The Little Green Machine Review

Anyone knows, or at least those of us who own a home, it takes a lot to maintain a home. Don’t get me wrong, I love owning a home. I am blessed and I want to steward what God has given me well. I am a list person but not when it comes to having a cleaning schedule. It’s sort of in my mind. I make a mental note of things I need to clean that day. When it comes to things that you may not need to clean as often, like washing a rug or your couch or a sofa, it actually may take longer to do so therefore I set a few of these types of tasks per month so that I don’t overwhelm myself.

So I have been seeing a lot of great reviews in regards to Bissell‘s Little Green vacuum and I finally decided to get it. I started doing a lot of chair flips so I needed a tool that could really clean upholstery well. Of course it sent me on the path of cleaning smaller rugs in our home and our car. The water coming out of these items was absolutely filthy.

I loved this vacuum so much that I had to share my review with you. (This is not a sponsored post. I just wanted to give you guys an honest feedback from my personal experience)

The Design

The design of this whole piece is just pure genius. It’s small and compact. You can store it under your sink or in your closet without it taking up too much space. What I love most about this piece is that all of the accessories have their place somewhere on the machine. The cord wraps around as well as the hose. The actually end piece of the hose has a holder and you can store an attachment on top of that. The second attachment piece has a holder as well so it’s less likely that you would loose any of these pieces. It also comes with a hydro clip that attaches to the hose. So in the end all of pieces are nicely tucked away.

User-Friendly

I am not an instruction manual type of a person. I will glance at it, but I honestly like to get to know an item by experimenting with it. I read through the basic instructions so I am not ruining the machine by doing something I shouldn’t with it but overall I didn’t really need the manual because all of the pieces attached fairly easy and there are instructions on the tanks as well the ratio of water to the cleaning agent that needs to be mixed in. The machine actually makes like this suttle noise when the dirty tank is full so that you know that you need to empty it out. The whole process is spraying on the water, letting it sit for a few minutes, then sucking that water out. I do have to say the advantage that this smaller one has over a larger carpet washing vacumes is that you can press as hard as you need to get the maximum water out. This way the piece dries quicker and you won’t end up saturating it with water.

Easy Clean-Up and Storage

The tanks remove very easily for refills and dispensing the water out. One of my favorite features of this piece is that it can clean the hose out for you after you’re finished. You just attach the hydrorinse clip to the end, add clean water to the tank, press the nozzle and allow the clean water to back fire through the hose, clean it, and dump into the dirty water tank which you empty after you’re finished. Once you do that and rinse both of the tanks out, you can tuck the machine away until next use.

Although it is a smaller vacuum and is meant to be used for smaller things, I personally think that if you have the patience to do larger areas rugs or larger furniture pieces, you can definitely accomplish it with this machine. My suggestion would be that you don’t pour too much water onto a specific area or item. This way you do not oversaturate, but even you do oversaturate an area, it really has a powerful suction, so it really does pull out a lot of the water.

I try to be a minimalist when it comes to making product purchases, but this tool makes such a big difference in the cleanliness of your home. I personally believe that a lot of the items that we toss out just really need to be washed well and this is the tool that is great for that.

It’s in a mid price range of $120. I checked several stores and the price is set at this amount across the board. I personally think that this is not a bad price if this is going to prevent you from having to purchase a new rug or a new furniture piece.

If you have kids or pets this is a must have. You can click here to order your Bissell Little Green ProHeat Portable Deep Cleaner.

Happy Cleaning :)

Create Coleture, Be YOU

Viktoriya Cole

Budget Friendly Kitchen Makeover

Finally, I sat down to write all of the details about this sweet kitchen makeover that I did for my Mom. She has always wanted a white kitchen so that was our basis for the makeover. So the first thing that we did in her kitchen is have someone come out and smooth out her popcorn ceiling. We were suggested to just do a slight texture because the house is over 20 years old, it would be hard to get the ceilings really smooth. I did a fresh coat of paint once they finished the texture. That in itself already brightened the room up.

Because we were going with the white theme, I didn’t want too many white hues clashing together so we went with a peachy tone beige color on the walls and painted the trim pure white. All of this was done while I was waiting on the custom kitchen cabinet doors and drawer fronts to come in.

(Mom’s kitchen before we started)

So because Mom’s kitchen cabinets were made of wood, we figured it would be best to keep the bases and just change out the doors and the hardware. I have painted a full kitchen before with doors and it’s a lot but if you like the style of your kitchen just not the color, painting the whole thing may be an option for you. I read a lot of tips from Chris Loves Julia and they share a way to ’sand’ your kitchen by using a deglosser instead of a sander. I will link it here if you’re interested to read more on this method here.

I measured all of the doors and wrote down the sides that I needed. (left or right) This matters if you’re going to have them cut hinge holes or what they call (bore). I hopped on the computer and ordered 27 doors and 9 drawer fronts through Home Depot. It wasn‘t hard, it was just tedious. I would suggest crossing each door off of the list as you order because it can get confusing what you already ordered. When you get to the checkout, it doesn’t tell you all of the details of the door or drawer fronts which makes it hard to double check your order unless you click into each selection and check. So needless to say, it’s not as user friendly when it comes to custom orders.

When you get on the Home Depot site, click on the search bar, and type in ‘replacement cabinet doors.’ From there you can build and buy.

Because this was a custom order it took over 2 weeks to come, which is understandable. We went with a more simple shaker style and I selected RIGID THERMAFOIL instead of wood because it was less expensive per door and the quality of this specific style just seems more high end.

My goal was to do a complete kitchen makeover for under $3000. It went a little over but not nearly close to what new kitchens cost. Plus this included the painting of the whole kitchen as well as the lighting.

If you are planning to switch lights in your kitchen, I would highly recommend that you do that before you start painting because that can help you see everything in a different light or at least the light that will stay there.

Once I tracked my order for the custom doors and it was a few days away from coming to my house, I started to prep the kitchen by taking all of the old kitchen doors and drawer fronts off. We taped off the kitchen and I used my handy dandy electric sander to strip the gloss off of the cabinets using a 220 grit paper. (Make sure you use your protective gear before doing that)

I came back the next day and primed the kitchen. This will help the paint to stick to the cabinets even better and make it more durable. (Plus remember primer costs a fourth of the price, so priming will also help you save on getting a lot of expensive paint and doing several layers.)

Once my doors came in, I took a drawer front and had Lowes color match it for me so that my white paint came out to be as close to the door color as possible. This is the paint that I bought. It was $54 for a gallon (specifically for wood cabinets) and I only ended up using about a third of a gallon.

Of course I would’ve used a sprayer instead of a roller but that was not in a budget so I used a smooth small roller that is specifically designed for a smooth finish. This is what it looks like. (See pic above)

Once the kitchen was painted and covered in a polycrylic coat, I let it cure for 24 hours. Coming back the next day to hang the doors and drawers fronts only to find that the hinges that they sold in the store were not the right overlay, so I had to order them on Amazon which was actually a blessing because they were way cheaper. Like $70 cheaper because I got them in a bulk of 50.

TIP: Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to rush this project. Kitchen has a lot of details therefore it will take time. I would recommend doing one thing per day. For example, pick a day to take the doors off and prep it. Then the next day prime it. The day after that paint it several layers and cure it with the clear coat (polycrylic). This way you don’t end up getting sloppy from rushing.

Once the hardware came in I spent about 5 hours hanging the doors and drawer fronts. I ended up having 5 incorrect door sizes so I had to order them and return the other 5 to the store. I ordered the drawer fronts with groove at the top to serve instead of a handle. It costs a little more to add on but it will save you money and time and having to install hardware.

The last step is to hang some hardware. I got a plastic tool for easy hardware installation. It was a breeze with this tool. I would highly recommend you pick this tool up to save you time and make your work look seamless. It‘s called align right large cabinet hardware installation template. You can pick at most hardware stores for under $10.

So although all of the doors are not up yet the kitchen looks spectacular. It looks so airy and light and minimal. More importantly Mom was pleased.

I will have more before and after photos once the rest of the doors come in, but I am glad the way these cabinets turned out and all of it for a fraction of the cost. We were able to change the style of the kitchen by replacing the kitchen cabinets doors and drawer fronts.

Biggest tip I can give you, is to take your time. Try to plan ahead and rest in between if you feel like you’re getting tired of working on it that day. Come back to it the next day with fresh eyes.

If you’re planning to remodel your kitchen using this method, comment below :)

Best Wishes

Create Coleture, Be YOU

Viktoriya Cole

Velvet Simple Backboard

It has been a while since I‘ve done a DIY post on my blog. So this is my way of getting into the groove. I switched my kid‘s beds around. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before because Toby has a smaller room so switching his bed out to Mila’s bed, which is a double bed versus a queen bed made so much more sense. So instead of the pink back board I decided to switch out the fabric to a velvet deep green.

This tutorial is going to be for a double bed headboard or you can do it for a twin as well. If you need to make a bigger one you can use a longer piece of plywood cut to the width of you bed frame.

I personally used a 48 inch canvas because it is light weight and has a wood frame that you can staple the fabric to. I bought it at Hobby Lobby. (if it is not on sale make sure to use the 40% coupon online).

These are all of the items you need for this project:

1. 48inch long canvas (at least 24 inches wide)

2. 2-3inch foam (same width as your canvas)

3. Staple Gun / Staples

4. 2 yards of fabric of your choice (I would suggest to get something more heavy duty as it will help you in the stapling process and obviously will make it more durable)

All you have to do is lay the foam against the canvas, lay the fabric on top and make sure you have enough fabric to go around, and then start stapling. I usually start on the longest side from the middle. I usually fold the edges in to make it look cleaner. The double layer of fabric will also make sure that nothing comes apart. Once one side is stapled, I turn to the second longest side. Now this one maybe a little challenging and will require some muscle work, but that’s ok, I believe in you lol. I usually run my hand over the top of the back board and try to tighten so that the sides have a smooth slope on both sides. Again, I start in the middle of the longest side and staple it down. This helps to guide me down both sides and make sure that I am a creating the same tension all the way around. (TIP: it is also better if you have 1 inch access fabric off the sides and not more because it folds in easier. You can cut access around the sides)

Repeat the process on the shortest sides and just brush your hand over the top of the piece to smooth it out and make sure that all of the edges have the same tension.

Now I know the corners look complicated but it is really just a matter of moving the fabric around to even out the creases. If there is too much fabric, you can cut a piece off so that it doesn’t get bulky.

You can get some hanging hardware at any of your local hardware stores. To install it onto the wall, just place the headboard against the wall and use a leveler to make sure its straight. Mark the nail holes. Attach the nails (use dry wall screws if you’re going to use plywood as a backing instead of the canvas)

That’s it :) Simple. Easy. Modern.

Create Coleture, Be YOU

Viktoriya Cole