Busy, but not a lot of fun

When I said we had a project here in Pagosa Springs to do, I wasn't kidding.  As I mentioned we have three tile inserts in our shower, and a few of the tiles on one of them were popping out as if water was getting behind them.  We tracked down the mastic and matching grout running all around Albuquerque while we there.  But we needed several days of sitting still to tackle this project.  We popped out the three most offending tiles first, a simple job of slipping a putty knife under and pop, off they came.  It was very apparent water had gotten through the grout and caused the problem.

After making sure I had a picture showing how the tiles were arranged, I worked on getting the rest of the tiles out.  It went pretty well.  I was very careful not to break any, as we weren't sure if we could get replacements.  5 tiles were a challenge, as you can see in the next picture.  The white you see is the old mastic, and it is as hard as concrete!  The 1/2" Corian that makes up the walls of the shower has been rabbeted out by a 1/4" to make the insert for the tile, which means as we are struggling to get the hard dried mastic off, it is sitting on Corian, only 1/4" thick!  We headed over to the Lumber Yard/Hardware store to see if we could figure out the best tools for the job.  We bought a small metal scraper, but we thought we'd maybe have to get a grinder of some sort to grind off the mastic if we couldn't get it off with elbow grease and a scraper. 

Ah yes, the beauty of a small town.  We asked the gentleman who was checking us out if they rented tools?  He said no, but there were several rental places in town.  He then asked what we needed and what were we doing?  I explained the project and said how we probably were going to need a small grinder.  He then says, come back tomorrow morning at 8am when I come into work and I"LL LEND YOU MINE FOR HOWEVER LONG YOU NEED IT!  How bout that?  We thanked him profusely and headed back to the motorhome to tackle the mastic.  We found if you were careful and very forceful at the same time you could chip the mastic off, so I would work for awhile until my hands hurt and then Jan would work for awhile until her hands hurt and so on.

Progress

This picture represents about 3 hours work!  I ran back to the lumber yard, thanked Mark for his generous offer, but said we wouldn't need his grinder after all.  Bought two more scrapers, as we had worn the edges off the first one, then came back and we worked some more last night, then more this morning.  I fought getting the last tiles off, but we were successful, and now have the tough part done!

Success!

Next all we have to do is clean up the tile, reattach the tile with mastic, and then grout!