Boxing Day is Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race day, and the Boxing Day Test match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, this year between Australia and South Africa. I had the cricket on the TV for most of the day, but I was mostly occupied in the bathroom, cleaning up the shower stall.
I’d said to my wife that I wanted to reserve a few days after Christmas to redo the shower seals. We won’t be able to use the shower while this is in progress, and it will take a few days, so we’re stuck having baths for the next few days.
The problem is the clear silicone sealant between the shower hob and the aluminium frame of the glass shower screen was getting mouldy underneath, and nothing I did cleaned it up. So I spent a few hours today stripping off the sealant, scraping out the crevices, cleaning various nooks and crannies that haven’t been cleaned properly in years, so they were pretty gunky.
I mentioned what I was doing with my friends and a couple of them gave me tips and suggested specific products from the hardware store to do what I wanted to achieve. One suggested a grout sealer as well, to prevent water leaking through grouting, and I thought that was a good idea as we’ve had a very minor issue with that happening. And then he said I should actually grout the gaps rather than use silicone, but I checked and grout isn’t good for metal surfaces, so I’ll have to stick to silicone. But I did get a small tube of grout for a few minor cracks, so hopefully that will go okay because I’ve never done grouting before.
My wife and I walked up to the hardware store this evening to buy the supplies. We went late, after 6pm, because it was a very warm day and we only did a shorter walk with Scully at lunch time in the heat.
So, I spent much of the day on my knees, or kneeling down, hunched over, or sitting on the floor, and scraping and scrubbing tiles and metal fittings. I had to take several breaks to stretch my legs and back out, but got the first part of the job done. All the silicone I want to replace is removed, and the surfaces are cleaned. Tomorrow I’ll go to work with the grout, and then maybe Wednesday I’ll do the silicone sealing.
Dinner today was leftover turkey slices and potato gratin from Christmas lunch yesterday. Scully also got a bit of festive turkey!
New content today:
For some reason, my mind insisted on changing your subject line to “Labour Day Boxing,” an Outback tradition in which laborers on holiday punch each others’ teeth in.