More Internet wisdom that worked

These days, whenever we need to find something out, we probably turn first to the Internet. We can learn many interesting things that way, and sometimes we may even find effective ways to do something we need to do, like how to fix something we don’t know how to fix. Today I tried a repair method I read about on the Internet, and it actually worked.

The problem was that our en suite basin, which is made of plastic (or maybe it’s fibreglass), was stained with my beard dye (don’t judge). It happened because the dye’s applied with a little brush and it’s possible to flick the dye without even seeing it until later. Left too long, it stains the basin.

So I turned to the Internet and the wisdom contained thereon was that nail polish remover would remove it (it was also supposed to work on removing the printing from those little plastic tags used to close bread bags).

We had some nail polish remover that we used as a solvent in our old house (maybe it was another Internet answer—I don’t remember). So I tried it and—nothing. I remembered that the instructions specified nail polish remover with acetone, which, apparently, they don’t all have. In fact, it didn’t smell anything like the stuff my mother used when I was a kid. So, I decided to buy some acetone and try that.

I’ve never bought acetone before, and I assumed I could get it at a hardware/home centre, and Google confirmed that. So, I headed out today to get the groceries, stopping first at the nearby home centre, and I bought the smallest bottle they had.

The acetone worked. I had to rub the spots, especially the darker ones, but it did work. I was kind of surprised, to be honest. The photos up top show the before and after, and I do realise it’s kind of hard to see. The shadow of the tap handle at the left edge of both photos is the point of reference.

There was one small (literally) failure, though: I tried the acetone on a bread tag, but it broke apart as I did. Maybe straight acetone is too harsh (it can strip paint, after all), or maybe I was pressing too hard, or maybe it was just a fragile tag. I'll try again another time.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to talk about trying something I learned about on the Internet. Sometimes the method works, and other times it just doesn’t. As it happens, I have another one to talk about, something that’s been in the works for a couple years, actually, and it's still not ready because the trial isn’t done yet (I read about a variation I haven’t been able to try yet).

Sometimes the Internet is pretty useless for telling us how to do things, but other times it actually delivers. This was (mostly) one of those times.