renovationism

1. It’s only a few tiles on a small counter top. You’ll think it’ll be a quick job. You’ll be wrong.
2. You won’t get the hose ready for cleanup because it’s cold outside.
3. You’ll grab a way-too-small container in which to mix the grout. You’ll spill the dry grout everywhere. But, you’ll demonstrate some sense by putting your dust mask on before the powder starts flying.
4. You’ve mixed grout before, so you’ll wing it instead of measuring ingredients. You’ll put too much water in at first, resulting in grout soup. Then, you’ll try to dry it by adding more powder, but you’ll end up dumping in too much. You’ll repeat this silliness a few times before you get something you can use.
5. Since you’ve got 1/16″ grout lines, and it’s only a few tiles, you’ll skip the grout float and put on rubber gloves and use your fingers. You will think this will save time. You’ll be wrong. And you will make a holy mess.
6. You’ll not have masked around the area very well. The black grout will get on your nice painted walls. You will be unhappy.
7. You won’t have put down a big enough drop cloth. The black grout will get on your nice white tile floor. You will be unhappier.
8. About three hours into a 2 hour job, you’ll begin to think it’s going so wrong that you’re going to have to tear the whole counter top off and start again (for those amateur psychologists out there, this is called displaced anger).
9. Fifteen minutes later, you’ll think it would have been better to just buy a solid counter top.
10. You’ll have spread so much of the mud on the tiles that you can’t clean it off with one bucket of water from the kitchen sink. At this point, you’ll show a little more sense and spend a few minutes in 30 degree weather setting up the hose. It will take 6 buckets of clean water to wipe up the muck.
11. At around 8 PM, you’ll finally get the grout applied the way you want it. You’ll throw out 90% of the grout you mixed because you mixed too much. You’ll clean up the floor and the walls. You’ll shop•vac the powder you spilled. You’ll clean yourself up. You’ll sit down to relax. Then you’ll remember that the hose is still sitting out in the freezing weather and you’ll spend 10 minutes putting all that away.

That said, it does have its payoff.

This entry was posted Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 9:09 am and is filed under laundry sink. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.