Yes, that is correct…I spilled used motor oil in my kids bedroom. Who does that? Does this kinda of stuff happen to other people, or just me? Wait, don’t answer.

I know I’m not going to get away with skipping that part about how it happened, so here we go. Adam was outside changing the oil on one of our cars. When he was done he came to the door with the used filter in a bag and asked me to put it in a trash can that was almost full. The diaper pail in the boy’s room was way past the point of needing to be taken out, so I took the bagged filter into their room where it touched the floor as I was opening the lid. I lifted it up off the floor to put it in the trash and BAM, it happened….motor oil leaked all over the carpet. I immediately ran and grabbed a wad of paper towels to start blotting it up, but that carpet was thirsty and it wasn’t coming out. Then I remembered a pin on pinterest that says if you get grease on your clothes you should go over it with a piece of chalk, because the chalk will soak up the stain. This was going to take way more than a piece of chalk, but I happened to have a ton of leftover chalk power from my attempted DIY chalk paint, so I ran and grabbed that.

I dumped it on my stain and waited for it to work its magic. But no magic happened. So I dumped more, and more…until I was left with a muddy, sticky, motor oil mess.

Curses.

I had no idea what to do and I didn’t want the kids to discover it, so I just put a pot over the motor oil disaster and decided to mess with it  later.

And there it sat, for nearly three weeks. My boys climbed on the pot, jumped off the pot, banged on the pot…but they never lifted it. I couldn’t believe it. I lifted it a few times just to make sure they hadn’t discovered my mess, but the second I did I regretted it because it allowed the horrible motor oil smell to spill out into my house. Truth be told the pot might have just stayed there forever if it wasn’t sitting in the most traffic part of the bedroom – in front of the changing table.

The stain wasn’t coming out and I wasn’t sure what to do…besides rip out the carpet. Adam didn’t have a better plan, so….

The carpet was cheap and gross anyway , so no harm done. We were planning on ripping it out one day anyway and all I did was speed up the process. Man I really did everyone a favor actually. I’m sure the ‘thank you’s” will start to roll in any day now….

 The flooring you see underneath the carpet is a (pretty expensive) stained and polished concrete. It runs throughout the house and we would love to just leave it. HOWEVER, the  investor that we bought of house from ruined them. When he repainted out entire house (a horrid salmon pinky salmon color, see pics here) he slopped paint all over them, and then covered them up with cheap carpet and even cheaper tile.

Such a shame. Even if we could manage to get all the paint up somehow, they have still been patched with concrete.

Now we just have to figure out what to do with the floors. I would love love love to continue our hardwood floors into all the bedrooms, but that is is pretty expensive and a fair amount of work. I have seriously considered painting them, it would be unique and crazy cheap to do. However, I read this post on The Handmade Home recently that says that painting your concrete floors – no matter how good they look - decreases the value of your home. I’m not super concerned about selling our house when the time comes, but it is something to think about. The last option is to just replace the carpet. It would be medium price but no work on our end…except that Adam and I have come to loathe carpet. It just collects dirt and grime and never seems to come clean. Lets face it, if a dog or kid pees on your carpet you and that pee are together for the long haul. There was no way that motor oil was coming out (the stain on the bottom of the carpet was nearly a foot across) and if it had happened on new carpet I would have freaked out. BUT its a universally accepted flooring choice (unlike painting your concrete).

Anyway, this is a sponsored post and I am getting to that part. So I had just started this post and it was sitting in drafts when I was contacted by Mohawk flooring. They wanted bloggers to share carpet horror stories and introduce a new type of carpet that has just come out. Now I normally turn down 99% of sponsored post offers, but the timing on this one was too eerily perfect to turn down. Plus the more I read about this newfangled carpet the more I wanted to try it (no they’re not offering to re carpet my bedrooms – dang!). So  this carpet is called SmartStrand Silk and the claim is that it is completely stain and soil resistant – for forever.  Most carpets have their stain repellent applied topically and it wears off in time. SmartStrand Silk has a different kind of fiber altogether (called triexta) where the stain and soil resistance is part of the fiber itself. Because this protection is natural to the fiber, no harsh chemical treatments are applied during manufacturing. Stain and soil protection lasts the life of the carpet, meaning the carpet looks newer for longer.  It is also supposed to be super soft, resist matting, and help you to lose weight without diet or exercise.

Okay, I might have made that last part up.

Now, those are big claims and I am naturally skeptic, so it’s a good thing that for a limited time Mohawk is offering to mail free samples of SmartStrand Silk right to your front door. I already ordered mine and you’d better believe I’m going to treat it horribly before I make my hardwood, carpet, or paint flooring decision. If you’d like to order some samples for yourself then just CLICK HERE to enter your shipping address.

Also, CLICK HERE to read a ton of customer reviews like this one…

Anyone else have a hilariously horrifying carpet experience? And just FYI, I have learned my lesson…take the trash bag to the motor oil, not the motor oil to the trash bag. Got it.

UPDATE!

A few days ago I received my carpet samples and the first thing I noticed is that they were really soft. Usually you think that stain resistant stuff would feel kinda plasticy, but they didn’t at all. My sister-in-law Meredith was over yesterday, so I asked her if she wanted to destroy the samples while I finished up a project (that I will share with y’all next week). She did, of course…who wouldn’t want to do something that is normally soooo against the rules? So here are my fresh carpet samples, right out if the box…

And here is what she did to them…

(I know, we’re missing used motor oil. We actually couldn’t find any… around our house it’s feast or famine in the used oil department.)

For the last sample she made a mud puddle and let Elijah take care of the rest.

Then she rubbed everything in really well and let them bake in the sun for half an hour or so.

To clean them we  just used water and a little dish soap (I also don’t have carpet cleaner, go figure) and cleaned from the top like you would if it was installed.  To be honest, I was not expecting good things from the white one. But here they are, still damp from the cleaning…

 There is a little bit of green paint still in the grey one, but I bet of you used legitimate cleaner it would come out. Now I’m still not going to become a carpet fan, but let me just say this….

Mohawk, I’m impressed.

Feeling rebellious and want destroy some carpet samples for yourself?  CLICK HERE to order some, completely free of charge!