OT: Home Renovation Gone Wrong

Because I just can't let a bad idea die, my wife and I are AGAIN looking at
the prospect of selling our home and pursuing the American dream of not just
owning our own home, but of owning our own pimp-daddy-swankalicious
multiple-fireplace/three-car-garage/master-bedroom-with-a-"sitting-room"-att
ached-having home. This is a bad idea because even though interest rates
have gone up twice since the last time we looked, house prices have
continued to increase as if there had been no interest rate hike at all.
This means that we will be paying MORE for the house we decided we couldn't
afford last time, and also paying MORE for the money we borrow to do so.

Let's not forget that we are looking to have the whole bitch custom built,
so all the plywood those folks in Florida etc, keep buying surely won't hurt
the supply and drive the cost of building up. No way that could happen,
right? Stupid hurricanes.

Anyway, on the plus side, because house prices have continued to rise
despite the interest rate increase, we figure that we can still get more
from our current house than we planned to last time, and hopefully this will
at least offset the increase in the price of the home we want to buy.

But we want to make sure that we get as much from our current house as we
possibly can, so we figured it would be to try to polish the turd a bit
before trying to sell it. And since one of the best returns on investment
house-wise, is to improve kitchens and bathrooms, that's what we chose to
do.

Well, our kitchen was about as improved as it could be, so we decided to
start work on the bathrooms.

In the main bath, I decided that I would replace the linoleum, countertops,
stool, tub and fixtures. In the master bath, I only replaced the
shower-door, linoleum, countertops and fixtures.

Most of the work went off without a hitch, as I am a master-craftsman if
nothing else (which ironically means that I won't touch "Craftsman" power
tools). screw Sears and their credit department, by the way. ONE late
payment and they drop my credit rating to 787, jerks.

Anyway, as has been a disturbing trend on all my home-renovation projects,
the easiest things sometimes turn into the hardest things.

Doing the finishing work on the bathrooms almost killed my wife, my dog and
me. Let me backtrack a bit.

I had the floors and countertops in place. I had the plumbing hooked up. I
had the new faucets in place. I had the new tub and shower doors exactly
where they should be. All that was left was the finishing work. In other
words, it was time to caulk the whole mess.

Generally speaking, I'm pretty handy with the caulk. My gun is pretty big,
but even so, I don't just rely on that. I don't just slap caulk around
willy-nilly. I've got some pretty good technique. What can I say, my wife
likes how I do it and I trust her as a pretty good judge of caulk. Or at
least, hers is the only opinion that really matters.

Anyway, I had the caulk all ready to go, I squeezed the gun a little and the
tip started to ooze a little. With that, I informed my wife to get ready,
because I was ready to go.

She told me she was ready for me to "work my magic," and encouraged me to
"let 'er rip."

I started with the tub, easily going around faucet and knobs, just really
finding my rhythm. Then I moved on to the edges of the tub itself. Things
were going really well, and my wife seemed to think that I was doing a good
job. I suppose this is probably what caused me to get a little ahead of
myself.

When she starts telling me how much she likes what I'm doing, I tend to get
a little cocky. So I started caulking faster.

Well, before I knew what was happening, I was done with the tub. However,
because I had been really hitting it hard, I had given my gun a good squeeze
and now my caulk was getting away from me. My caulk was going crazy!

It wasn't just oozing out of the tip anymore; it was practically SHOOTING!

I panicked a little. I didn't want her to know that I was losing control, so
I quickly moved to the stool. Running the tip around the base of the stool
helped my caulk calm down a little, but I had to give my gun another squeeze
to get the job done.

However, just as I was preparing to squeeze, my wife decided to scratch my
back a little and tell me what a good job I was doing. Well, that caused me
to jump a little and as a result my squeeze was a little harder than
intended.

So again I was losing control of my caulk, and this time I couldn't slow it
down, and I couldn't fool my wife. She saw the caulk flying out of the tip
and her eyes got as big as saucers.

"Oh my God!" she yelled, "What are you doing with that thing?! Watch where
you are pointing your caulk!"

"I'm trying!" I yelled back, trying desperately to find someplace to let it
shoot safely.

I couldn't find anything to safely hold my caulk, and to make matters worse;
all our yelling had caused our dog to come running into the bathroom to see
what all the fuss was about. Seeing me jumping and spasming like an idiot,
he thought I was trying to play some sort of new game, so in good the spirit
of good-sportsmanship, he decided to play along.

He jumped up and planted his front feet right on my chest. Well, this caused
my arms to jerk wildly, and caused the caulk to go flying everywhere.

"SHIT!" my wife screamed, "YOU GOT CAULK IN MY EYE!"

"Oh my God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I kept
repeating like a mantra.

Possibly blinding my wife with my caulk was bad, but then I saw what was
perhaps the worst thing of all. Somehow, I had got my caulk on my dog.

I threw my gun into the sink and started the water running and then threw my
arm around my wife and ushered her to the kitchen where I proceeded to help
her wash my caulk out of her eye. After a few minutes, she was able to see,
even if her eye was really red and she had to keep blinking it. Luckily, no
permanent harm was done.

Just as my blushing bride was calming down and sitting calmly on one of the
kitchen chairs, my dog decided to make sure she was okay. It was then that
she noticed that I had caulked him too. She just looked at me and shook her
head.

I don't think she admires my caulking abilities anymore.




The dog didn't seem to mind though.