#33 - Why Our Shower Made us Think of Michelangelo and Survival
I haven't really felt like writing for a while. I lost my writing mo-jo (my kids look at me cross eyed when I say such 2002 things...) a few months ago. We've had lots of highs and lows within our immediate & extended family, and it leaves my brain muddled and emotions confused, so the first thing to go was my desire to write about the nitty gritty of our house. I kept wanting to share photos, but just couldn't get words to paper (screen).
And then came Tuesday 2 weeks ago. Matt went into our new master bathroom to finish things up in there. The grout of the shower had been on hold for quite some time while we wrapped up some other things, but grouting was the last step before we could start using our bathroom.
Let me back up. Since my last update the following things have happened (in no particular order)
1. We received our FINAL BANK CHECK!! AND IT ONLY TOOK OUR OWN FINANCIAL INSTITUTION 11-14 DAYS TO CASH THE THING AND RELEASE THE FUNDS TO US. You know how long 11-14 days is when you have thousands of dollars that you NEEDED YESTERDAY. It was completely unreasonable. But "it's policy." Except that 2 times prior, they overrode the hold. I personally think being customers of a bank for almost 18 years should give us good street cred. But, it's not Mayberry. We could have been trying to pass a fake check, we didn't have money in our account to cover it, therefore they had to hold it for 11-14 days. Even though it had the name of another bank on the check, and even though we had taken 4 other legit checks to them before.
2. We designed and installed closets. Designing and installing closets is my happy happy happy place! We bought an easy-to-use system (Closet Culture at Menards), that I could complete entirely by myself! (I did ask Matt to install the one rail that the system is secured to. I could have done that by myself, but I chose to have him to it because he's particular about things like using studs to secure screws AND making sure things are level.) I'll someday maybe share a little more about the closets.
3. We MOVED INTO OUR BEDROOM. It took me about 2 weeks to acclimate and not feel like I was sleeping in a hotel. And now I'm right back to sleeping like a rock every single night. I tell people this all the time, but almost every morning, I utter a prayer of thanksgiving that I am able to sleep soundly every night! I know so many struggle with restless sleep which must be so difficult. It's definitely not something I take for granted!
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| What our old room looked like afterward! |
All of that junk was hiding in our old room. Our bed was catty-corner specifically to create storage. That pink chair that I've been dragging along since college never had a home in our house but I didn't want to let it go. So, it lived behind our catty corner bed. (These are the true befores...from June 2017!)
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| This was our linen closet prior to renovation. I'm so excited to have a true linen closet when this is all said and done! |
4. We moved into the family room!
And then our sweet neighbors gave us the most perfect rug for the space!
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| It's not completely finished, but its livable! |
5. We discovered that the leak from last august was actually TWO leaks. We thought it was just the washing machine, so we removed that and bought a craigslist replacement. And then carried on with laundry like normal from Aug 2017 to October 2018. When it came time to move into our new laundry room from the old laundry room, we discovered that there has been a slow leak from the copper drain pipe in the wall. A steady trickle had been leaking out of that pipe for over a year with every single load of laundry we did. I have done a LOT of laundry (I know this because I can slam through a box of 250 dryer sheets in no time.) So now that room needs to have some repairs before it can become a pantry. And our master bathroom vanity will need to be replaced when we get a chance.
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| Original Laundry Room - June 2017 Picture |
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| Matt fixing the leaky pipe. (thru the wall, you can see the back of our old master bathroom vanity cabinet) |
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| Kitchen side |
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| Bathroom side |
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| New |
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| New, taken just this morning! |
The other day, I was in our old master bathroom fixing my hair, when I heard a weird rumbling sound. And suddenly, an ARM came flying through the vanity cabinet beside me! Matt succeeded at scaring the living daylights out of me! I'm not in the habit of using expletives; so I didn't swear at him ... but whatever I said came pretty close, and I think I took a swing at him when he finally came around the corner! He just laughed and laughed and laughed.
So, that's the back story. Two Tuesdays ago, Matt was able to begin grouting our master bathroom shower. That's the last step before we can start using that bathroom. He was grouting, I was doing whatever it is I do (working on my 3rd box of bon-bons maybe?). I went to check on him and he had grouted A LOT of shower, and he was at the part where you use a damp sponge to wipe the grout off of the tile faces. It's supposed to come right off. Except this grout in particular had dried like cement much more quickly than expected. I jumped in and started trying to wipe it off. It would not budge.
The grout is medium grey, so when it's wet it's charcoal black color. Imagine white tiles covered in a thick mess of charcoal grout that will not budge. It was maddening. We stood in there together, silently trying to scrub the grout off the shower walls. From 10 pm until 1 am we worked (he was working before that already, and he stayed up until 2) trying everything we could to remove the grout. We tried scouring pads, putty knives, elbow grease, more water. The tiles have little dimples in them that were filled with drying grout. The faces were coated and the grout lines between tiles were anything but straight. It was the two of us vs. the clock. We were both covered head to toe in charcoal sludgy grouty nastiness.
And the whole entire time, barely anything was happening other than the grout drying more and more by the second. It was almost impossible to remove. It was horrible. I can't say that emphatically enough. The worst part is that it would cost a ton of money to rip it out and start over, but it's not really financially feasible at this point for us to rip out a perfectly functioning shower for cosmetic reasons. Even when it is AS UGLY AS IT COULD POSSIBLY BE be and no one wants to put their name on it, it's hard to justify ripping it out! The basic purpose of a shower is to be a waterproof location in which a person can shampoo their hair. It doesn't have to be pretty. We could still shampoo in there even though it looked like a sewer pipe had exploded. It was so terrible.
We tried so hard to get the grout removed. We didn't talk about it until later, but each of us thought to ourselves, "I don't even want to take a picture. We do not need to document this. We just need to be sure to get a shower curtain and never ever let anyone see this embarrassment."
So we didn't even take pictures!!
Eventually, Matt resorted to using a nylon brush head on a drill to slowly brush away the grout. It worked, but it was slow going. Like I said, he stayed up until 2 a.m., but it was encouraging that something was working.
The next morning, I woke up discouraged that we had such a problem on our hands. I mean, we've been at this for over a year. We're so ready to be done. Everything has gone relatively smoothly, we can see the end in sight and now this!
I was making breakfast and coffee, getting the kids off to school and Matt came out to the kitchen after a good night's sleep and said, "Well, I figure if Michelangelo can carve a David out of granite, we oughta be able to chip off a little grout."
I agreed and laughed. First I thought how grateful I am to be married to a dude who has good perspective. Secondly, I thought, "Well, he's right. If an artist can chip away at stone and make a naked Bible guy...certainly, we can chip away at grout. Game On."
I made it my mission of the day to become Michelangelo. I started drill-brushing away the grout at 7:30 a.m., and worked until around 4 pm with breaks to eat and to transport kids to and from school. I timed it, and it took me about 15 minutes per tile. By the time I was clocked out for the day my finger tips were numb and tingly from manning the drill. I used a spray bottle to wet the grout before drilling it...it helped eliminate dust, and I had to refill the spray bottle twice, that's how much spraying and drilling was occurring. I sprayed and drill-brushed the faces. And then I cleaned up the dimples and joints with a putty knife. I had a pretty good rhythm going after a while. The whole time I kept thinking, "If my kids were being held hostage by terrorists, and they demanded that I remove grout from a shower with a drill and a nylon brush head, how fast could I do it?" And that's what I did. It was Jess vs. the Kidnapping Terrorists.
(These are in no particular order, but you can see how thick the grout was under that ledge. It was like that over the entire wall!)
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| In this photo, you can see what the grout looks like dry (top) and wet (under the ledge). That's also important. At first, I thought, well, once it's dry, if we can't get this off, it's really not that noticeable. It sort of blends in. But the thing with grout...it will always darken when wet! So even if it looked ok dry...any time the shower is turned on, everything would turn black again! NOT GOOD. |
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| Used brush head vs. a new brush head |
And darned if we didn't defeat those nasty kidnappers by the following day! Because of other responsibilities, Halloween costume prep, and just pure weakness...(took a while for my hands to make a comeback)...Matt completed Operation Grout Removal. We estimated that it took about 20 hours of work between the two of us to remove all of it. I cannot even put into words the relief we both feel at NOT having the most embarrassing DIY fail in the world in our house. Of course Matt analyzed things and knows where we went wrong, and knows how to move forward.
Cause it's still not done. The's one more shower wall to grout. But after cleaning up that giant mess, we both walked away and that dumb bathroom is STILL exactly as we left it almost 2 week ago. Neither of us has stepped foot in there. (Wait! I take that back! I swooped in there once to set down that wooden shelf I found hidden behind other treasures at our local antique mall -- the one that makes me itch.) There's still a bucket of (now dried) grout, an old worn out drill brush, piles of supplies and a bucket of water with (totally useless thanks for nothing) sponges in them! It's like a freak show crime scene.
We'll get to it after a while. Might even take some pictures of the grouting process this time.
Meanwhile, I'm keeping a close eye on my kids AND devising a plan for getting back at Matt!
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