An unscheduled off day, but I didn't rest...

I was ruminating all day. Earlier this week we had a guy install brick veneer on one of our basement walls. It was a great deal, he was only charging me $250 for labor. As the grout dried, it was poorly done, and was smeared all over the face of the bricks. It really didn't look good.

I did some research on what would take it off and the only thing coming up was to use acid. As I did more research I found out that acid was dangerous and would not work well on porous brick. The experts said it could change the color of the brick or grout. I was really starting to get anxious, as we did get a deal, but the wall did not look very good.

I did contact one guy who said I was "hooped". He said the only thing that I could do, or should have done right after the brick was laid, was to use a brush and water to clean the grout and grout haze off the brick.

Late in the afternoon I was in panic mode. I went to home depot and picked up all kinds of brushes, sponges and cleaning detergents.

When I got home I went right to the basement and started wetting the walls and scrubbing with a steel brush. Low and behold, it was working. I was saturating the wall so much that it was allowing me to soften the grout, rake around the brick and wash down the side of the wall with a sponge full of water. I also used a pressure washer with a very small amount of pressure for a final cleaning.

As I was cleaning and sponging, Alice was mopping up the water. What we were doing was pretty dangerous and we did not know what the potential water damage could be. I must of used 15 buckets of water, plus the water from the pressure washer. We started at 5 pm and ended at 11:30 pm. We didn't get to bed until 1:30 pm. The kids figured I'll be sore tomorrow with all the scrubbing I was doing. I was scrubbing so hard, one of my knuckles started to bleed, athough it was worth it, the wall was starting to look much better. I will say about 1/2 way through my upper back was hurting, plus I had my injured lower back from falling down stairs last week.

Because of this crisis, I didn't do any training. I figured I'd push it off until tomorrow.