Weekend Update – Chores and Children
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This weekend my wife and I had a fairly large list of chores to do including going through all of our five year and two year olds clothes sorting what can be transfered from the older boy to the younger one, and what goes into storage because its too small for my toddler to wear. It is amazing how fast children grow, I wonder why I ever bought more then five or six pairs of clothes as we had thirty or fourty shirts and pants that were outgrown within a year. This took about an hour to complete including redoing the bookshelf in my son’s room, but before we took on this chore I took on one of the most difficult chores I didn’t anticipate.
We had some of the caulk between our kitchen counter and wall coming apart so we figured buy a tube of caulk, caulk gun and recaulk the entire kitchen countertop and bathroom shower ourselves. This appeared to be much easier said then done. In stripping the old caulk and applying the new caulk we quickly learned that spreading the caulk evenly and smooth is very difficult and when you press it to smooth it, it leaks out and smears over the wall and countertop.
Needless to say we stripped the whole first layer and redid it, wetting your finger prior to spreading helps smooth the caulk, but the smear spread on the countertop and wall are hard to prevent. I wound up having to use a razer and trim the caulk after it all dried and was painted over. This whole task took nearly two and a half hours and was extremely frustrating.
I did read after the fact that using painter’s tape can help keep the caulk to specific area’s you want to caulk, but for the future I think I will buy the caulk and just pay a professional to apply it, it is worth the cost of labor to have the caulk applied by someone with experience. Unless you are extremely patient and willing to try and try again, do not attempt to do this yourself. In fact, I would practice for at least 1/2 hour on wooden boards in the garage before trying it for real.
I am literally exhausted now and have turned to blogging while my wife went out to get a pedicure and manicure to relax a little bit after today’s chore fest.
-Justin Germino
Tags: caulking, caulking kitchen, Cleaning Clothes, difficulty caulking, Kids Growing, Kids outgrow clothes, weekend chores
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Caulking is very awful! I only did it once outside along our drive and boy, it’s not so easy. I’m with you on calling in someone who knows what they’re doing. It used to be my dad, but now that he’s gone, it’s Handyman Connection for me.
Karen, author of “My Funny Dad, Harry”s last blog post..The Day Dad Died, God Gave Me Special Cat Time
I had the same problem as Karen and that I always had my Dad do all the kitchen and bathroom repairs including the caulking. But now since my Dad passed away last year, I’m going to have to do the caulking myself. I’ve seen a little tool at Wal-Mart that supposedly helps you make perfect lines every time. I’m definitely going to try that before I hire someone to do the caulking for me.
Greg
I saw that tool myself, haven’t tried it though.