Sunday, July 15, 2007

Product Testimonial

It all comes back, full circle to the toilet. Today was the day to do some housecleaning, which includes the previously mentioned toilets. Well, I'm not one to shirk my cleaning duties for more than a month or two, so I jumped in and cleaned the already-renovated half-bath. In a previous post, I had mentioned how well Super Iron Out worked at cleaning rust stains out of the toilet, the basement laundry sink, the water softener, etc. It was time to put it to the test again in cleaning the toilet. For your viewing pleasure, I've included pictures of the drained tank before and after pouring in about 1/2 cup of Super Iron Out. The "during" picture is about 2 minutes after pouring in the powder and you can see how much rust it's dissolved in that short time. Mind you, the final result picture is after only pouring in the powder and letting it sit for 10 minutes. No scrubbing, no effort beyond flushing after it sat and worked.

Before - this is what I have after not cleaning the tank for about 45 days. I did have one of those bleach tablets in there which doesn't appear to have done anything. Then again, maybe this would have been much worse without it?




Two minutes after adding the powder the tank is pretty clean. I assume the powder "eats" the rust or dissolves it somehow, as there is little to no residue in the bottom of the tank.




Ahhh, sweet, sweet, clean-tank goodness. How I've missed ye.





On a completely unrelated note, my wife and I took a walk to an open house about a block from us. Well, actually we drove. We didn't want to look like neighbors just stopping in to see what the house looked like. The place was priced $35K more than we paid for ours four months ago, but it is in better cosmetic shape. It does need some updating to make it shine, but it is mostly cosmetic work like painting, replacing carpet, etc. I'm guessing they will have to drop at least $15K to sell it any time soon though. For their asking price I think buyers could find better. My house had a much heavier case of "ugly" than the other one, but our lot is larger, the location better, and the layout is a little nicer (my wife disagrees on that last point, but she's not running this blog...). I've been keeping an eye on what has been selling in the area (I need a new hobby) and would bet that if they spent $5,000 on carpet, paint, new storm doors, and a few other little details that they could get their asking price.

What really stood out during this open house was just how completely freakin' lame the realtor was who was "selling" this place. They had a one hour window for the open house and we were there right at the beginning (11:00). Nobody else was there the entire 15 minutes we looked it over. Never once did she ask us anything about what we were looking for in a house, she didn't ask if we had kids (the fenced back yard would have been a great selling point for kids or pets), she didn't ask if we were selling a house (hey, maybe we'd need a realtor for that, too!), she didn't point out any other positive features of the house like a newer roof, new driveway, or maintenance free windows. In fact she only pointed out a small sunken area of the back patio which she said should be mud-jacked and some outdated fake beams in the living room. Nice... I'm sure the current owners would be happy with your work, realtor-lady. She didn't even offer us a business card. I'll admit, my experience with realtors has been limited, but I know lame when I see it.