The Caulk Master...

This weekend, among many other fantastically exciting things In The Life of a Sort of Single Gal (only because Rich was working the. whole. flipping. weekend. Otherwise you can bet we'd have been up to no good together...plus, I know you're all just dying to know what sort of single girls do these days...I also know you're thinking it's mostly all Sex and the City around here. ha.) things such as going to the Farmer's Market then out to brunch for some Mexican Crack (what's Mexican Crack, you ask? That would be the best blue cheese dressing this side of the border...I know, it's strange, Mexico is probably not usually known for its blue cheese...but Casa Sanchez has the best hands down) napping, reading, napping...running errands with a friend, napping...and then came the bathroom face lift.

Or maybe that should be the bathroom butt-lift.

What?

That's usually what's going on in the bathroom isn't it? More butt-type things. Ok, you have a point, I do actually get ready in the morning to go out and face the day and put my face on using the mirrors in there...but, you know what I mean.

I love my bathroom. It's dead center in the middle of the house, and there's only one of them...in a 1925 craftsman style house, what do you expect? Upon moving into Foolsewoode lo those many years ago, we noticed that the original battleship gray linoleum (holy cow. I am doing some major drooling on the selection of vintage linoleum they have...) was coming up in several places. This could have been due to the large holes in both the pipe of the sink in the bathroom and the pipe in the toilet...every time you flushed, clean water poured out onto the floor. Ditto with running the water in the sink (clean water=no good for flooring) We had not overlooked this when buying the home...it's just something that needed to be replaced before we could use the bathroom (note to self: Plumbing is very expensive. No major life altering decisions like "should I replace the non working trap in the original vintage wall sink, even though it's quaint to use a plug on a chain instead...and then watch as the plumber rips the sink out and realizes that he can't repair the trap or put the original sink back in the wall...and then you have to get some HUGE ugly new sink put in that you overpay for, and rips up your beautiful wall tile and then have to replace with a vintage pedestal sink in the near future, only not the tile because you don't know how and now you live with that, because you've just moved into a new house and no one but your ex husband [whom you happened to be married to at the time] showed up to help you and you were so tired you didn't know what kind of decisions you were making only you wanted to just use a sink at some point?" yeah...)

Um.

Oh.

So, we (and I use that term lightly because it was my project that my ex had to come in and help with because I couldn't do it...which means it was 2 days of full contact stripping of linoleum off the floor with a furniture scraper strapped to his foot to get to the original wood) removed the linoleum and then when I got feeling back in my extremities, I managed to design a stencil modeled after William Morris' Blackberry pattern and hand paint it over the edges of the floor, and then put about 10 coats of non-gloss all over the floor. (you should have heard the fight my ex put up about that one...he wanted super extra glossy, but as we didn't play basketball in the bathroom, I thought something not as slippery would be better, plus I want to be able to walk around my house without worrying if I have non-marking soles on my shoes...sigh) I also have a cute vintage cupboard that hangs above the toilet...and the original tub that is backed or rather, sided with glass bricks...

But the caulk around the tub was icky. Icky caulk is not something that one wants to look at when they're in the bath trying to relax. There's no amount of bubbles that will hide something like that. And the caulk? It's been like that for some time. Saturday dawned and I had an industrial razor blade in my hand stripping off the old caulk (and yes, even when I was talking to Rich on the phone, our only mode of communication this weekend. Did I mention he was working all. flipping. weekend? I used the word caulk so much that I know he was worried that I now have a form of Tourettes that will leave me yelling the world caulk into polite company for no reason...that and I have a naughty teenager living inside of me) getting out my bleach pen to douse all the ickiness and scrub and clean so I could let the entire caulkless tub dry for 24 hours before I applied spanking new caulk (heh) White to be exact.

It looks damned good, if I may say so myself. I am a caulk master (too far? sorry) But, the problem is now solved, and my bathtime is much more relaxing. Only now all the necessary bath crap that litters up the sides of the tub looks too messy...

Le Sigh.

I also noticed that my oak toilet seat is needing to be replaced, because oak toilet seats tend to get a bit funky around the edges after a while...Let me tell you something about my toilet. It is from 1925 and totally original to the house...which means it flushes a crazy amount of water when it's time to do things like that (I should put a jar of sand in the tank right?) but that's not the worst of it. The worst thing is it's shaped funny. It's an odd shape for new toilet seats and the holes for the screws that hold the seats on were drilled not quite even...so it's cockeyed as well. Which means that the toilet seat that was on there was always a little slidy aroundy when you sat on it, and no amount of tightening those fantastic plastic screws that came with the toilet seat helped secure it in the least. One wrong move while sitting down and wheee! You either ended up hitting your head on the sink or hitting your head on the towel rack (why else do you think I hung those cute pin-up vintage towels on it? Padding...and yes, their little skirts lift up and they have applique panties on...swoon)

I thought I'd outsmart the toilet seat thing though and spring for the "seat that fits long toilets" or some such nonsense...and you can believe that the oval toilet seat is certainly more expensive than it's smaller counterpart.

Well.

It certainly fit on the toilet, but look at how much it hangs off there in the front. Good grief. This also means that there's a lot of porcelain hanging around the front when you sit on it...but, you'll be happy to know it's totally sturdy and doesn't slide around anymore, which was worth every extra penny I paid for the oval toilet seat...I think anyway, we'll see as time goes on.

And look at all that sense of accomplishment I have now! The caulk master and home owner extraordinaire...

Lord my life is sad when Rich is working. all. flipping. weekend.