I Can Caulk!

Ok, so I consider myself an independent woman.  Those who know me can attest to this fact.  This independence has cost me occasionally over the years because I frequently learn things the hard way.  However, it has been beneficial in many ways as well.  For example I found myself yesterday stripping old caulking from the shower in my apartment, which was mold infested, and re-caulking thereafter.  One of the challenges of being independent and “doing things myself” is that I frequently find myself jumping blindly into ventures to which I’m unfamiliar.  Like caulking.  For example I’d never used caulk in my life until I moved into this apartment last month.  I’ve learned that caulk is the fix-all right after duct tape.  You can use it to patch holes in the wall (as long as it’s the kind you can paint over), you can use it to glue things (such as bathroom tile), and well you can use it traditionally to keep water out of places it doesn’t belong.  The hole-plugging I adapted to just fine.  I haven’t tried gluing anything just yet.  And as far as keeping water from going places it shouldn’t? We’ll see.

One of the challenges of my caulking adventure was the application.  You see I have some distinct OCD tendencies.  We got it all taped off so initially I had nice—straight—lines when I pulled the tape up last night just before bed.  This morning I got up to see how it looked and determined that it was too thin in some spots.  Of course I thought to myself “I won’t need to re-tape” because I was just gonna fill in some of the thin spots.  Well sure shit my nice pretty lines aren’t so pretty and as far as deterring water?  Like I said we’ll see.  However, I can say I caulked my own shower and it’s something I can add to the list of things I’m capable of doing myself even if it isn’t pretty. I’ll get over it.  Though my OCD self and I did think about starting over until my roommate practically pushed me out the door at the mention of such an idea.