Caulking Up the Bathroom

I decided that this weekend I was going to be a good tenant and re-caulk around the shower door.

The shower door leaked when I moved in, but during one of my Mom's visits* she filled in the holes with caulk. Alas, after a few months it started to leak just a little bit. So this weekend was going to be the big repair weekend. I'm going to Albuquerque tomorrow, so I won't be taking another shower until Monday, and my roommate is in New York doing pre-law school things. That gives the caulk the full recommended 48 hours to set.

With all these big plans, I decided to take things a step further and scrub my tub. (After eating grub, going to the pub, and examining my chub.)

I'm going to skip to the end of the story here and tell you that the caulking came out swell. I did a masterful job, and no water shall leak under the shower door ever again.


(The lines you can see on top are on the metal door guide. The pure and excellent slope of the caulk bead is imperceptible in the picture.)

Back to the middle of the story: While I was leaning on the wall scrubbing my tub, the wall gave up. It decided that the years of mildew and soakage were too much for it, and the drywall quit and walked off the job leaving the ill-grouted tile to fend for itself. The tile did a commendable job of pretending to be a wall for quite a while, but my leaning on it was simply too much to bear.

The end result is that my shower door is water tight, but the gaping hole in my wall may leak just a bit.



* vis•it (vĭz'ĭt) pronunciation
v., -it•ed, -it•ing, -its.
v.tr.
1. My Mom coming to San Francisco to see me.
2. The prime opportunity to buy me shirts/slacks/sweaters
3. To fix and clean my apartment. (Including doing dishes which may or may not be mine.)
4. To try to instill in me the knowledge and motivation to cook.