A Peek Into a Renovation Marriage

Pop Quiz:

In your marriage, whose job is it to buy the groceries?
Cook the food?
Mow the yard?
Shovel/snowblow?
Investigate bumps in the night?
Fix a leaky ANYthing?


Well, in MY marriage, the first three are mine, and the last three belong to Hubs.  But I find that whenever we start renovating, I start taking over more and more "manly" chores.  Like mowing the yard.  That started when we were in Charleston.  Renovating.  And he was too BUSY too be bothered with piddly things like mowing the jungle in our back yard.  If I wanted Lil C to play in the back yard, I was going to have to learn to start the mower all by myself.

Generally, the ENTIRE "fixing" category falls squarely on Hubs' (or should I start calling him Mr. FixIt???) shoulders.  Until today.  The Renovation Marriage mentality has started kicking in again..... I feel it.  A slow creeping of testosterone into my blood as I suddenly have the urge to feel empowered by using power tools, razor blades, utility gloves, hammers, and....well, I was going to say, and screwdrivers.  But I already use those.  "Replacing ALL household batteries" falls squarely onto MY shoulders, so I have confiscated and hidden 2 screwdrivers exclusively for my use.  (Hubs counted one time.  He has over 200 screwdrivers.  He won't miss the 2 I stole, I promise.)

Anyway, back to the story:

It all started with this:

A nearly-invisible puddle of water on the kitchen floor.

 Which led to my mentioning it to Mr. FixIt - Honey, we have mysterious puddles forming on the kitchen floor.  So he made a small 1" round hole in the ceiling one night to see if there was any water directly above Said Mysterious Puddles.  (By the way, my in-home geography SUCKS.  The bathtub is DIRECTLY above this spot.)

See the hole?

Then I SAW the water drip... drip.... drip...ing onto the floor Sunday night while Hubs was showering.  So I told him about it again.  So he recaulked the tub as soon as I had finished cleaning up.  That started a no-showers-for-36-hours clock.

So we didn't shower at all on Monday - we held out till Tuesday morning.  Hubs took his morning shower around 05:30, and I took mine a couple hours later.  And when I did, I saw this:

36-hour-old caulk, already pulling away

36-hour-old caulk wrinkling up.

I didn't know what to think.  So I called the people who made the caulk we used, and described the problem.  I had barely described the problem however, when the nice man told me that we were most likely using latex caulk:

latex caulk = not right

 When we SHOULD be using silicone caulk:

silicone caulk = right

He said if silicone had EVER been used previously on the tub, that the latex wouldn't stick, and we'd end up with ribboning and pulling up, and lack of adhesion and a tub on our kitchen table.  Ok, so that last one was just me stating my worst fear and not what HE really said...  The simple fix he proposed was to go buy some silicone caulk and try that.

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Here begins The Renovation Marriage mentality kicking in (because, if you were taking notes, you'd remember that I DID say that HUBS recaulked it on Sunday):

Today, I got myself the caulk gun, some hair-dye gloves (yep, I did watch Hubs wipe caulk all over everything trying to get it off HIS bare hands), a couple razor blades, and the new tube of caulk.

Easier than playdough.

 I mean, like, seriously, the stuff wasn't even TACKY on the tub.

Once the easy stuff was off, the razor blade made short work of the rest of it.

Cut off the tip of the caulk.

I was sure to leave plenty of room for Hubs to have to cut it again later....cuz we all know caulk dries out and it's almost worth buying a new tube before using the three-quarters you already have, just so you don't have to mess with pulling out the dried-out plug.

For all the women who have never caulked.

There's a cute little stick on the end of caulk guns that have no apparent use.  This is that use.  I haven't seen an episode on "How It's Made: Tubes of Caulk", but somehow they actually manage to get FOIL inside, all the way down at the END of the long part.  So the stick punctures the foil, and life caulks on.

I didn't bother making it pretty.

In fact, it was QUITE ugly.

But when I used a gloved hand to smooth out the ugliness....

Hopefully all the puddles stop!

And we'll have a well-caulked tub.

....for a year.  Till we tear this ugly thing out and throw it carelessly in a dumpster and scream good riddance to it.  Because, really??  A SALMON-colored tub?????  But that's another post....  See you tomorrow!