Nail product review and a typical day of household repairs

First, the repairs. Our home is on a concrete slab and our dryer vents through the second story. Periodically my husband uses the shop vac to clean the dryer after removing the back, and then reverses the shop vac and blow air up through the dryer hose to encourage any clinging lint to free itself.

Normally we would not tackle this just before Christmas. My washer and dryer are at the back end of my kitchen. The washer has to be moved in order to get the dryer pulled forward so that he can access the tubing. A few loads took much longer than usual to dry the other day and I was concerned we had a blockage. The good news is that we don't. If it wasn't a fluke, there might be a sensor going bad that is causing the heat to shut down too soon. Time will tell.

To pull the washer forward, the hoses have to be disconnected from the laundry tub. One of the pipes is now leaking at the handle. It is a very slow leak, but will have to be addressed soon. Now just isn't the time to rip everything apart unless it becomes an emergency. Why is it that one problem or task always seems to lead to four or five more?

Now for my disappointing product review. My sister-in-law gets manicures with gel polish and is very pleased with the results. I've been considering trying this but it won't happen until at least next week, or more likely, after the first of the year. Same sister-in-law told me about a product called Gel Perfect by Nutra Nail, available at Rite Aide. It is supposed to be like the salon applied lacquer but does not require a UV light treatment.

The polish was $11.99, the remover $5.99. I did use coupons, but it was still much more than I normally spend on polish. The procedure called for you to shake the bottle of color (all bottles are small), then unscrew the caps on the three bottles in the kit.

(Three middle bottles are the kit. End bottles are for size comparison)

First you brush Activator on 5 nails. Next you immediately apply thin coats of color to those 5 nails. Now you need to clean that brush with the cleaner in bottle #3. They stress that you MUST. DO. THIS. after every 5 nails!

Now you repeat the steps on your other hand. After cleaning the brush, repeat everything AGAIN on your first hand for a second coat of color. You definitely need at least two coats of color, maybe 3 or more, depending on the color.

It did dry quickly and was shiny.

That is it for the good part. The bad part is that one nail chipped in less than 24 hours. No housework or crafting was done in that period to have caused the damage. Within 48 hours, I had a second chip that got larger in a hurry. Now that I've looked at reviews online, I see I not alone in my disappointment.

(image found on internet, not my nails)

I took the Gel Perfect polish and remover back to Rite Aide and got a full reimbursement. I came home and used acetone (the company's suggestion if not using their removal pads) to soak cotton balls which were placed on each finger and wrapped in foil for two minutes. I had to go through this process twice on each hand to get 95% of the lacquer off. I will have to work on them again tonight, but I have other things that need attention this afternoon.

I guess I will be visiting the salon soon and trying a professionally applied gel polish and see how that goes. Anyone have experience with them?

What we go through for beauty, eh? And for clean dryer vents too.