We spent...

A week in Arkansas. I thought that I was going to have to stay for longer than originally planned BUT things were better so I came back home. We asked Ma Burke what project she wanted us to work on and she said trimming her bushes but it was really too hot to do that so I asked if she would like us to tackle her master bath. She was thrilled at this idea because her shower head had been dripping for years and she had what she thought was mold or mildew in her tile grout. It was a BIG project for a week but Wayne thought we could get it done. We started out with a Lowe's run for a shower faucet as well as some tools we would need. Wayne searched the internet to see if there was a way to get to it without coming from the back side but every video he looked at did it that way so we had to cut a hole in her side wall so we could get out the old faucet and put in the new one. That took a day to get that done but the solder joints were good and it didn't leak...well kind of. This is a funny story. The water shut off is in her yard on the other side of her driveway from the front door. So we had Ma stand in the shower to watch for leaks and she could yell at me (I was near the front door) if there were any and I could  yell at Wayne to shut it back off. So he turned on the water and I could hear water running but Ma never yelled at me so I ran back to investigate and the water was running out the shower head and into the shower but the pipes weren't leaking at all. I hurried up and shut off the faucet but by that time the shower was FULL of water because we had the drain plugged with a paper towel to prevent junk going down it and clogging it. By this time we also had removed some of the tile and soaked sheet rock and were trying to dry the shower out so it was VERY WET again. Luckily it was quitting time so it had all night to dry out again.

She has a ~45 year old home with those lovely green tile / toilet / sink combos. She actually really likes the color and wanted to keep it. We thought about changing it to a fiberglass shower but the drain was wrong and moving a drain when it is on a slab and that old was too big of a project for us to tackle. So then we had to try to salvage green tile but knew we could buy white tile so Wayne busted out the white that was around the bottom and just took out the green (which pretty much fell out since the sheet rock behind it was pretty well rotten). We got backer board to replace the sheet rock to make it up to code. We thought the floor tile (it is tiny one inch) might be in an old lead pan but it was put on poured concrete and since it was in good shape we didn't need to change it. We found out that what she thought was mold on the floor was actually missing grout. So I had A LOT of green tile to scrape and clean...it took the better part of two days. Luckily Wayne had other things he could work on in the bathroom while I did that.

We finally got the tile back in on Saturday night (a week ago yesterday) but we were two days behind schedule. We didn't want to grout on Sunday but also knew we would NEVER get the project done before our flight out if we didn't. So we got up Sunday ready to grout but first had to read tutorials since it had been years since we had grouted. So we tried to get the grout to stick but it was all rough and gritty and just wouldn't stay in our joints. So we called his brother who had a lot more experience than us in doing this and described our grout and what it was doing and he said we had defective grout. By this time it was late on Sunday (it took about 6 hours to prep the old grout...AKA take it out) so the project was on hold until Monday.

So early Monday morning we made another trip to Lowe's to get more grout and this time it worked!! The only problem was that I didn't sponge off enough of it so it looked more mudded than sponged but it will have to do until I get back to fix it. At least it is waterproof (we hope...couldn't shower in it until after we left).

I wish I had photos but my camera's battery went dead and of course I forgot the charger.