How to stay cleaning while staining

In just a few short weeks we'll be renovating our home. Well, new floors and a counter top. That actually doesn't sound like a lot. It will however make a huge difference in the style of our home. We are doing quite a bit ourselves so I am sure that there will be plenty of material to put on here. One thing I am starting with is staining our banister. Currently it is your typical oak and fairly yellow in color. We are going a bit darker (is almost black a "bit"?) I saw a pin on Pinterest showing that you can use a polyshade to stain it without having to sand first. It is worth a try.

In a later post I will show some before and afters to let you know if this worked. If it does I can see myself staining everything in my house! This post is for something I came up with to make the job a little easier. I have already laid down the first coat (it suggests 4 coats total) I did this with pieces of an old T-shirt. This was a real mess. I tried using my hand in a plastic bag to keep stain off my skin. I had trouble getting into the nooks and crannies. The excess material undid all my "go with the grain" by depositing left over stain onto other areas. And stain does not exactly just wash off. BTW, magic erasers are not for removing stain from said skin. Ouch!

So here I am the following week ready to tackle another coat and hopeful knock it out over the weekend. Here is the trick/tip I discovered: I purchased latex gloves, then I purchased those cheap $1 knit gloves you find everywhere this time of year. Do you see where I am going with this? I only did one hand so I had one free to do other stuff. So with the latex glove on first, the knit glove second, I was able to dip my hand into the stain and rub it all over my banister with the greatest of easy. My fingers got into every nook and cranny, I easily followed the grain, no excess fabric to get all over my self. It was flawless. Highly recommended method!

Welcome to Flippin Good Ideas

Well Hi, I am a bit new to blogging. So forgive the horrible typos and grammatical errors. Mostly I needed a place to put all the fun projects I work on. I also love looking through pins of upcycled projects and feel the need to also throw my hat in to the game.

Some things on here are more of a "pin"test. Looks easy enough and would love to give it a try. I find that most of the time it is a lot harder than it looks or takes more work than I thought it would. So I have a much deeper appreciation for the wonderful items I pin. Although, sometimes it really is quite simple. I find that projects like these require just a bit of experience from trial and error. The first go around you do learn of the steps you would rather take to make a job more simple, clean, and quick. I hope that is what I really offer here. A way to make it all accessible to you. You know, you... who is reading this and viewing pins as well, but not actually doing any of them. Is that you? Well, just so you know, It can all be done. I am going to show you how...