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Hot take: I brushed the wrong way for 6 years and a cracked flue tile finally tipped me off
Been sweeping for 11 years now and last month I finally figured out I've been going top down on every single job when I should've been switching it up depending on the flue. Pulled a brush through a brick chimney on a 1920s house in Norfolk and heard this awful grinding sound, then saw the camera footage showing I'd been roughing up the mortar joints where the tiles were already soft. An old timer at the supply shop asked me one simple thing, 'you checking the tile condition before you pick your bristle type?' and I just stood there like an idiot. Now I run a camera first on anything older than 30 years and I'm finding cracks I used to brush right past. How many of you all check tile condition before you even pick a brush off the truck?
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ninal914d ago
This is exactly like what happened to me with grout lines before I started actually looking at the tile before scrubbing. I spent years treating every floor the same way because that is what I was taught, and it turns out half the damage I was doing came from not slowing down to look first. The thing is, we get into habits because they work most of the time, and then we stop asking if they still make sense. Then one little weird sound or one off job wakes you up and you realize you have been on autopilot for years. It happens in every trade, honestly. The fix is almost always the same too, just take ten seconds to look at what you are actually working with before you start.
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