I feel like Bob Vila!

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One of my spring break tasks was to deal with the moldy grout in the shower. Yuck.

I tried Oxy Clean. It got the tiles cleaner-than-clean, but didn’t tackle the grout at all. Boo.

So back to Home Depot I went and I purchased a Clorox Bleach Pen. I also purchased some stuff that I need to create the mosaic I want to make for the table I plan to paint for the living room (this becomes important later).

So, last evening around 8:00 pm I started to bleach the grout (what? you don’t do that at 8:00 pm? Well, there was nothing good on TV). It worked great.

It also ran down the wall – of course – and attacked the nasty caulk around the tiles that butt up against the tub.

Hm. Attack is a good word.

It came off, as did the tiles. Whoops.

I called Mr. Ex to find out what to do, and emailed his BlackBerry. No answer. I go look at the tiles again. Yup; still coming off. Six of those little suckers.

So – I decide that I need to deal with this myself. I Google “replacing bathroom caulk” or something like that, and within 30 minutes I’m an expert at what I need to do. I removed the loose tiles (not hard – the bleach had pretty much done that for me) and took them to the newly-cleaned out laundry toom to soak them in mineral spirits to remove the old cement, grout and caulk. I scraped off the old stuff from the tiles on the wall (not having a screwdriver I used a wooden paint stirrer from Home Depot – it worked) and cleaned and dried the area. The soaking tiles were clean and the remaining cement scraped off easily.

Now – I needed ceramic tile cement. Luckily, earlier that day I had already gone to Home Depot to get some for my mosaic project. How good was that? I also needed something to spread the cement on the tile. Did you ever notice that there are special tools and gadgets for everything in home repair? Well, I went through my craft supplies in the laundry room (again, newly cleaned, so it was easy) and found the tools that I had used when I was in my paste paper phase. Well, they’re just perfect for cementing tiles! Whoohoo.

So, back to the bathroom and the tiles. I put some music on, and did me some cementing. No big deal.

Crept back in an hour later – tiles still up.

Wow. I rock. The biggest problem is the the six tiles are waaaaaaay cleaner than the others, and when I’m done grouting and caulking that’ll be cleaner too. Oh well – this project will wait until this summer when Allie’s in Israel and I’m alone in the house. That way a few days or so with no upstairs bath won’t be a disaster.

So today it’ll be back to Home Depot for grout and caulk. I’m so cool.

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