Caulking around

When be bought our house, it had been sitting empty for over 5 months and the people who owned it before us were not exactly the best housekeepers.

I spent the first few months scrubbing floors, windows, painting walls, and doing pretty much all the other "easy fixes."  One thing that has been looming over my head was our upstairs bathroom.

Its on the list of "complete overhaul" but for the time being, there are many more projects that come before it.

The caulk around the shower had mold in it and even after I scrubbed and bleached, it wouldn't come clean.  I knew I needed to pull it all out and start again, but it was just too daunting to take on in the first few months.

See the dark parts around the bottom??  That's mold. Gross.

So here we are, 7 months into living here and I finally l got around to tackling the moldy-caulk problem.

I am no stranger to caulk.  I re-caulked our bathtub at our old condo, so I already had the tools on hand. The little caulk tool is a miracle. Seriously.  If you are about to re-caulk, get one of these little guys. You will thank me later.

First I had to get the moldy caulk out of the shower, so I used my trusty screw driver.

So gross.  Not sure how we lived with this for so long.

Slow and steady wins the race

It took a long time to dig out all of the caulk, then scrape the remaining bits off the shower wall and basin.  There was lots of crap coming out of the walls, and then something fell out of the wall.

A straw.

Really?

Seriously?  How did a straw get in the wall?  Do you think that someone put it there on purpose?

People are really weird.

I vacuumed up all the caulk, the dirt, and the gross straw, and then bleached the crap out of the whole thing.

Side note- I should never be allowed to use bleach.  I accidentally dripped it on my sweatshirt and the bathroom rug.  Bleaching fail.

Once it was all dry and clean, I started the re-caulking process.  This was the fast part.

It was an instant upgrade and made everything look clean and updated.  

Mold free works for me!

Please not that I use the word "updated" very losely.  I'm not sure what I can do to actually update the early 90's laminate shower surround. 

Someday, this whole bathroom will be a bad early 90's memory.

Until that day, at least we are now mold free and clean.

PS- I resisted the urge to use lots of Caulk/Cock jokes throughout this whole post.  To those who hate cock jokes, you're welcome. To those who love a bit of cheap humor- maybe next time.