I love all the natural wood in our house...that wasn't always the case. Years ago I wanted to paint it. But, my husband put a hard 'no' on that one. I'm glad he did. I have come to love the natural knotty alder in our home. I still hate our kitchen cabinets...but that's another post for itself. :) Our door and our banister posts are the knotty alder and have seen their fair share of dents, dings, and scratches throughout the years.

They weren't horrible; didn't even bother me. Well, enter in this cute pup:

The second we go out the door, even if it's just to get the mail. This dog is at the door scratching the good heck out of it. Ugh. I didn't notice he was doing this until too late and the damage was already done.  The damage was half way up the door and about 1/3 of the width.

I kind of freaked out. My husband oddly wasn't as mad as I thought he would be. Then I remembered a quick little trick to help hide those scratches. They will always be there until I can sand them down, or fill them, and restain or paint. But, this was a great bandaid, plus, I don't have do any staining or painting and can still keep my wood looking beautiful :)

The secret is walnuts.

Yep. Can you believe these can diminish the appearance of scratches on wood? They can!
Just get a chunk and start rubbing it into the scratches. These are my results.
Before (the top was actually already done, so this gives you a good before and after also):

 After:

 Here's a super good example. Before:

 After:

As I mentioned before, the dents are still there, this just makes the scratches less obvious. The oil in the walnut gets absorbed by the wood. I like to think the nut itself also acts like a filler into the scratch also.

My husband was so amazed by this, he took as many walnuts as he could and went around the house fixing all the scratches :)

Pin for later:

Continue reading

Share:

I'm the first to admit that I'm not a good cleaner. I pick up my stuff, can't stand clutter, but when it comes to deep cleaning? I'll find something better to do. It pretty much only gets done when guests come over...or when it gets so gross that stuff starts to stick to it. haha. Gross? Yes. Serious? Maybe. I mean, my house isn't trashed. So, don't think that. I clean, I promise. Anyway. The whole point of that was that I'm all for cleaning hacks. So, I decided I would pull together all my hacks and share them here with you! These hacks seriously save my sanity in most cases, and make some jobs so much easier!  The pictures are pretty self explanatory; just click on them to go to the post to learn how! And let me know in the comments your own hacks! I would love to try them :)

And if you want to know some of my "cleaning secrets" when my house is a mess and people show up last minute or I need to clean it in like 10 minutes. Check out this post :)

Continue reading

Share: