And we continue on with our house repairs. Today I ran the gamut from spackling some old nail holes in the dry wall that we found when we removed all of the personal pictures for staging the house to filling in some nail holes in some wood to caulking where Gary is adding some trim to a patio door. Let’s see, which one of these handyman chores do I enjoy the most? Is it two-step spackling where you have to make it as smooth as possible and then sand to finish it off? Or is it filling holes in wood and then wiping it all smooth with a wet cloth? Or is it grouting where you first have to remove old caulk then have to carefully pull the trigger to force the grout into the gap you’re trying to fill and then release it before you over fill the gap. Then, with your finger, you run down the caulk you just filled to get rid of all the excess, which ends up goopy all over your hand.
BINGO! You’re right - it’s none of the above. But, if I had to choose, I dislike caulking the most since I think the caulk gun is more for men. I want a small dainty, womanly kind of caulk gun. Maybe in pink. Caulking is definitely a man’s job. But, today Gary was busy with other things and it became my job. First I had to scrape our the old caulk with my trusty utility knife, then smooth over the surface so the caulk would hold and finally I was ready to spread the caulk. Now, imagine all of this while I am sitting in the shower. Yep, we were replacing some caulk that had been put along the bottom lip of the shower door before we bought the house. Now, of course, who puts caulk in a shower? The answer is very few people and probably only those with a problem. But, we are trying to sell a ‘pristine’ home and the caulk had some spots on it so I was sitting on the drain in the shower, hunched over, pulling the caulk out. Ha, got it and got it all smoothed out. Of course, it took about 2 hours.
With the caulking removal and the smoothing over done, I was ready for the caulking installation. Oh, boy, here’s the fun part where I get to shoot gobs of caulk into tiny spaces and wipe the rest off. When I finished with all 4 areas that I had caulked, I put duct tape around the caulk nozzle to keep it supple and usable and went downstairs to see how Big Gar was coming with the patio door. I laid down on the floor, cataloging the spots I had done and mentioned the bathroom.
‘And, oh yeah, I got the shower done too.’
‘The shower?’
‘Yeah, around the bottom where I had taken the old caulk out.’
‘Did you use the same caulk?’
‘Well, yeah, the white stuff.’
And here’s the lesson. There is a difference between the caulk you use to fill in cracks between dry wall and moulding and the caulk you use in a shower: one is waterproof and the other is water soluable. It’s always best to use waterproof in the showers and water soluable in other places. Aha. Now I know.
Guess who got to remove the just-installed caulk? Yeah, the same one who learned the valuable lesson: me. So I rushed back up to the shower to get it out before it set. As I was wiping it off, I got to test its water soluability and, sure enough, it wiped right off with (2 dangling prepositions) a wet rag and dissolved in water.
But, then we decided not to replace it the caulk. Showers are not supposed to need caulk and we’re going to see if this one really does.
Here’s the twofer: the second caulk lesson: I wanted to fill in a crack in some white caulk in the guest room shower and grabbed the ‘waterproof’ caulk on the counter. Ooh, I like this caulk, it’s silicon and clear. Oops, wrong waterproof caulk - I should have used the WHITE waterproof caulk not the CLEAR because using white caulk to fill in a crack in white caulk would cover the crack. Yep, my clear caulk filled in the crack but you can still see it through the clear caulk. Chalk another lesson up.
I actually hope i never have to use these lessons.
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