Day 63: Crawling around on bathroom floors

What I'm watching today

Girltrash: All Night Long (2014, Amazon Prime streaming) - I watched this movie on the recommendation of a colleague who likes the same bands as me. Think of this movie as a gender-swapped version of Superbad. But not as thoughtful as Booksmart. And the characters are much older. And it's a little bit sexist. And also it's a little bit racist. Oh, and it's a musical. The cast is almost entirely female, and in this universe every twentysomething female is either a sorority girl or a punk rocking lesbian. There is no gray area. And that's fine, because this movie is exactly what it wants to be. My only expectation was that the music would be better, but that was a big disappointment. However, I did discover that I really like Lisa Rieffel's singing voice, and I went ahead and added a bunch of Killola tracks to my YouTube playlist, so the movie wasn't a total loss. I also discovered that this movie is the continuation of a web series that aired in the early 2000s, so maybe checking that out beforehand would have helped me understand some of the plot points and inter-character relationships that the movie doesn't bother to establish.

What I'm doing today

Unclogging - The customer service department received a customer feedback card that said one of

Now that's a clean drain!

the bathroom sinks was a little bit clogged. I've been dealing with these household drains for over three years now, so I knew that no amount of Draino was going to do the trick. The problem is that all of the bathroom sinks have really crappy stoppers that trap hair, toothpaste, soap scum, and anything else that wants to go down the drain. The process of clearing the clog first requires removing the stopper, cleaning the stopper thoroughly, and then scrubbing in and around the top of the drain. It's pretty simple. 

Caulking - When the previous owners tiled the master bathroom they did a pretty good job. However, one thing that they did wrong was that they used grout instead of caulk in the corners of the shower area. Over time, as the house has settled, some of these corners have started to crack. We found this out the hard way a few months ago when my wife was in the shower and it began to rain in the laundry room one floor down. We've had a quick-fix solution in place since then to prevent water damage. It's time for a permanent fix though. The process is pretty straightforward, to be honest:

1. Using a grout saw, strip away all of the grout from the corner area that is cracked. 
2. Apply sanded bathroom caulk to the gap.
3. Done.

I did a ton of research to find the best brand of caulk, and also to color-match the existing grout. Sawing grout by hand is a terrible job, and if I ever have to do it again I will spend the extra money to buy a Dremel attachment. The only problem I ran into was that whoever installed the tile wasn't very precise, and the edge of the backer board stuck out slightly beyond the edge of the tile. With uncompromised grout, this wouldn't have been a problem, but the crack and subsequent moisture buildup caused the backer to slightly expand and warp, probably causing the grout to crack even more. So to be safe I used a utility knife to carefully trim off a sliver of the backer board, being cautious not to damage the tile or the quick-set adhesive holding the tile in place. Once all that was done, I could then apply the caulk. Admittedly, the end result turned out better than I expected.