The road to Pinterest fails is paved with good intentions...

Yep... I've disappeared for a while. Not because I'm not constantly working on the house. In all humility, I tell you it's because I've made a HUGE error in judgement that's cost me quite a bit of time and energy.

While I was sanding the stairs, covered in dust, I started thinking about the banister. I'm so over sanding. I'm using a gel stain on the banister, which actually doesn't require sanding. BUT after trying it on the stairs, I decided if I didn't want it quite so dark, I really needed to sand the banister. Or at the very least, I needed to get the polycoat removed. Enter the Pinterest idea. At some point, on some blog, on Pinterest somewhere... I read about someone using a gloss stripper to remove polycoat. And whoever it was raved about it. The catch is, I can't remember what they were using it for, and I have since decided it must have been for a flat surface like a cabinet door. 

So I got this stuff. In my mind, I thought I'd apply this stuff and then wipe it off and voila! I read the directions and it still didn't compute when it said to scrape it off. It didn't occur to me that this gel would dry. Hard. It would dry hard and require me to scrape every inch of banister. It would not wipe off. 

And here I am... three days later (in terms of working on the house at least) still scraping this stuff off the banister. And, you ask, "Did it work?" Kind of. Sort of. But not really. It's hard to tell as I have since taken the sander to it in desperation. 

Y'all. I'm sure this stuff is great for a flat surface. I can even tell you it will remove paint as it's removing paint from my balusters (totally fine--I have to repaint them anyway). But... ugh. Don't use it on your banister. You will be scraping for-EVER. Every nook and cranny. You can kind of see how it's removed some of the polycoat in the the picture. What gets me about this picture is that I'm actually planning on PAINTING this part of the stairs and probably could have just roughed it up really well with the sander and called it a day.

Luckily, I grabbed this little brush when I was in Home Depot last time. I think it was near the metal working tools, but I have no idea what it's really for. What I do know, is that it has saved my sanity today. It's really effective as scraping this stuff out of crevices. 

So, all that to say, I could have been done two days ago if I hadn't started down this rabbit hole. Don't do it. Don't. Just don't. 

 

Sneak Peek

 

On a fun note... our granite got delivered!! This is actually not what I originally had in mind. In fact, it's very much what I didn't want. But when we went to look at our options, all the ones I picked out were quartz or not the greatest grade of granite and therefore not as strong. My husband was pretty set against quartz, and there was no changing his mind.

Since I'm not a granite expert, time is against us, and I didn't have time to research, we went with the one my husband really liked. And honestly, I think it's absolutely gorgeous in my kitchen! It will also hide dirt better than what I would have picked. It's called Snow White. Not what I'd have named it, but no one asked me!