Let’s Caulk it out

I think we all now know that I have a love for caulk. I just want to caulk everything! But that is not an option. I did however need to caulk a few more areas in the bathroom, yippee skippee right? That’s what I thought! As I last left off with the master bath, I had removed the counter splash guards…

The walls are now all painted blue so you cannot see any of that spackle hanging out anymore, but what you can see are some crazy gaps between the wall and the counter top….

Careful, don’t get too close, you may fall in! This was in need of some caulk! So, I happily made my way to the garage to get my caulking supplies…

Pretty extensive supplies huh?

From there I just went my normal route of taping off the areas that I wanted caulk, then I plopped some caulk down…

While I was at it I found a few other areas that I thought needed some caulk as well…

Wanna see the results? Good thing cause here they come…

BOOM! Look at that!

Much better!

Here is the back of the countertop…

This piece of trim just had a crack down the side, so I filled that right in.

I also did some of the trim near the floor that had some cracks. Fortunately we still have these beautiful laminate floors! blah!

And around the toilet…

And next to the shower…

How about a close up?

Here is how the bathroom looks today…

I decided to change out the countainers on the counter to something with less of a tealish tint.

We also took the door off of the “toilet room”, we really hate having a separate room for our toilet, just seems like a waste of space.

We cannot wait to renovate this entire room, as for now we are going to live with everything as is. We are saving our pennies and one day we will have a brand new bathroom! Can’t wait.

Here is one more before and after of this quick update on our bath…

Better? I hope so!

Master Bath Changes

I am on a kick with the master bath right now.  I just feel the need to make some changes, so that’s just what I am doing.  Last I showed you I had taken down the wallpaper border and left the room looking like this…

No more border! Yahoo!  Next up I thought it might be nice to put some fresh paint on the walls.  I just can’t get enough painting apparently.  Before I started there were a few things I needed to do to prep the room.  Here is the sink area in the bath…

See the counter splash guard?  Well, I hate it.  There is one on each side, yay! I decided they had to go, but first here’s a close up…

They were both semi-peeling away from the wall already, so removing them was pretty simple.  I just took my spackling knife and pried the piece away from the wall.  I had to cut some of the caulk as I went, but it pretty much just popped right out.

As you can see some of the drywall peeled up, nothing a little spackle can’t take care of, amiright?  So I got right to spackling…

I use Dap DryDex spackle from Lowes, it goes on pink and dries white.  That way you know when it is okay to start sanding.

I think it looks better already!

From there I spackled all of the holes in the walls from the previous owners art.  Then I sanded everything down really well.  I also re-painted all of the trim in a white semi-gloss.

Now this room is all ready for a good coat of paint on the walls.

If you check out the picture above, you can see that this room is two different shades of teal.  I am pretty pumped to change the color and make it all one solid color.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

86 Wallpaper

As I have previously mentioned our master bathroom is not my favorite place in our house. I have already removed all of the old caulk in and around the shower and tub and put fresh caulk down, which helped a bit.

Eventually we would like to demo this bathroom and start fresh, but since that is a ways off I needed to make some changes now. I started with removing the beautiful border. Here it is before…

Pretty nice huh?

Fortunately it is just on this one wall. Here is a close up so you can take in the lovely flowers…

So, I got out my tools I needed…

I decided to go with the same hot water/liquid fabric softener concoction that I used when removing the border in the guest room. It seemed to do the trick the first time, so stick with what works right?

This time I started to peel the border before spraying my fabric softener mix on it.

The border was already peeling up from the wall before I even touched it. I am assuming this is from all the moisture and steam from years of showering in here. I wasn’t complaining though, made my life a ton easier…

I just started pulling and was left with this…

Yup, the top layer all peeled down in one piece, wahoo!

From there I did my spray and peel thing until I had this…

This took a total of about 15 minutes. I was pumped, since the last room took me more than an hour. I think it looks much better…

What What! No more wallpaper borders in this house!

Lets Give Them Something to Caulk About

Yup, I just hacked a Bonnie Raitt song to named my caulking post.  I know I’m cool, you don’t have to tell me.

Our master bathroom has been grossing me out since the day we moved in.  I had to do something about it, at least to make it feel a little cleaner.  Please don’t think we are dirty from these photos, I scrub this bathroom once a week.  Let me show you what I am talking about.  I should warn you if you do not like disgusting bathroom things you should skip this post completely.

This is our gross entrance to our shower.

YUUCCKK!

All of the old caulk is dirty and the shower is rusting pretty bad.

And the inside doesn’t look any better.

The corners seem to be the worst areas.

Eventually we will most likely redo this entire bathroom, which would include removing the tile and shower surround.  Since that project is down the line I needed to do something to make this shower feel cleaner.  So I got out our razor blade and box cutter and started removing the old disgusting caulk.

I first started scraping what I could off the ledge.

This got off some of the hard water and dirt but did not remove the caulk.

I used the box cutter to slice into the existing caulk, I went back a couple times until some pieces started to come loose like this…

I started peeling the caulk away by hand, and then went back with the box cutter scraping any remaining caulk until I got as much as I could.

Next I hopped in the shower and starting removing the caulk in there the same way.

Inside the shower I did have to use the razor blade a bit to get any caulk that was stuck on the tile.

I then cleaned up all of the caulk pieces that I had removed with the vacuum, then scrubbed everything with CLR spray.  This helped remove any hard water or rust that I couldn’t get off with my normal tile cleaner.

I wasn’t able to get all of the rust stains, but it was already looking a ton better.

From there I grabbed my caulking tools.

A tube of caulk, a caulk gun and a roll of painters tape.

I wanted straight lines on the ledge of the shower, so I used the painters tape to mark off where the caulk would go.  I didn’t use the tape inside the shower since the tile is white, I didn’t think the caulk would be as easily seen.

I then just snipped the end off of my tube of caulk and place it in the caulk gun.  From there I just started applying the caulk in between the taped off areas in a thin bead.

Once I had the caulk down I used my finger to smooth it out into the crevice.

Once I had finished I peeled the tape away immediately.  I didn’t want it to dry, then peel it, because I wasn’t sure if the dried caulk would peel away with it.

Ah! Look at those clean lines.

While I was at it I decided to caulk next to the tub as well.  I didn’t remove the old caulk from here because it was holding down our beautiful linoleum flooring that I didn’t want to damage with the razor. (In case you don’t get my sarcasm, I hate the linoleum, it will be the first thing to go).

Looks so much cleaner.

I then caulked the inside of the shower the same way.  Here are some before and afters…

Yay for new caulk right?  Does that not make you want to go caulk your bathroom or kitchen or everything?  I now love caulk.  Here is the whole bathroom with fresh caulk…

I love little projects that make a big difference.   I know it’s not perfect, but it makes me feel better about showering in here.  Woo hoo!