Why Not Fix That, Too, While I'm Here

This afternoon, I planned to replace some caulk around the inside of the shower in the master bathroom and scrub the floor. Planned on talking about an hour to do it (first mistake).

The caulking was going OK until I discovered one of the walls in the shower (we have that plastic stuff that is glued to the exterior wall to create the shower walls) was not glued together. Why not fix that, too, while I'm here? Glue that I had did not work.

I then noticed that the tub faucet had a lot of calcium buildup on it and really could not be cleaned up enough to look nice. Why not fix that, too, while I'm here. This was the BIG mistake.

Off to Home Depot I went. Got some epoxy and super glue figuring one of them would fix the shower wall. Then discovered that it was not as simple as just buying a few "replacement parts" for the tub...had to buy a "kit". Picked up the cheapest kit and headed home.

Came home and tackled the shower wall first. Since the epoxy was the fastest drying glue, I tried it first. It seems that Brooke and Amanda could not properly appreciate my efforts...something about the smell. Whoever thought that epoxy dried quickly must never have used as much as I squirted between the walls because I got tired of standing there pressing one wall into the other waiting for the epoxy to harden. Break out the super glue. Worked like a charm.

Next to tackle the faucet stuff. Short version, nearly EVERYTHING in the kit was all wrong. I could have fixed the problem with the enclosed plumbing part, but since that would require taking the shower wall down, cutting a hole in the sheet rock underneath and changing out actual pluming, I decided against that. By this time, everything is a mess.

Quite disheartened, I took the old tub faucet to Foster Hardware to see if I could find just this part to replace. The rest did not look good, but the faucet was the worst looking. Come to find out, I should have started at Foster Hardware. I was able to replace all of the tub hardware much cheaper piece-by-piece than the kit I previously purchased.

After dinner, I replaced the tub hardware, finished caulking and finally got around to scrubbing the floor. Finished at 7:30pm. Total time = 5 hours!

The new hardware installed.