Jun

5

I’m not handy.

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When we bought the house, the guy that inspected the place to make sure it wasn’t a money pit told me that the piece of plastic that had been installed between the tub and the floor wasn’t really the best choice for keeping moisture from fucking with the subflooring, and suggested a silicone caulk instead. As a project that ultimately might need doing, the recaulking of the bathroom made it on to the list at 87 with a bullet, then utterly failed to get done for nearly a year.

Today, while I was trying to clean the bathroom so that we could replace the shower liner that had developed a pink mold of some sort, I got it in my head that the plastic strip should be removed. I pulled it up quickly, and then discovered that I was at a loss as to what to do next. Rooting around in my “tool box,” I discovered that we actually had white silicone caulk and a caulking gun. Of course, what with my general lack of understanding of even the simplest of tools, I couldn’t figure out how the damned thing worked. Well, I analyzed it for a while, I saw that the trigger would push the plunger forward slightly with each squeeze, and that the tube of caulk appeared the right shape to go into the barrel. I even figure out that the little hole in the handle would work nicely to snip off the end of the tube and that the little metal wire that was attached to the bottom of the barrel would no doubt puncture some sort of inner seal.

What I couldn’t figure out is how to get the plunger out of the way so that I could put the tube into the barrel. I kept trying to pull it back–which, incidentally, was the right impulse–but the end of the plunger kept getting caught at the end of the barrel. I watched a video or three on YouTube to try to figure it out, to no avail. Eventually, I concluded the damned thing was busted. Only I remembered that the last time I messed about with caulk, I had the same problem, and when I looked at the replacement caulk guns in the Home Depot, they all had exactly the same problem. What the fuck?

What the fuck turned out to involve unscrewing the end of the plunger, pulling the damned thing back, then reattaching. Why couldn’t I figure this out? I’m not handy.


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