Before I got started planning out the bathroom closet, Peter had a much less pleasant job to face. While I was at work he created various pastes of bleach that we left sitting on the tiles for long periods of time. Is this the safest thing for you to do? Probably not, but we were desperate and as I mentioned before we didn’t have much money to throw at our bathroom makeover. He managed to gently chip away some of the freestanding grout that was dried to some of the individual tiles. Unfortunately, for fear of chipping the tiles themselves, he did leave some of the more stubborn grout. After just the bleach the bathroom was looking a million times better.
As you can tell from the photo above, the caulk and grout was way too disgusting to leave in tact. Even after bleaching it repeatedly, it still looked like a gross gray color.
Peter went in and removed the strange caulk/grout combination that lined each of the walls and connected the walls to the shower. After vacuuming up the debris, we were ready for a fresh new start.
It looks ten times better. Our bathroom tub was uber dirty! I spent so many hours scrubbing it down with pumice stones but no dice. Twenty months living in our home and we’ve never used the tub (except to rinse our mop out). Another thing to replace and add to our lengthly laundry list.
What a way awful task but it looks a million times better! And who needs to be safe anyway? I’m the girl who spray paints and paints in an unventilated garage because I’ve got things to do, places to go and leaving the garage door up would be way too cold. And when the chalkboard paint dried horribly? I still sanded it despite the lead poisoning warnings. I may be crazy, but sometimes we gotta do what we gotta do!
And it looks like your bleach trick totally worked!
Dolores: It sucks when you’re bathing area is gross because then you (or at least I ) always feel unclean. Have you seen that bathtub painting kit? Apparently if you have a grossly stained tub you can use the kit and repaint it. It might be worth looking into until you have the time and money to replace it.
Meg: Haha our home improvement projects will be the death of us. I do try to be safe when doing projects but in the end using an insane amount of bleach or spray painting with the door shut usually wins out.
What a pain, but what a difference!! And safety, shmafty – sometimes there are more important things!!
Thanks Heather! It definitely paid off.