And it was all yellow

It turns out that construction paper, when wet, is great at transferring dye. It makes sense, in retrospect, but definitely was not something I would have thought about when my kids went for a cup of water while coloring last weekend. But oh yes, there is quite a lot of dye in that paper. An hour after said coloring, we walked into the sunroom and see sopping wet construction paper on the wood floor. We life it and see...

Now this would be bad in any instance, but you may remember the saga over the floors in this room and how we fought hard to make it look perfect. And in an instant, two small children had ruined our efforts. OK, I'm being a bit melodramatic - I know it will sand out if we ever were to refinish the floors, but that is most definitely not on the horizon.

Various websites provide options of varying degrees of confidence. Both of us agree that Magic Eraser seems like a bad idea, since it actually sands away some of the finish. So we opt first for a vinegar solution and a cloth. That removes a lot of the blue and a small amount of the yellow. Next, it's on to a baking soda solution. I have to warn you, keeping a consistent white balance with these pictures was pretty much impossible, so you'll have to use your imagination a bit to compare between pictures.

Even with something as gentle as baking soda, instructions across several websites seem to suggest that gently rubbing it, rather than aggressively scrubbing it, was the way to go. Even baking soda could pull off some of the shine. So we put some elbow grease into it for a while.

 And in the end? Well, you tell me. What do you see? Here's the "finished" picture, from two angles (and evidently two very different light sources?).

Do you see it? We do. It's a lot better but the yellow is still there lurking. We're hoping that no one else will ever notice it and that, with time, neither will we. Our wood floors are generally a honey color, so maybe it will just look like variation in the wood. Or we might go back and take another stab at it with something more aggressive. Do you have any ideas? We've read so many things on the internet that we'd prefer to try something that one of you, dear reader(s) has actually successfully used in a similar situation.

We were surprised that a color as light as yellow lasted more than the blue, until D reminded me about the constant problems we're dealing with on our counter when I make my new favorite drink, a golden milk latte. Getting turmeric on the counters keeps requiring me to pull out the big guns of a countertop cleaner, rather than just our normal dish soap and water. I didn't take a picture because I didn't want to let the color sit for even a moment longer than I needed to, once I realized that I'd gotten some on the counter (I usually make my drink on the stove, AWAY from the new counter). Not that we think turmeric is the source for yellow in construction paper, but who knows...

Until then, well, we're feeling a little yellow.