WordPerv

On Sunday I began my weekend project: re-grouting the half-bath and entryway floor. I thought it would be easy – after all, the directions on the tub of grout make it sound easy enough – this should have been my first clue that it wouldn’t be nearly as easy as I had envisioned.

First I had to remove as much of the old grout as I could which took far longer than I had expected. I also chewed through and ruined one of the bits to the dremel (sorry Brian!) since it seems grout is a lot tougher than it looks. Who knew?! After several hours of dremeling away (yep, I just made up a new word: dremeling – verb, the act of using a dremel), I was finally ready to begin applying the new grout. As I put it down I was filled with excitement – it was so clean and bright and white and NICE LOOKING (I’m quite sure the previous grout was original to the house – more than 20 years old!). Because I know you have to wipe away the excess grout after it’s been applied, I only did the half-bath, an area less than 4′ x 4′. 

I finished applying the grout and decided to take Daisy for a walk to give the grout some time to set, but also because Daisy has been hyper and a little needy lately (our minimum is 4 miles a day and we’ve been walking between 5-6 miles). While walking I was already congratulating myself, thinking, “Damn, I am the Queen of Home Improvement Projects!”

After we returned from our walk I fed her and then threw some food in the oven for myself. This is important because for the first time in WEEKS I actually felt hungry. Even Saturday, when I ran 20 miles, I wasn’t hungry and realized the next day that I had only consumed about 700-800 calories, whereas I burned twice as much during my run… That is NOT a good thing, so on Sunday when my body said it was hungry I listened.

While my food was baking I checked on the grout. It was still wet and I reread the directions, confirming that it stated it needed to set for 15-30 minutes before you begin the process of wiping the excess away. I’m not sure why, but suddenly the lightning bolt hit me that the grout at the BACK of the room had now been sitting for nearly 45 minutes. FUCK!!!!

I grabbed a bucket of water and began wiping the excess grout away, starting at the front of the room because quite frankly I didn’t have a choice. 15 minutes later my dinner was done and I’m no where near getting to the back of the room. Do I keep working or eat? Never fear friends, I listened to my body and ate dinner.

I finally finished wiping away the excess grout nearly 2 hours later, because it was practically dry and rock hard, which means it took more than twice the effort to clean it up. And the funny thing with grout is it usually takes several applications to get all the cracks completely filled in. So today I got to repeat the fun all over again, only this time I applied it in small patches so I could remove it before it dried completely. And it took me all day to finish the half-bath and do half of the entryway, but this is because I took my excessively needy beautiful little dog for a long walk in the park and because I also ran out of grout. Guess I know what project I’ll be finishing on my next day off.

And what did I learn from this fun weekend project: 1) I hate tile flooring; 2) if I ever have to re-grout something again I’m going to pay someone to either re-grout it for me or rip it out and install something easier to maintain; and 3) despite my less than easy project I still feel a sense of accomplishment for having done it – even if I’m not 100% done just yet.

However, even with the sense of accomplishment, I feel like I need to demote myself. I’m no longer the Queen of Home Improvement Projects, I’m only a Princess… But a Princess with pretty new grout: