When purchasing our house we made the mistake of choosing one with no double glazing with the idea of installing it at some point in the future. We still haven't gotten around to it, so our house is usually quite chilly in the winter to say the least and, as there is no extractor fan in either the kitchen or the bathroom, tends to retain moisture in these rooms (don't ask why we bought this place...we ask ourselves the same thing every day!), particularly in the colder months when it's just simply too Baltic up north to shower with the window open!

As a result of this we get quite a bit of mould appearing on the grout between tiles in both the kitchen and bathroom and also in the corners of the window frames where moisture gathers. We've tried several mould removers but most of them were long and tedious jobs involving me, on my hands and knees, dipping a toothbrush in a bottle of mould remover and scrubbing each piece of grouting individually...well, I'm sure you can imagine what a fun little task that was!

My mum knew what an ongoing problem we were having with the reappearance of mould and turned up one day with a bottle of this HD Mould Remover that's she'd bought from Lakeland (£5.49 for 500ml) with it's promise to "destroy mould immediately". To be honest I was sceptical, as nothing else had worked particularly well, but we decided to give it a go anyway.

To start with, it came in a much more useful bottle than previous mould treatments. Complete with a spray/nozzle (child friendly, obviously), which has two "off" settings, one jet setting and one spray setting. So rather than having to dip a toothbrush into a bottle or tip a bottle upside down onto a cloth, you just spray the affected area and leave it for half an hour. No scrubbing, no toothbrushes, no backache! Although I would definitely recommend the wearing of rubber gloves!. After half an hour you go back and wipe the area down with a damp cloth and voila...no more mould!

And you know what...there really was no more mould! Our grout was now back to looking like new as though there'd never been anything wrong with it. We tested it on a small area to start with and my trigger happy hubby was so impressed with the results that he immediately carried on with the rest of the bathroom, eagerly spraying away until every little hint of the black stuff had been targeted. What he hadn't taken into account, however, was the overwhelming smell of the stuff! As we only used a little squirt to start with, it wasn't too bad, but when you use a lot at a time it is incredibly overwhelming...pretty much a pure bleach/chlorine smell. It was SO overpowering that when we went back to wipe it off again we couldn't even be in the room for long enough! We quickly threw the window open, closed the door behind us and used the downstairs loo for the rest of the day! Lesson learnt...only use in VERY well ventilated areas.

But, smell aside, we were, and continue to be, very pleased with the results of this mould killer. We now use it little and often to keep the problem areas at bay and so we don't overpower ourselves with the smell of bleach again! And don't even think about using any of the others we have lined up under the kitchen sink. We'll definitely be buying another bottle when this one runs out, it's well worth the money...it's a heck of a lot cheaper than double glazing anyway :)

One word of warning though -- it is clearly highly chemically/toxic and contains A LOT of bleach so don't leave anything that it could stain anywhere near it when you're using...a tiny little droplet got on a flannel and it now has a white patch on it!

I was considering only giving it 4 stars because of the smell, but on reflection maybe it's good to have it smelling so potent...if it smelled like roses you might be tempted to stay in the room with it, which obviously wouldn't be a great idea!