Our front steps

   One day this summer, I went to sit down on the steps leading to (or from) our front porch, but I didn't, because when I looked down at them, they were just to gross to sit on.  So was the porch itself.*

                                                       (deep dish pizza file, #225)

    Action was needed ! 

    I remember reading how you shouldn't use bleach on wood porches or decks, that it wasn't good for the wood nor the environment. So instead, I started with an ice cream bucket of warm water, a scrub brush and lots of  blue Dawn dish soap.  While it did make an impact, the steps were in such a sorry state, that it wasn't getting all of it. 'Hummm... I don't want to spend weeks on this'. 

   Then I thought of all of the various things I'd seen on line, about using a combination of blue Dawn dish soap and Hydrogen Peroxide. 'Well (I thought), I know that Dawn is good for the environment, haven't a clue if Hydrogen Peroxide is, and not sure about either one on wood, but something has got to be done about these steps and I am in the mood right now to start on them..'. So I refilled the bucket. This time I put seven (7) swirls of the blue dawn dish soap in the bottom of the bucket, started adding warm water and while it was filing to half way full, added the equivalent of two (2) Tablespoons of Hydrogen Peroxide. 

    The scrub brush I was using, has a handle curved up from the base of it. It makes for a wonderful scrub brush, because there is a variety of ways you can hold onto it. 

     I could see how much more effective the combination of the two products was, within just a couple of swirls of the scrub brush!  I literally giggled with glee! (The * above, is due to the fact that I thought to take this picture the day I started on the steps, after having already done the wood from the front door to the steps.)

     Due to still being 'Ms. Vertigo', the overall project took me a week to complete. I tackled one step a day. Scrub it down, rinse it off with the hose, go sit and regain my equilibrium while it dried out, go out and double check it, usually decide that one more go at it would be a good thing, tackle it, and then go sit for the rest of the evening (o:-p). But it was worth it!  This is what the  steps looked like when I was finished.

                                                  (front porch and tree, picture #001)

     As you can tell if you look at the edge of the porch to the right of the steps, once I was done with the steps, it became all to obvious how bad the edge of the rest of the porch had looked, so I ended up cleaning it to (before the picture was taken).  Then I cleaned the railing down the other set of front steps.  Several weeks later, I cleaned the whole back porch too. The projects took a lot of elbow grease, but to this day, I smile when I see the finished results. :-]