The perils of blog browsing

It’s all Amy Duck’s fault!  A Saturday afternoon and I had no plans to do much except watch a bit of the Six Nations Rugby on TV.  Waiting for the start I idly browsed a few boating blogs.  Then I happened to spot on Amy’s MB Willow blog that James had bought her a shiny new tile grout removing disc, and I thought, “Our shower at home needs regrouting, I could use something like that.”  Straight to Google I went, hunting for grout removing tools and came across several references to people getting the old grout out using a Dremel.  Aaah I’ve got one of them and there is a little tool a bit like an enlarged dentists drill bit in the kit.   Acting on impulse  and not dressing for the occasion, that is to say not undressing either,  I plugged in the Dremel and set to in the shower cubicle. Just to try it out you understand.

Ten minutes later I stopped.  My hair is getting fairly white these days, but then it was like the purest snow, as was my face, my jumper etc etc. Some of the grout had indeed come out, but with my usual incompetence I managed to score a nasty groove where it shouldn’t be in one of the tiles.  Hmmm.  Well in the immortal words of Magnuss Magnusson "I’ve started so I’ll finish”.  By now I had abandoned the Dremel and got a hand grout scraper from Wickes (only 5 mins from our house).  A bit slower but less risk of damage.  Then I thought I might as well rip out all the silicone sealant around the edges as it was starting to get spots of mould.  This needs a sharp craft knife to cut it away and in the time honoured manner I cut my finger.  Now I had red blood spots on the white dust, very pretty.  I soldiered on, and ripping out the sealant along the edge of the shower tray, three wall tiles fell out.  I poked around behind them.  They are stuck to a wooden back board which (understandably after nearly twenty years) had succumbed to a patch of wet rot.

So my couple of minutes browsing caused me to miss half the rugby, get my clothes all full of white dust, cut my finger, have to cut out and replace some rotten wood,  and go out and buy a whole tub of tile cement just to stick on three tiles. Now I’m waiting for the tile cement to dry before I grout the whole lot.  I should really stop reading blogs.

PS Things are progressing re CanalPlan and CanalOmeter spreadsheets, it’s just that I’ve been a bit busy!