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accomplished

How to remove hot pink nailpolish from your parent's expensive off white carpet.
It' only been what, three months since I posted... I've been busy. But I actually have a story to tell today, so I figured I'd write it down before the details loose their clarity.

Last night, as you might have guessed from the title of this post, I accidentally spilled a pool of hot pink nail polish on my parent's off white carpet in the master bedroom, in possibly the most conspicuous place in the entire room. I wasn't even painting my nails in their bedroom, I only ever paint my nails in the bathroom, precicely so I can avoid incidents like this - which made this entire thing all the more painful. I had opened the nail polish, because it looked kind of crusty and I wasn't sure it was usable, and I set it down on the nightstand, and walked away to do something. I came back, and not remembering that I had neglected to close the nail polish bottle, picked it up by the lid and spilled nail polish all over the carpet, my jeans, the bed and my parent's hundred dollar sheets. (Which is another ordeal entirely that I have to deal with when I get home from work.) It looked like I had brutally murdered some small defenseless animal. when I showed my brother the stain, he said that he doesn't think he has ever done anything to the house that has had as much potential to cause a murder as that stain.

I hope that none of you ever have to use this information, but I figured I might as well share what I have learned about removing dark nail polish stains from light carpets.

1. Blot up excess nail polish with whatever is closest at hand immediately after the spill, trying not to smear it and spread the stain. Don't rub it, it will only make things a million times worse!

2. Get your nail polish remover (I've seen different opinions on weather acetone or non-acetone is better, so use whatever you have at hand - just make sure it doesn't have lanolin in it. Acetone will eat away synthetic carpets, but not really bother natural carpets - so if you don't know what kind of carpet you have, just be safe and use the non-acetone, even if it is slightly less effective.) and dab at the stain using clean white towels or paper towels until no more color is coming up. Make sure to change your towels frequently so you aren't just redistributing stains on to your carpet. Don't pour the nailpolish remover directly on the carpet as it will eat away at the glue underneath the carpet piles, and destroy everything.

3. Get some cheap aerosol hairspray (Aquanet, unscented), spray the stain and continue to dab with towels. The color will not necessarily come up on the towels, but the stain will start to look less intense.

4. Once the stain has started to significantly fade, get some Spot Shot stain remover - the stuff in the dark blue and orange can - and start to alternate using the Spot Shot and hairspray, continuing to dab at the stain.

5. Once the stain is almost imperceptible, mix 1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide and 1 tbsp. of ammonia, and pour liberally over the area. Cover in saran wrap and place a number of heavy books on top. Let sit overnight or for a few hours. (This might seem a little ooky, and you may be worried that they hydrogen peroxide will bleach your carpet, but the substance will only affect the stain left from the nail polish, as carpet dyes are made to be resistant to fading and bleaching, and hydrogen peroxide is a very mild bleaching agent. The ammonia is added to change the pH of the solution and thus speed up the hydrogen peroxide's bleaching process.)

6. Lastly, spray the area with water and blot until you are convinced that all of the chemicals you have used to remove the stain are gone. This is an important step, don't skip it - because although hydrogen peroxide will quickly degrade to water, the ammonia will eventually bleach your carpet if exposed to any amount of light.

Alternately, if you have a wet/dry vac or a steam cleaner, after step 2 use the hose/brush attachment to remove the hairspray, Spot Shot, hydrogen peroxide and water after each application - it makes things slightly easier than having to dab at the carpet for a million hours.

As with anything you put on your carpet, you should always do a spot test in an inconspicuous place, like a corner in your closet, before appling any kind of chemicals - so you really should spot test everything before appplying it to the stain.

However, my parent's carpet is now as good as new, and I don't have to be worried that they are going to strangle me in my sleep to get a life insurance payoff to re-carpet their bedroom. Hopefully they will never be the wiser. And I don't have to have an aneurysm next time I am the clumsiest person on earth and spill a horribly garish color of nail polish on a pristine carpet.

Now I just have to figure out how to get the stuff out of their sheets.