Hallucinogens and Ceramic Tile

[Matthew Sturgis]

You can probably count the number of tile jobs I have done on two hands. So I am learning something new every time I clean tile and I learned a valuable lesson on this particular job.

I get to a customers house on a hot summer day and before I start cleaning, she offers me a bottle of water. I drink the bottle of water.

Then, I start prespraying the bathroom with Viporvenom. I work my way backwards till I get to the door. I pull the door out and prespray behind it and swing the door back towards the wall. I then glance at the rest of the floor that I have already presrayed. The floor looks like it is covered in blue thread locker. I mean color and consistency exactly. Adrenaline kicks in as I start seeing dollar signs of what it will cost to replace this tile. I grab my turbo hand tool and start rinsing. It is rinsing fine but there is a very fine grout/caulk line by the shower I cannot get with the tool. So I take my rag and wrap it around my index finger and wipe along the tub. When I look at the rag there is a big blue spot on the rag. Good, got it. I keep extracting and get it all the threadlocker up before it dries in the grout.

Now I am letting everything dry and studying the tile to see if there is a large enough color difference that I might be in trouble. But to me it looks OK. I get the customer into the bathroom and start explaining what happened. She gives me a look of disbelief. So I reach around to my pack pocket to show her the blue spot on my rag and there is nothing. There is no blue spot on the rag.

It's at this point that I am certain there was something in that bottle water. I quickly excuse myself, drive home, and listen to Dark Side of the Moon all night.

But seriously, what the heck was going on with tile?

Here's a pic after the tile was cleaned:

 

[Old Coastie]

Some reaction with hairspray or body powder, maybe.

 

[hogjowl]

Did you save us some of that water?

 

[Sierra Clean Care]

You can probably count the number of tile jobs I have done on two hands. So I am learning something new every time I clean tile and I learned a valuable lesson on this particular job.

I get to a customers house on a hot summer day and before I start cleaning, she offers me a bottle of water. I drink the bottle of water.

Then, I start prespraying the bathroom with Viporvenom. I work my way backwards till I get to the door. I pull the door out and prespray behind it and swing the door back towards the wall. I then glance at the rest of the floor that I have already presrayed. The floor looks like it is covered in blue thread locker. I mean color and consistency exactly. Adrenaline kicks in as I start seeing dollar signs of what it will cost to replace this tile. I grab my turbo hand tool and start rinsing. It is rinsing fine but there is a very fine grout/caulk line by the shower I cannot get with the tool. So I take my rag and wrap it around my index finger and wipe along the tub. When I look at the rag there is a big blue spot on the rag. Good, got it. I keep extracting and get it all the threadlocker up before it dries in the grout.

Now I am letting everything dry and studying the tile to see if there is a large enough color difference that I might be in trouble. But to me it looks OK. I get the customer into the bathroom and start explaining what happened. She gives me a look of disbelief. So I reach around to my pack pocket to show her the blue spot on my rag and there is nothing. There is no blue spot on the rag.

It's at this point that I am certain there was something in that bottle water. I quickly excuse myself, drive home, and listen to Dark Side of the Moon all night.

But seriously, what the heck was going on with tile?

Here's a pic after the tile was cleaned:

Next time you listen to that album, on the third roar of the lion(Wizard of Oz), press play on you're MP3 player/cd player..... whole different experience....... then you know what's in the water........

 

[Mikey P]

That's a tough tile to get the grout excess off of.

Guessing you loosened the "haze"...

 

[Matthew Sturgis]

Did you save us some of that water?

The water is all gone but try the kool-aid! It's all I've been drinking since I got here.

Guessing you loosened the "haze"...

Unfortunately the haze was blue and not purple. Not really the "experience" I was looking for.

How would you approach this floor going forward?

 

[Mikey P]

It's porcelain as you probably know, do you have a Malgrit brush and a 175?

I still think you have grout have problems and bleeding of the color.

You'll need to scrub the heck out of that floor with an acid to get it all off

 

[Cameron DeMille]

this is weird, no idea.

Only thing I can think of is did you have anything in your sprayer prior to putting the Venom in that contained UV inhibitors? UV inhibitors are often blue and can separate/collect on the bottom when not mixed properly. I have had instances before when rinsing out sealers frm sprayers, we had a little collection of blue at the bottom. It just took some extra rinsing

 

[Matthew Sturgis]

It's porcelain as you probably know, do you have a Malgrit brush and a 175?

Alls i knew is it wasn't stone. I have the 175 but no brush. You think the grout would still look good with the color removed? Can I get myself in trouble with that color floating around?

did you have anything in your sprayer prior to putting the Venom in that contained UV inhibitors?

That's a good point but as far as I know I don't have anything with UV inhibitors.

 

[Mikey P]

All the color won't come out, no worries

 

[Matthew Sturgis]

All the color won't come out, no worries

Nice!

 

[Willy P]