Life lessons and shower repair? Yes. Clues to the big picture aren’t always floating in rarefied air; sometimes they’re down in the muck wrapped up in mistakes. The following come in no particular order. Think of it more as a Toolbox for Life. Use what you need.
And thus spake-Mold-sthustra: If you want your life to change, you have to change it.
Don’t confuse a simple meme with a simple task. But this is where we’ll start. You’ll need the right tools.
In a life change, sometimes the hardest thing to do is start. The habit and simplicity of doing things the way we’ve always done them is a tractor beam some of us can’t break. But you won’t learn any life lessons unless you try. For projects like this one, where I’m pretty sure the yuckiness was just fused in place I take something of a “How do you eat an elephant?” approach. Answer: One bite at a time.
- Decide to act
- Make time to act
- Prepare to act
- Act
Also, keep a trash can close by and wash your hands. A lot.
I’m not sure there’s an exact overlap between my approach to DIY and to life, but if there is one thing that makes my DIY life easier it’s 100% this:
GET ALL THE TOOLS READY FIRST.
Before you start in on solving the problem, get your tools out, organized and easily accessible in the place where the project is, like the night before if possible.
Then, clear the work area. In a bathroom, that means move dangling towels, bathmats, step stools…whatever…OUT OF THE ROOM. Even after doing that you’ll probably still bump your head and hit your funny bone but at least you won’t be tripping over a laundry basket too.
This shower stall is aluminum and the base is solid fiberglass. My Hyde Tools Contour Scraper was fatal to this ancient mix of caulk and crud. Not sure I’d try this on ceramic or anything with a glazed finish.
Truth is kind of a big deal to me.
It’s part of why I do this for a living. On the bright side, Truth is raw-some, life at its best: It’s a stud wall holding up a home or a super tight cope in crown molding (of course there’s a video on crown right here) or a door that closes so satisfyingly every time you use it it’s a daily joy. It’s inescapable and it’s great!
But on the dark side, the Truth of buried problems and fears is equally inescapable—even if all you do is try to escape them. Not facing life’s Truths doesn’t mean they’re not there. They’re there, smoldering like a giant pile of bark mulch. Add in laziness and dread and that’s a heavy load to carry, and one that does not get smaller. Ever. Unless you make it smaller.
I lay this shower repair at the feet of the last two items. There is just no part of this carpenter’s heart that wanted scrape caulk all day and uncover the mess I made one shower at a time, one year after another.
DIY tip: I had my cordless vac of sensational-ness to handle the gross-ola. When dealing with stuff like this you want to keep it dry and contained. I must’ve run the vac 20-times to suck up little pockets of debris.
In life, sometimes there are just tools you can always count on. The Truth is one. Patience another. And Kindess usually doesn’t hurt. Grit and determination also play massive roles in a project and an existence.
My Hyde multi-tool—goooooood I love this thing (so much so I made a video, and a rhyming phrase…what’s wrong with me?)—got in to some of the nooks and crannies the other tools couldn’t reach. Don’t worry, it’ll come out later too. It always does.
Solving the persistent problems of existence requires strength, flexibility and the ability to develop and reveal new edges of ourselves if we’re to keep evolving. We’re going to get worn down, hurt, and broken. It’s a fact. What emerges from enduring life’s challenges is the new leading edge of us.
I’m not making that up and I’m not making up that the Hyde 25mm snap-off knife works the same way. The long, flexible blade is great for making the many cuts and slices a typical utility knife can’t reach. It is raaaaaaaazor sharp. And when the leading edge is dull or crippled, snap it off to reveal brand new shiny steel.
The water that comes out of our taps might as well be delivered by dump truck its so hard.
Our faucets and shower heads—I’m getting to it!—have stalactites. So I teamed up my mess-around-the-house-conquering Hyde Quickly Clean Glove…Video oh-ho-ho…with some chemical magic in the form of CLR to make the shower doors see-through-able again. The glove’s micro abrasives helped cut through and dislodge the layers of everything showery (soap scum, body oil, etc) while the CLR was fatal to the hard water build ups on the glass.
Wonder why the doors—the source of this whole mega clean-up in the first place—wouldn’t roll smoothly. Sometimes life’s problems can be solved by peeling back layers to reveal that big problems are caused by little, or maybe manageable is a better word, things: A proverbial pebble in the shoe. And little things are easier to fix when you can see them in the plain light of day. But you’ve got to dig to find them.
This shower stall has always bothered me, mainly because the base was held together with caulk. Well, you don’t need to be Mike Holmes or Tommy Silva to know that’s doomed by design (new TV show, producer friends? I’d host that one. I have experience.)
Once I understood the fundamental problem I could fix it. The fix: Adding two zippy screws to the corner bracket.
One of the important life lessons: Be able to fall in love again.
OK, that’s sappy, but I have to deliver on the title. I think it’s also true. Love isn’t a fixed moment in time, it’s a process. The Hyde Caulk Aid is 100% not a tool a pro like me would ever pick up because we’re, you know, pros and don’t need caulk aid.
And that’s a mistake. From the built-in spout cutter to caulk removal gouges (I didn’t see them until all the caulk was gone here) to its rounded screed, it is full-tilt boogie awesome for this project.
There is beauty in awesomeness. Get as much as you can, anywhere you can. It’s what life is for. That is a caulk tube tip of near sublime perfection.
I suppose the Grand Canyon and when my 9-year old son utters in intergalactically powerful innocence possibly the two most sensational words in the world, “Hey, Dad…” aren’t bad either.
Life lessons: Don’t put your hands in the sticky stuff. And when that inevitably happens anyway, know how to clean up the sticky stuff.
DIY lesson: Have something handy for when sticky stuff gets stuck to other stuff because it is sticky. In this case, the caulk tube lance invariably becomes caulked to the caulk frame, so I use the mighty-multi to pry it free.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I let this go this far.
Water leaked into the floor. I ignored it. It got worse. The good news is that I was able to make a near invisible repair by filling the hole and repairing some other damage with Gorilla Glue clear-drying epoxy. I’ll use this stuff again in a heartbeat. Also, I love their commercials where the gorilla comes out of nowhere with a bottle of glue. Hilarious.
If you’re caulking and there are paper towels around for anything other than drying your hands, you’re doing it wrong. Caulk is tooled using a wet fingertip and grout sponge, regularly rinsed in a bucket of water.
Even with Hyde’s Caulk Aid of Outstanding-ocity keep the sponge and water handy for clean-ups and wipe-downs. An never let go of this little red wonder. Perfect caulk lines for this. I’ll never caulk a shower or tub again without it again. I think I already said that one second ago.
Better. Six hundred miles closer to better than when I started. Still far from perfect. It’ll get us to the next chapter in this bathroom’s life: Full-tilt reno.
In other words, if we’re all marching on the path of progress, of making tomorrow better than today for ourselves and our families in some tiny but perceptible way, this shower is a little like all of us: Better, far from perfect, moving forward.
That’s the Truth.
By Mark •, thanks so much for the post.Really thank you! Great.