Wish It To The Cornfield

I vacillated quite a bit as to whether I should get rid of the droopy tile. There were good arguments on both sides, but ultimately it came down to how much it would bother Me. Honestly, I don’t think most of the huddled masses would have noticed, and those that did would have thought, “Hey look, that tiles a little crooked”, and then they would have quickly forgotten all about it.

For the most part it wasn’t noticeable at all because it was sort of close to the floor. You had to either sit down on the toilet and stare at it, or you had to view it from afar. Being that the bathroom is so small, viewing at it from afar was not easy.

Today while I was at work, I pretty much decided I was going to leave it. My fear was that I would start a tile destruction cascade event where I would end up replacing a lot more than just the one tile. There are a lot ways a tile removal operation can go wrong for a novice tile remover like myself. I convinced myself it was character, so it should stay, and in 6 months I’d never notice.

I got home from work and walked in to the kitchen just as I always do. As I walked up to the sink to open the blinds the violet light caught my eye from the bathroom window. As I looked in the bathroom from the kitchen to admire the light I could see the dropping tile. It was probably the only spot in the whole house you could view it from a far. To me it stuck out like a sore thumb. It had to go.

Before


After


The whole operation took less than 5 minutes. I scored the tile in 3 or 4 places with the diamond blade on the grinder and popped most of the pieces off with a thin pry bar. The last few fragments were removed with a hammer and chisel. It is nice to know that the tile was on there good and I had good coverage with the thin-set. In the after picture, you can see how some of the cement board came off with the thin-set. No sense in making a minute batch of thin-set just for this one tile. I’ll wait until I’m finishing the back wall and I’ll put a new tile in then

Glad that’s over!