Robots are the future when it comes to cleaning our homes, apparently. Forget Mr Muscle, robots are the ones doing the jobs we hate. But as this homeowner found out the hard way, these smart gadgets don't always do the jobs without causing their fair share of mayhem.
Related: The online vacuum-cleaning hack that Dyson is warning against
Samantha Smith got a very unwelcome surprise when she returned home, to find her robot vacuum cleaner had set off to clean the floors and in the process 'dragged' a tin of paint around the kitchen – black paint nonetheless.
The result is FAR from a masterpiece. When things don't go to plan with smart cleaning gadgets...
Shocking robot vacuum paint spill...
It's every homeowners worst nightmare, black paint spilled all over immaculate white floor tiles! (Insert horrified emoji face here).
‘I set "bop bop" off in the morning – we have cats, so its great to get random hay bails of cat fur. We live in an apartment so he vacuums the whole place’ explains Samantha. ‘We had been doing touch ups during lockdown with my Abigail Ahern Hudson Black paint in the sitting room. We had the tin and brushed etc to one side waiting to be put away,’ she explains. You can see where this story is going! ‘I came home and ‘bop bop’ had knocked it over then dragged it round the kitchen!’
Her immediate reaction was, as you can imagine, unprintable. But she remained calm because she knew that it could be cleaned up.
Miraculously she just used soapy water to clean up the water-based paint.
Luckily for Samantha she's a tile expert - working as a design consultant at Westerhope Tile Centre so tiles are pretty much her life she tells Ideal Home.
Samantha tells us ‘there's nothing I don't know about tiles. Soapy water and that's it! I did also have a spray bottle of just normal kitchen cleaner too but the soapy water was good. Didn't take long to clean, just a bit longer than cleaning the floor normally.'
Fortunately because she knew it would clean off Samantha was able to see the funny side. ‘I did laugh. I knew it would come off the tiles as they are porcelain, the grout is epoxy grout so it's tougher than cement based grouts’ It’s for this reason that the paint didn’t stain the pristine grout either.
Thank goodness Samantha is a tile expert is all we can say.
Samantha's stylish kitchen before the paint spill
It's a good job it all ended well. As you can see, the kitchen is far too stylish to have been ruined by the robot vacuum paint spill!
Related: Best steam cleaners 2020 – the top steam mops for refreshing floors and more
Do you have a robot calamity story? We want to hear from you.
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