Bloom (walls) and Mythic’s Adanna Aire (ceiling)
- Living Room: Glidden’s Sand White
- Kitchen: Glidden’s Gentle Tide
- Den: Glidden’s Water Chestnut (fireplace accent wall) and Glidden’s Wishes (other three walls)
- Laundry Nook: Glidden’s Wishes
- Half Bathroom: Glidden’s Wishes (walls) and Valspar’s Honeymilk (stripes and ceiling)
- Sunroom: Glidden’s Water Chestnut
- All Trim & Interior Doors: Freshaire’s No-VOC stock white semi-gloss paint
Note: Some of the Glidden colors listed above are no longer available, but they can supposedly look up the formulas on the computer and whip them up for you. If not, Glidden’s Wishes is now called Eloquent Ivory (it’s the same exact formula), Benjamin Moore’s Quiet Moments is very similar to Glidden’s Gentle Tide and Benjamin Moore’s Ashen Tan is very close to Glidden’s Sand White.
And why stop now when there are more things we can add bullets to? Here are few of the major paint discoveries that we made along the way. Here’s hoping they help you sleuth out the perfect color palette for your casa:
- Never select a color without checking it out in morning light, afternoon light and evening light- just to be sure it doesn’t mutate from serene to scary when the sun sets.
- Paint colors look completely different in different spaces, so don’t blindly paint your room a color that you liked on the walls of Restoration Hardware since their lighting sitch is nothing like yours. Instead bring home the paint chip, tape it up on your wall and check it out in your lighting at all times of the day.
- Always look at a paint swatch on the plane that it’ll be on (don’t put it on a table and look at it horizontally if it’ll be on the wall- actually tape it up on the wall and evaluate it there- the same goes for ceilings).
- Taping up a few paint chips at a time can help you select the perfect shade (since you can compare them to one another, you can much more easily weed out anything that’s “too yellow” or “too peachy” thanks to the other swatches beside it).
- We usually gravitate to the bottom two swatches of every paint chip (since our house is modestly sized we like how lighter tones and shades of each color make our house feel more airy and expansive).
- Neutrals can be written off as boring, but with crisp white trim and a range of furnishings, accessories, and textiles layered into the space they can be anything but.
- Repeating a color across the house isn’t weird- it’s smart. Making your master bedroom the same color as your entryway is a great way to take your house “full circle” so things feel like they’re part of a bigger picture. We use 80% of our home’s colors in at least two spaces (sometimes three) and the result is a nice layered and serene feeling.
- When you don’t want to repeat the same exact color, sliding one tone lighter or darker on the paint swatch is a great way to guarantee that rooms will feel related and airy (ex: go a shade lighter in your master bathroom than you did in the master bedroom for varied interest that still feels cohesive).
- There have to be colors that you always gravitate towards (in our case, green and blue) so using muddy and subtle variations of those tones along with a nice liberal dose of neutrals is a pretty foolproof formula.
- Keeping the flooring (ex: mocha hardwoods) or the trim (ex: crisp white) consistent in as much of your home as possible will really help to unify any home’s color scheme.
- Even smaller items- like a leafy green plant in each room- or similarly colored wall frames- ours are all white- can really tie disparate rooms together for a nice easy flow.
- Don’t forget that tan and beige aren’t the only neutrals! Cream is a gorgeous alternative for a hallway (especially if you have a bunch of rooms branching off of that space and want something unifying and not too bold) and there are many light platinum gray tones that are luxe and chic without being too dark and brooding.
- In general (although definitely not in all circumstances) we like accent walls that are subtle as opposed to jarring and high-contrast (since the later can break up a space and define the boundaries of it, thereby making it feel fractionalized and disturbing the easy flow).
So that does it for our yeah-we-make-mistakes-too-and-learn-as-we-go-and-repaint-rooms-a-few-times-to-get-things-right post. It definitely helps to remember that paint is the cheapest mistake you can make! So stop being paralyzed by indecision and just dive in. If you pick the right color you’ll be over the moon, and even if it’s wrong you’ll learn what you don’t like so you’re closer to scooping up the perfect shade… and you’ll only be out around $20-30 bucks. Happy painting to you and yours!
Psst- Wanna see some of our favorite go-to paint colors? Check out this post full of tried and true tones and shades. Of course they look different in every room (due to lighting and other ever-changing factors) so we just suggest grabbing a bunch of them and bringing them home to see which ones look best on your wall. Happy hunting…
Leave a comment
Feeling Sheepish (Part 2)
So we’re back with our second faux sheepskin DIY undertaking (after sharing the first one this morning). For this project we actually visited the biggest most insane fabric store that we’d ever seen while on a recent trip to Charlotte to visit some friends. It’s called Mary Jo’s Cloth Store and it’s basically a gigantic 32,000 square foot warehouse full of about a million bolts of fabric (we’re talking about a football-stadium-sized holy grail of textiles). And it’s located right outside of Charlotte (just off of 1-85 at exit 21).
All I can say is that if they don’t have it there, nobody does. Plus their prices are fantastic. We saw designer prints marked down to $10 a yard that go for $19 a yard here at fabric stores in Richmond. Yes please. Here I am among the rows and rows (and rows) of stacked fabric bolts with my cute friend Kristin who showed us around the town (remember we crashed her house for you a while back?).
And here’s John doing what he does best. Finding the weirdest thing he can and taking an ironic picture with it (yes that’s dental themed fabric with teeth, floss, toothbrushes, and sayings like “smile!” on it). Like I said, if you’re looking for something specific they have it at Mary Jo’s.
Anyway, we ended up bypassing all the quirky patterns (cats with yarn? check. dogs in baskets? check) and picked up a yard and a half of gorgeous nursery fabric to make a modified crib skirt (to obscure the space between our crib mattress and the top of our slide out drawer- stay tuned for those details) along with one yard of fluffy ivory faux fur. We looked through dozens of faux fur options to find the densest, most creamy colored version that looked and felt the most like sheepskin. And the cost? $14.99 for the yard that we grabbed.
The best thing is that it was on one of those super long bolts so even though it was only 3 feet wide, our big rectangle of fluffiness was nearly six feet long which meant we could get three faux sheepskin throws out of it, making them just $5 a pop (which is a heckova deal when you consider that Ikea’s cheap-o real ones are around $25 each). Of course we just whipped out our homemade paper sheepskin template (see how we made that in this morning’s post) and used a thin sharpie to trace the pattern from our template onto the back of our fabric three times.
Then I did a test cut on the edge of the fabric to be sure fluff wouldn’t fly everywhere and the faux fur wouldn’t completely unwind or come loose when it was trimmed down to size. Happily just a few fluffs were freed with each snip (it was sort of like giving the large shaggy fabric a haircut) but nothing too major was released, and even when I tugged on the fur around the edge of my test cut it held steady and didn’t unravel. Whew. This meant that I could then go ahead and cut along me three sharpie outlines to create three fast and easy faux sheepskin throws in a matter of minutes without worrying about binding the edges. Easy.
Things were a bit floofy when I was done (picture my black shirt covered in matted sheepdog-like hair) so I tossed all three of our new throws into the dryer on “extra low heat” and let them spin a bit to shake out any and all remaining fuzz. It worked like a charm and when I pulled out our three surprisingly realistic looking $5 faux sheepskins they looked pretty darn good. Definitely good enough to be used around the base of my Christmas tree, draped over chairs and the back of my couch, tossed over an ottoman or two, etc. And this dryer de-floofing process seemed to really be effective since I was no longer covered with white hair every time I brushed up against them. Which is nice because that would seriously get annoying.
Now just as we mentioned that this morning’s DIY sheepskin project yielded more structured “rug-like” versions, this approach makes for much floppier and flexible “throw-like” accents. So they’re great for tossing over pieces of furniture to add some nice lightness and softness but probably couldn’t hold up on the floor (without creating death-trap slipping scenarios) like our rug counterparts could from this morning. So here’s one of our three new furry guys living it up on the storage bench in our dining area (pardon the bluish-white cast, the sky was reflecting through the window- for a more true indication of the real color check out the picture of them in the dryer above).
Here’s a close up so you can see how the edges look nice and fluffy just like the real deal. We honestly don’t know if anyone would be able to tell that we switched out our real sheepskin for this faux one since they look so eerily similar. Which was totally the goal. Score.
We tossed the second one over the back of a nearby living room chair (we love the layered tone on tone texture that it adds).
And draped the third one over the back of another slipper chair in our den. Doesn’t it look soft and inviting? Who knew three $5 upgrades could add so much to three different seating areas in our house?
So that’s our second faux sheepskin DIY tutorial for ya. It really was as simple as hunting down some wooly white fabric (or even a white furry blanket if you see one of those at TJ Maxx, Home Goods or Target), whipping up a free homemade paper sheepskin template, tracing it onto the back of the fabric (or blanket if you go that route) and cutting it out. And don’t forget that a quick low-heat spin through the dryer should de-lint it for you. Easy peasy.
Or should we say easy fleecey? Sorry that was terrible. I’m cringing over here. Maybe we’re just a little too excited about our cheap-o $5 furry friends (I can’t wait to move them around our house like I used to do with our Ikea ones- they’re so flexible and fun). Plus these are WASHABLE (our Ikea versions never were) since they’re made of fabric, so that’s the icing on the cake. But now it’s time to ask you guys what you’ve been making lately. Have you picked up any discount fabric and used it to recover a chair or whip up a quick pillow? Have you made your own faux-fur throws, pillows, or blankets? Do tell.
Psst- Wanna check out our first DIY sheepskin tutorial from this morning? Here’s a shortcut.
Feeling Sheepish (Part 1)
Ok, so you might think we’re crazy, but we always thought the sheepskin rugs that Ikea sold (especially the super cheap small sized ones that we always grab) were faux. Well, we recently had one of those duh moments when we noticed that the materials weren’t listed as acrylic or some other fabric and instead read: 100% sheepskin. Oops. We should have known- after all, they’re a Swedish company- but for some reason we always saw $99 sheepskin rugs and assumed those were the real ones and that the cheap $25 Ikea ones just had to be man made.
Now we know the faux or real sheepskin decision is an extremely personal choice (just like wearing fur, eating meat, wearing leather, etc) so this post isn’t about judging or debating that issue (to each his own!) it’s just about a faux sheepskin DIY project that we took on so we could happily pass our Ikea sheepskins on to a relative who promised to give them a happy home. It suddenly just felt weird to see Burger laying on the one that we had draped over the sofa but we didn’t want them to end up in a landfill (so handing them off to someone who would appreciate them seemed like the best thing to do). We actually took on two different faux sheepskin projects, so this post will detail one of them while the one this afternoon will detail our second adventure in faux sheepskin making (hence the “part 1″ mention in this post’s title). Let the fun begin…
First, we hit up a few stores in search of a super wooly shag rug on the cheap. We hit the jackpot at Marshall’s where we found a large 4 x 6-ish version for $39. We knew we could get at least two faux sheepskins out of it (which made them under $20 each- which was actually cheaper than the affordable Ikea ones) so we snatched it right up. The tawny eggshell color was perfect and the fact that it was convincingly textured and wooly looking made it more of a “perfect fit” along with the fact that the backing wasn’t that baby-doll-head-smelling grippy rubber, it was one of those woven fabric-backed rugs that we prefer.
Then we got to work making a life-sized template to dictate our new sheepskin’s shape, so we taped a bunch of pieces of paper together to get a nicely sized “background” and pulled up the link to the real Ikea ones which we used as a guide. It was as simple as sketching out a sheepskin-ish blob on our taped-together printer paper and cutting it out with a scissors.
Oh and here’s a tip: you can fold the paper in half vertically before cutting it out and just follow the pencil line on the exposed half of your sketch while it’s folded for a perfectly symmetrical result if perfection is you middle name. I actually didn’t go that route because I figured a little asymmetry never hurt and most sheepskins aren’t perfectly even on all sides anyway.
Next we just placed our new “sheepskin” template on the back of the rug and used a thin sharpie to trace around the paper cutout which left two sheepskin sized outlines on the back of the rug:
Then we did a test cut to see what would happen to the rug when we sliced through it. Our big fear was that everything would come loose and fall out (which we thought we might be able to remedy by using white duct tape to tape around the cut-out lines on the back of the rug before snipping to hold things together at the edges). But we were pleasantly surprised that no tape or other precautions were necessary and every slice was clean and no threads came loose even when you tugged on them after cutting. So then it was as simple as cutting out both of our sheepskin outlines…
… which left us with two pretty darn amazing little faux sheepskin rugs. We love all the soft creamy texture that the shag pattern adds, and of course we love that we made them ourselves. There’s always a bit of pride when you get to mention that you DIYed something, right?
Oh and do you see that little pile of fluff under the scissors? We gave the outline of each rug a little haircut to refine the shape and make them look more polished and clean (initially the shag had flopped a few directions while we were cutting so the outline wasn’t very crisp- but a few snips around the perimeter of each of our new wooly additions really cleaned things up and emphasized our intended shape.
Now this version of our DIY sheepskin is thicker and less flimsy than our second one (which we’ll be sharing this afternoon). So it’s not as easy to “drape” over the back of a chair for example (it’s a bit more structured, like a rug would be). In short: it’s much better served as an actual sheepskin rug (ie: use it on the floor as opposed to tossing it over the back of your sofa). Oh and you can make a much larger one for a bigger area with a larger rug (or just by not making two of them from one rug) so that’s another idea. When it came to our two little ones, we did notice that one of them looked great on our square ottoman in the nursery (which required it to be a lot less flexible than thinner surfaces like the top of a soft upholstered chair or sofa) so that’s where we decided it should live:
Isn’t the shaggy texture charming? We just love how chunky and tactile it is- you really can’t walk into the room without petting it.
And Burger LOVES IT! In fact sometimes we can’t find him and he’s in there sleeping on it in the sun. Maybe he can sense that no animals were harmed in the making of it? Either way, so cute.
Our second wooly rug will probably also live in the nursery (on the ground as an actual rug) so stay tuned for those details as we continue to cobble things together in there. Oh and remember how there was an extra strip of leftover rug on one end after we cut out both of our sheepskin templates? Well it was perfect for creating a bonus little textured lumbar pillow. So not only did we get two faux sheepskins for $20 a pop, we actually got two sheepskins plus an accent pillow for $39 total. Not bad right?
All we did was take that long piece of leftover shag and trim the interior edge so it was one long rectangle. Then we “folded” it in half to create a nice loop of shaggy texture. When it came to filling our fluffy DIY pillow, we actually looked no further than a few other rug scraps- so it really is made completely from leftover rug snippings. We love that we didn’t have to buy any batting or anything- and there was practically zero waste created by our entire project since we used it all.
Now we’re sure this next step will leave a few of you shaking your heads, but we’re work-with-what-you-have people, so we actually reached for safety pins to secure the left side of our makeshift pillow (which you see me holding together in the photo above). The great thing about the rug’s incredibly dense shaggy texture is that every single pin was completely obscured but it held things nice and securely- plus it’s super poke-free and safe since they’re buried so deeply in the shaggy texture that you’d literally have to go hunting around for them to find one and then would have to apply a ton of pressure to pop one open (which can’t be done by leaning on the pillow or even whapping someone in the face with it during a pillow fight). Anyway, so we used a few safety pins to connect our loop of fabric on the side and a few more along the top and bottom seams.
As you can see from this close up, they’re placed extremely close to the base of the rug so they don’t stick up and can’t be seen, felt or accidentally opened (they’re literally buried two or three inches “beneath” the dense shaggy fabric).
So unless you’re digging through the long fibers of the rug in search of one they’re completely undetectable. Gotta love a cheap on-hand solution like that.
We’ve been using the pillow for about two weeks now in our living room and we have yet to feel any “small metal nubs” when we lean back on it. And we especially love that it was a free little bonus so if at any point we want to revise how we connected it (and remove the pins) we can- but seriously, so far so good. And we love that we used every last scrap of our rug and got a little bonus decor item out of the deal.
So that’s one take on our faux sheepskin solution. Stay tuned for this afternoon’s post where we actually hunted down fabric and made a more flexible and drapey “throw-like” version. And those were even cheaper and easier so they’re definitely an anyone-can-do-it DIY project. Well maybe not anyone; Burger refuses to help but ironically can always be found enjoying all the fruits of our labor…
Sidenote: Is it wrong that we think he’s the best looking dog in the world? Seriously, he’s a knockout isn’t he? But enough about our heartstoppingly handsome chihuahua. Have you guys ever DIYed anything from a rug or altered one in some fun hands-on way (dyed it? spray painted it? used it to “upholster” something like a cube ottoman?). We’d love to hear all about your thrilling adventures in rug-customization.
Fab Freebie: Housewears
*** This giveaway is no longer accepting entries.***
Ok, so maybe you didn’t get that bit of bling you wanted for Valentine’s Day earlier this month. Here’s your chance to rectify the situation with some personalized jewelry from Lisa Leonard Designs. She even sells home decor-related pieces like necklaces with a chandelier, paper lanterns, frames and a house key on them. If those aren’t designs after our own home-loving hearts than we don’t know what is.
I’m not so good with the jewelry lingo, but word on the street (or at least from the pregnant lady standing behind me right now) is that Lisa’s hand-cut and hand-hammered sterling silver necklaces, bracelets and earrings are well-worth shouting “oooh, I love that one… and that one… and that one” in your husband’s ear. In fact, Sherry loved the earrings that Lisa sent her way so much that we recently bought a set for my little sister’s birthday. And they barely take them off (so yes, my sister and my wife are often at family events sporting matching earrings).
And if you’re having trouble picking a favorite, perhaps this will make life a bit easier: Lisa Leonard Designs is giving away TWO $100 gift certificates towards anything in her store, so our winners can snag more than one thing if they just can’t decide. Plus if you don’t win, they’re generously dishing out a discount to everyone else, so stay tuned for that along with our winner announcement on Thursday. In the meantime, here’s how to enter:
- PRIZE: A $100 credit towards anything in Lisa Leonard Design’s entire collection
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “WEAR ME” and…
- BONUS QUESTION: …tell us about something in your closet that doubles (or that you wish could double) as home decor. Do you display your purse collection for all to see? Do you swag a scarf over a hook by the door for some color? Or do you have a favorite dress whose fabric would look awesome as curtains or an accent pillow?
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, February 24th at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: Two
- PRIZE SHIPS: All over the globe!
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winners will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday. Good luck!
Find more freebie info on our Giveaway FAQs page. Pics courtesy of Lisa Leonard Designs.
This Vacuum Sucks- Part Two
We already talked about how much we love the Kurv (we’re not paid by them or otherwise perk’d in any way, we just truly love it) and now we’re even more excited because the day has finally come that we’ve discovered a full sized vacuum cleaner that we love just as much! Really, it sucks like a champ. And when we pair the carpet-friendly nature and the sheer power of our new addition with the super portable and wood-floor-friendly Kurv, the dust bunnies and tiny puppy hairs on our floors don’t stand a chance. Seriously, our house has never looked (or felt, because that’s important too) so clean.
We realized we needed to replace our sad excuse for a full sized vacuum known as the Dirt Devil Vibe Quick Vac (more like a leaf-blower as it actually blew out more dust than it sucked in) before the baby came, especially because it tried to kill me whenever I cleaned up during allergy season (seriously, I’m not kidding when I say that it blew things up and out into the air). It was really our fault when we decided it was a good idea to invest all of forty dollars on a vacuum cleaner. I mean what did we expect? So this time around we did some research and actually went into vacuuming shopping with a list of things we wanted:
- A HEPA filter (which helps keep allergies and other airborne pollutants at bay)
- A bagless variety (also great for allergies and simpler to operate for un-bag-coordinated people like me)
- A reasonably light-weight model (anything over 20 lbs, no matter how much power it has, is a bit much for a 5’2″ gal)
- Significantly more power than our previous model (which only boasted 8 amps)
- More settings for different jobs so it can effectively clean multiple surfaces (some area rugs in the house need extra suction while the hardwood floors need something geared for that purpose).
Your list might not be the same as ours at all (different strokes for different folks) but we highly recommend the idea of walking into any big household purchased like this with an idea of what you want from the get-go. It really helps to keep things from getting overwhelming since you can immediately whittle down all the options since they can’t all possibly meet your previously established criteria. It’s a nice little filtering method that allows you to hone in on a few models that seem to fit the bill and then you can do additional research or ask any questions about those few contenders to make the final decision.
Ladies and gentlemen, here’s what we ended up whittling down as our winner, the Bissell 82H1 Cleanview Helix Bagless Upright Vacuum Cleaner:
And since that name is such a mouthful, let’s just call him the newest member of our family. This guy has 12 amps of power and multiple settings (five to be exact, so you can add extra carpet suction or turn it to a more hardwood floor friendly setting). He also comes equipped with something called a Helix Dirt Separation System for deeper and more powerful cleaning. Of course he’s bagless (and has an easy-empty dirt cup) and has a HEPA filter as well. Plus he even has extra perks (like adjustable height settings and also comes with a slew of extra fittings like a TurboBrush, crevice tool, extension wand, and upholstery/dusting brush). Plus he’s just 15 lbs so he falls under my 20-or-less rule. And after reading many many customer reviews on a number of sites (thanks to our iPhone we could do that right in the store on the spot) we were confident that it was a great choice (it had over 40 five-star ratings on Amazon).
Perhaps the best news of all was the price. Our new friend happened to be on sale at Target (down from $80 to $69 just for the weekend) so although we walked into the store intending to spend around $200 for something that would last, all the high-ratings and the fact that it met and exceeded all of our previously set requirements had us feeling like we’d struck gold.
But back to my story. When I got home I broke it out on our grubbiest carpet (the yellow one in the living room was full of grime from lots of indoor-outdoor snowy-and leafy-foot traffic traffic as of late) and it seriously lifted every last bit of dust and dirt (John watched as the carpet literally got yellower and less brown before our very eyes). It looked brandy new again. Oh happy day. And it worked just as well on the hardwood floors (I got giddy when I got to change the setting from carpeting to hardwood- it felt so custom and fancy). I even took the upholstery brush for a spin on our sofa (it picked up every last hair, fleck of dust, etc).
No, that’s not my hand, and that’s not our sofa (thanks for the images Amazon). But really, who knew cleaning could be fun? I was perma-smiling like a stepford wife with my new vacuum cleaner by my side. So that’s the story of our latest housecleaning weapon that I’m relieved downright psyched to have on hand before the bean arrives in May. After all, one of my resolutions this year is to simplify things and keep our house running more efficiently and easily. And this guy will definitely make cleaning stuff up much simpler than our former leaf-blower ever did. And I bet I won’t go to sleep with a runny nose every time I vacuum during allergy season anymore. Somebody stop me before I lift this machine up in the air and start singing “for he’s a jolly good fellow.”
Oh and just to be totally clear, Bissell didn’t pay us or otherwise perk us (nor did Target, Amazon or anyone else) to mention this vacuum. It’s actually the one that we researched and paid for ourselves because we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread and we wanted to share our find. So this post isn’t one big ad as much as one big weird love-fest for a new vacuum from an extremely appreciative homeowner. But let’s talk about your lean mean cleaning machines. Any other Bissell lovers out there? Any fancy Dyson peeps (I ogled the white pet-hair model for what felt like hours)? Anyone who doesn’t believe in vacuum cleaners and peacefully coexists with dustbunnies? Let’s talk about what sucks at your house.
Psst- Wanna know more about how we clean our entire house? Click here. And for the original suckie vacuum post about our beloved Kurv, click here.
