Monday, April 27, 2015

Save Us From the Time of Tile

(Alternate title: A Bit of a Caulk Up)

Funny story about the backsplash mentioned in yesterday's post; because the laundry tub sink is so deep, we hadn't really given any thought about one until we were testing the faucet, and the subsequent wall wiping made it clear this would need to be addressed.

The quickest solution to this, taking into consideration my total lack of experience dealing with tile and grout and the like, was to purchase 4 of those peel-n-stick mosaic thingies from the store and trim the two pieces behind the faucet a bit to account for the back of the sink being about two inches higher than the side. Unfortunately, the side piece wouldn't fit snugly into the corner due to the slope on the rising back edge of the sink.


It is easy enough to cut out a 3" strip or even a single rectangular piece from the mosaic grid, which is what I ended up doing, but that left about and inch-and-a-half of empty space that would look pretty fugly if I just tried to caulk it up.  I took one of the single square pieces from a peice I had previously trimmed for the back wall, locked it in the vise-grips in a piece of newspaper to prevent scratching, and used a cutting wheel from the Dremel to cut off the lower right corner, then a grinding head to buff out the resulting black mark.  Feeling very smug, I smooshed it into place with some caulk and there you go!

THEN I had to go and spoil it all by taking the final 9" x 12" sheet, peeling off ALL the backing instead of just the bottom third.  While I stood there with it flat in my palms and pondered the best way to get around the enormous faucet to the wall behind it, the middle sagged, my palms instinctively slapped together to prevent the glass from falling to the cement floor, and smack, the two sides were comPLETELY and irreversibly glued together.  

I uttered a carnal verb with about 22 Fs in it, angrily threw the now USELESS paperweight that HAD been an elegant handful of tile mosaic into the trash like it was an NCAA slam dunk competition and stormed off to Rona to buy a replacement, asking Audrey if she could kindly scrape away or smoosh in the caulk patiently awaiting for the tiles to descend into it. 

Thankfully, the lineup at the cash registers was pretty modest, and in no time at at all, I was headed home, and salved my bruised ego by putting on my sunglasses and turning the music way up with the windows open.  15 minutes after getting in the door, the backsplash (such as it is) was complete.

As lessons go, $10 is a small price to pay for such a reminder about the right way to go about things.

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