Being a blogger means I take pictures every single day, which means hundreds, if not thousands of pictures are taken every single week. Not all pictures are uploaded anywhere straight away, some are kept for months later, and some need hours of editing work done to them before they can be posted anywhere. Some are instantly posted to a platform or two instantly though - if you're on my personal Facebook then you know how much I love a good old curry for dinner!
One of the main places I take photos is in my kitchen, its where the most amount of natural light comes in, and although it's small it's quite spacious, and the tiles can be a good backdrop - that is when they're looking picture good of course! My tiles get wiped down most days because splashes and drops happen when your cooking, and thankfully they come up sparkling clean, the grout however.... well that's a whole new story isn't it, and I know I'm not alone!
Around 18 months ago, I had a money tin I was collecting loose change in to get my bathroom and kitchen tiles re-done. I socialise a lot, and now I've got a house and not a flat, quite a lot of the socialising goes on here at my home, so that means I have lots of visitors, some planned and some unplanned, and there is nothing worse than being in the kitchen, making hot drinks for your guests and cringing that the guests may notice the cobweb in the corner that you've been meaning to get with the feather duster (but that's an exercise regime because you know there's a big spider somewhere who has made said web!), or the state of the grout on the tiles.
My tiles, like many of us, go the whole way around my kitchen, which isn't the worse thing in the world, until you start calculating the cost of how many you'll need, how many come in each pack and actually it isn't going to be as cheap as what you'd hoped, not by the time you add in all the bits you don't think about, and the cost of labour too! So this tin, was forever growing, and was forever being dipped into, the ice cream man would come round and I'd have no problem 'borrowing' £8 out of it to buy us all an ice cream with a flake, or 'lending' money out of it to pay the bin cleaners, it was a never-ending cycle, I'd top it up and empty it twice as quickly.
I was fed up with my tiles - well, not even the tiles but the grout! However I couldn't afford to rip them off the wall and replace them, so I got hunting the good old internet for ideas on how to spruce up tiles. The common ''you should already know this, and didn't need Google to help'' answers come up, such as replacing tiles, and even regrouting them. Replacing them was out of the question financially, and regrouting them was too, as I'd have to pay someone who knew what they were doing, because me and DIY don't get on that well!
I did thankfully come across some more easier and cheaper ideas, and if you've been a reader of Unique Young Mum for a while then you know I love a bargain and doing things on a budget! One of the ideas was using sticky back plastic to give your tiles a whole new look, without the cost and expertise of retiling, but then I remembered 2001 when I was a fresh year 7 at secondary school, and how something so apparently easy turned into a task and a half, it reminded me of how much I hate sticky back plastic, I was so thankful when Spud started secondary school, the hype of covering your books with sticky back plastic seemed to of long disappeared!
The internet come up top trumps when it showed me a product I never knew existed though, GROUT PENS, like can you actually believe it? I couldn't! No more horrible dusty looking grout, which wasn't actually dust because no amount of polish, bleach or other cleaner was bringing that grout back to its perfect sparkling white! I purchased a few Rainbow Chalk Markers because as I said previously my kitchen has so many tiles, and I was amazed that one pen has done every single bit of grout on show, in not only my kitchen but my bathroom too, and all on a bargain budgeting cost!
Now when I have guest round, I only have to worry about them checking out the cobwebs on show, but thankfully they all know about my spider phobia, and how worked up I get over cleaning cobwebs!
Until next time,
Jada x
The internet come up top trumps when it showed me a product I never knew existed though, GROUT PENS, like can you actually believe it? I couldn't! No more horrible dusty looking grout, which wasn't actually dust because no amount of polish, bleach or other cleaner was bringing that grout back to its perfect sparkling white! I purchased a few Rainbow Chalk Markers because as I said previously my kitchen has so many tiles, and I was amazed that one pen has done every single bit of grout on show, in not only my kitchen but my bathroom too, and all on a bargain budgeting cost!
Now when I have guest round, I only have to worry about them checking out the cobwebs on show, but thankfully they all know about my spider phobia, and how worked up I get over cleaning cobwebs!
Until next time,
Jada x
This is a collaborative post.
