DIYing for a Clean-Looking Shower

After 7 years the shower's caulk was permanently mildewed or God knows what and it depressed even me, who has showered in below-freezing barracks, in a hoarder's bathroom, in shower stalls stained orange with bacteria, in state-park shower houses where families were gutting fish, and so on (when I had no other choice).

c'est fini

My current fix-it mania drove me to buy a claw-like caulk-removing tool and dedicated kitchen-and-bath caulk. I laid down a bunch of towels, folded myself like origami into the shower stall and with rubber-gloved hands scraped off the old caulk, and thoroughly washed the gaps now open with a 50-percent bleach solution, and let them dry for 24 hours while I stayed at a friend's house.

I returned home to apply the caulk. With my inexperience ("Why isn't any caulk coming out? Oh, I have to squeeze this trigger really, really hard, with both hands") it took three sweaty hours to apply, and as soon as it was good enough, like a guy would have done it, I left the wet towels and caulk-choked caulking gun in a heap and ran back overnight to the friend's house to allow the caulk to cure.

Turned out okay, as you can see, even if imperfect. There is no "before" picture because it was too repellent to show. I also stuck "treads" on the shower floor for safety. This plus the new tiles on the backsplash means the bathroom update is complete. The Divine Cabin has a shower only. I get baths 64 miles away in The Original Springs Hotel in Okawville, IL, the only mineral spring in this area.

A Companionable Spider

All summer I welcome daddy-long-legs into the bathroom; they arrive even without a welcome, so why not. This orange-brown one, my companion for several days now, first hung out in the plastic container I keep combs and hair products in; then it spent an evening on the sink’s edge, and leg by leg it poled away when I came in to brush my teeth. Here it’s enjoying a bath towel. It seems to like exploring the variety of bathroom surfaces and landscapes—like a European tour, except for spiders. I carefully dried my hands on this towel’s edge so it could keep its footing. It’s so companionable now that it doesn’t flee. What does it think of the giant being who enters and brightens the bathroom (a room with no windows) at intervals, steams it to a comfortable humidity, and leaves it in peace?

I hear many folks bemoaning the end of summer, but summer lasts until my summer companions are gone.

The Perception of Doors

Before hardware removal

3 brands of stripper, all caustic as heck

Paint layers were visible

Strip-Eeze at work

On March 17 the handyman took my bathroom door off its hinges, as I had asked, and I hung a curtain made of a basted yellow bedsheet to replace it, and outside in the garage I removed the door's hardware and began stripping its many thick layers of paint, planning to refinish. Four chemical strips on one side and nine (!) on the other, plus scraping and sanding -- but even so, layers of paint, probably oil-based, perhaps containing lead, remained: peach, pink, blue, green, white. Although the door is solid core, the wood is soft pine, not hard like oak, and my putty knife gouged it in places. Manfully I scraped and sanded, all masked with gloves and respirator and eye protection, until soaked with sweat, trying not to breathe chemicals and dust. "Ain't nobody gonna do this for me," I thought. The door is 80 x 30 inches and heavy, so friends helped me flip it over. One day in mid-April I sighed and phoned the handyman saying I gave up, I'd pay for a new bathroom door, as I'd wrecked the original and really needed a bathroom door--until there's a bathroom door, nobody much can visit me. Despairingly I looked up what a door costs. A slab isn't obscenely priced, but it costs to have holes custom cut for the hardware. In any case the handyman never called back.

Painting by lantern light

I figured he thought: Let the dumb bunny stew in her own juice. Too bad I never got the door perfectly clean of paint and varnished as I hoped. People asked why I didn't use an electric sander. Well, the garage has no electricity and is too far from the house for an extension cord. I never like to give up. But--a bright idea!--I could repaint the door myself. Discovered wood filler for the gouges. Sanded and cleaned the whole thing this afternoon and began painting about dusk so it would dry overnight. Worked by lantern light until I was finished with the one side. Tomorrow a guest will help me flip it over. Then I'll finish painting, replace the hardware and phone the handyman. At least the door will look spring-clean now instead of chipped, gray and pawed over. Moral of the story: Sometimes giving up clears room in your mind to come up with something simpler and better. (Just now a tick was crawling on my neck! Took it to the bathroom and exploded it with a match.)

Port-a-Fortune

Leaking water heater sops the towels that I cover the floor with. Changed em once a day, now change em twice a day. Disaster is imminent. Handyman Darryl says the reason the place is going to hell in a handbasket is that I live here all the time, don't I ever travel around the world or something and leave him to shut off the water supply and update the bathroom and this whole house? And he strongly hinted I ought to.

So I did look into world travel, but can't afford to go gallivanting even to Wisconsin for ten days to two weeks, and furthermore don't want to -- this is the only place in the world I want to be -- so thought about renting a portable outhouse for the duration of in-home construction. Emailed for a quote on the simplest model. It costs $120/per. It didn't say "per" what, but studying it hard I realized it costs $120 per DAY to rent a port-a-potty. Pardon me, but since the facilities would be outdoors anyhow, an empty coffee can makes more financial sense.