Life Is But A Drink

No, I’m not pregnant.  And, no, I have not wielded any sort of trowel or trowel-like apparatus since my failed bricklaying experiment a few weeks ago (see here to re-live that horror).  I am, however, pretty much crazy.

Over the weekend, I dug deep into one of my drawers for a pair of sweatpants that I could wear to do some work outside.  Because it was too cold for shorts (where did you go, my friend Spring?).  I found this lovely pair with some (very!) old stains on them.  Grout stains circa 2007.

The origins of these grout stains?  Back in mid-2007, I decided to re-grout the tile in our hall bathroom when we accidentally* bought a new townhome and had to put our condo on the market basically overnight (since we couldn’t really afford the new townhome without selling the old condo).  It needed to get done and, although it would have been perfectly acceptable for me to wait for my husband to do it, I decided that I was going to take matters into my own hands and re-grout it one night after work while my hubby was away at some singing gig or another.

I was 7 months pregnant.

And there I was.  Down there on the floor, on my knees, re-grouting the tile with my big ole’ pregnant belly.  Generally not advisable.  On several grounds.

Why did the tile floor need to be re-grouted?  Well, you see,  my husband and I are not particularly huge DIYers.  Little stuff, yes.  Major room overhauls and remodeling, no.  (We’ve gotten fairly good at calling a capable contractor or handyman to handle our more significant projects.)   However, in 2005, we (well, really, my husband) completely overhauled the hall bathroom in our old condo.

It went from this BORING bathroom with standard builder cabinets, an ugly off-white/yellowy counter, that unfortunately classic bathroom light fixture, big mirror sans frame, laminate flooring, etc.**:

To this lovely bright and airy bathroom:

We put up beadboard on the walls (my husband so learned how to rock a mitre saw), installed a new light fixture (which you can’t really see in the photo), put up a lovely cabinet above the toilet, replaced the mirror, laid cute little hexagon tiles on the floor, put in a new toilet and a new pedestal sink, and installed new towel bars.  Really the only thing that stayed behind was the shower because it was in decent shape already and was covered by a (new!) shower curtain.  We were so proud of our blood, sweat, and tears and the resulting transformation, which us non-DIYers found simply miraculous.

Everything we did held up really well over the next couple of years that we lived in the condo.  Everything except the floor tile.  We apparently didn’t use enough grout or used a crappy grout or something because, within a year or so, it started to wear away a bit and was looking a bit shoddy.

Here’s a little photo documenting the deterioration.  I’m not sure that you can really see it, but there are places within the white grout lines that look black or gray.  That’s not dirt.  It’s places where the grout was wearing away.  Boo.

Anyway, that’s why I ended up re-grouting the bathroom while 7 months pregnant.  Completely insane, I know.  But we sold the place within days of putting it on the market, for more than our asking price, which I attribute entirely to the pretty new grout in the hall bathroom.

* OK, we didn’t actually ACCIDENTALLY buy a townhome.  We knew that we were buying it.  We just didn’t have any real plans to buy one.  We inadvertently fell in love with a townhome that we were looking at for fun and, three days later, we made an offer that was accepted and OMG we just bought a new place. 

** Yes, those are (freshly laundered) bras hanging over the top of the shower curtain.  Sorry.  Never anticipated that I’d have a blog and end up broadcasting this photo (and my undergarments) all over these here Internets.