No more chips, thanks

We were warned that tile replacement would be a tricky business, but that cream chip in our lovely grey bathroom floor screamed at me every time I stepped over it. So yesterday young Mr Bathroom Fitter came back to replace the chipped tile. He stood at the door with a hammer in his hand and a chill sped along my spine. Was I doing the right thing? Was I sacrificing over £500-quid's worth of underfloor heating just to fix a chip that probably no-one but us would notice?

When the first hammer blow fell, the question became moot. We were on our way.

The underfloor heating is supplied as a mat. The exact dimensions of the room have to be provided to the supplier as the mat is made to measure. It can't be cut. The wiring that provides the heat is threaded through the mat, which is made of a kind of woven plastic raffia. When tile cement is plopped onto this raffia, it seeps into the weave and sets, so while lifting the tile is relatively easy (once it's been broken into a million pieces), cutting the hardened tile cement from around the wires without breaking them, crushing them, or cutting through them is a tricky business.

But after 90 minutes banging and chiselling, it looked very much as though the process had been successful. We were left with a tile-shaped hole in the floor inside of which eight loops of wire appeared from under adjacent tiles and neatly disappeared back again. Ten days have to elapse to allow the tile cement to fully cure before the heating can be turned on. Since we now have one new tile that ten day clock has had to be reset, so we won't know for certain that the crisis has passed until we can test it. For the moment though, I'm enjoying the fact that there is no longer a small cream mouth yelling at me while I'm cleaning my teeth.