I used to think I was handy..but now I'm not so sure

It's only been a week since I last wrote, but I feel like I have a lot to report on!

Let's start with one item that I just completely crossed off my list. #88: Get new tires for my car. Car people have recommending to me for about a year now, that I should think about getting new tires on my car. I always brushed off that recommendation, thinking about more exciting things I could spend $500 on. That was until this winter. Every time I drove my car out in the snow I'd have trouble stopping, or my car would slide around all over on the roads. It has been quite scary driving at times. So, this past Friday, I took my car in for new tires. In case you're wondering, I got Uniroyal Tiger Paw tires. They sound coooool, don't they? They only thing that could make them sound cooler is if the name was Squirrel Paw. But I'll settle for Tiger. It's a good animal. Just not as cute. Anyway, the guy at my car place said these would perform great in ice and snow, which is definitely what I wanted! When I was paying for them, I told the guy that it had to snow now, so I could try them out. Everyone else in the car place looked at me like I was crazy. Who really wants it to snow!? Well, I got my wish, as it snowed Sunday night. So of course, I took my car out for a drive to see how it would perform. Now, there was only about an inch of snow, so it's not like I was driving through a blizzard, but it was very icy, as it had been raining the whole day prior to the snow. And so far, I'd give the tires a good rating! No sliding around for my car!

They sure look fierce like a tiger, don't they?


Now, I'll move on to a couple items on my list in the home improvement section. Josh and I are still working on getting the bathroom renovations completed. Since he's gone for a week, I thought I might try my hand at re-caulking our bathtub. (Which is #56 on my list) Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Maybe it's simple if the old caulk had been there for a week. But it seems as if this caulk has been there for 10 years! I spent 6 hours in one day trying to get it off between the bathtub and the tile. I went through 3 different bottles of caulk remover. The first two were ok. I don't remember the names, but I don't recommend them anyway, so it doesn't matter. However, this 3rd bottle I got was the brand that was recommended to me by a lot of the DIY websites. It's the 3M brand. I just didn't get it at first because I couldn't find it anywhere! Lowe's didn't have it; nor did Home Depot. I finally found it at Menard's. And it worked like a charm. I did what the directions said and I put some onto the old caulk and let it sit for 3 hours to get the old caulk to soften. Then, I went back with my hammer and flathead screw driver, and tried to chisel the pieces of caulk away. And it came off pretty much right away! This stuff was a life saver. In case you're in the market for caulk remover, here's what the bottle looks like:


I was going to put the new caulk down right away. But while I was down in the tub chiseling away at the caulk for 6 hours, I noticed that a lot of the grout between our tiles had cracks in them! I knew that couldn't be good, as water could get in those cracks and into the wall. Yikes! So, after talking to Josh a little bit, I decided to hold off on the caulking and when he comes home next weekend, we're going to re-grout the tiles in the bathtub. This one little project is turning into a huge one! But I know this is good to do. I mean, look at the grout in these pictures:

Looks gross doesn't it? Don't worry...our whole shower area doesn't look like that, but there's a few more tiles that definitely need some work!

Another small problem I ran into while removing the caulk was up at the top of the tile, between the tile and the drywall. Some of the removal went ok up there, but at one point, I started taking out more of the drywall with my caulk remover tool! It's not horrible, but I don't know if simply putting caulk over it again will fix this problem.

Here's a picture, so you know what I'm talking about:

While it's not horrible, I feel that that shouldn't have happened. The white part of this picture is from when I tried to use some drywall plaster to see if that would fix some of the small holes. I'm not sure if it worked or not. Sooo, this is going to be another area where I will wait for Josh to come home to fix. :) I hope he's not reading this and is now afraid to come home! Don't worry babe...it's not as bad as it looks. :)

I have managed to do one thing right though. So far, at least. I have succeeded in painting the bathroom green, like the rest of our bathroom area. I only did a primer coat and the first coat of the green so far, but so far so good! I plan on doing the second coat tonight. Even though it's the smallest room in our condo, it was definitely the hardest to paint! There was so much stuff to tape and go around. And then when I had to do the high parts toward the ceiling, I had to bring my step stool in there, which didn't really fit. It was definitely a challenge.

I'm also working on putting down baseboard trim in some of our rooms. I was hoping to have that done by the time Josh gets back, but now that these other problems arose, I've decided to hold off on that project for now. One thing at a time...

That's about it for the home improvement projects for now. Hopefully next time I write, I can put up pictures that actually look good!

In other news: I am now up to 35 push-ups at once! Only 5 more to go. And when my current bottle of vitamins is used up, I might think about switching to the Flintstones gummy vitamins. They just look sooooo good! Mother, if you're reading this-- if they would've had these when I was little, I wouldn't have had to spit out my gross, chalky, Flintstones vitamin in the corner of my room every day. :) I read on the bottle that adults can take the gummy vitamins if they take 2 a day. Sounds good to me...I'm down with eating a piece of candy twice a day. :)