No question about it. Necessity is the mother of invention. It's been 9 years since I moved in and it's time to do some maintenance. The part that needed the most attention recently was the bathroom. The grout started coming off. Being a handyman myself, I considered it my weekend project.
First step - remove the old grout. I grabbed my goggles, hammer, and an old screw driver and started chipping away...and chipping...and chipping...aaand ooops. I just chipped the edges of adjacent tiles. :(
I knew it was coming. It already happened before when I did the bathroom walls and this is what I have to pay for being stubborn. Okay, wrong tool for the job. But I don't have anything else. I know an oscillating tool would do the job but this is a one time task and I'm not willing to buy one. Renting is out of the question since we have none of that around here.
Refusing to accept defeat, I made my very own grout remover. Powered by just a little elbow grease, this tool can get the job done in at least half the time, guaranteed! LOL!
Let's get to it! We'll need:
- a piece of scrap wood
- a hacksaw blade
- handsaw
Using a handsaw, make a groove on a piece of wood. How deep it should be depends on how much grout you want removed. In my case, I wanted about 5mm of the blade sticking out when you put the hacksaw blade in the groove. The handsaw will cut a groove just wide enough for two hacksaw blades. Just break the hacksaw in half using pliers and put both pieces in the groove.
Cut off the excess wood, and we're in business :-)
I don't know why I just thought about it now after doing the shower walls that took 2 days. My contraption got the job done in less than 2 hours! No more jagged, uneven grooves and no more chipped tiles!
