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Wednesday, 16 May 2012

New silicone in the toilet

I didn't meant to do much any renovation in the toilet, my first plan was just to change the silicone in the joints around the wash basin and between the tiles and walls. But I ended up ripping all the accessories off the walls and painting the whole room. I've done all that, but I haven't yet placed things back in the toilet and there are still the radiator and few metal covers that could need some painting.

The original silicone was in some places gone all yellow, it looked discusting. Also in some areas the silicone was not neatly placed.



I removed the silicone using a carpet knife. A co-worker tipped to use a carpet knife with pulling the knife part as long as possible and holding the knife very close to the surface where the silicone needs to be removed from. That was a very good tip. I have previously used a regular knife and it was real difficult to remove the silicone. With this tip it was surprisingly easy.


While I was removing the silicone I got a close, maybe too close, look of the painted walls and noticed they weren't really white anymore, more like yellow and had scratches and holes. Then I desided to paint all the walls. I will show you more later but it was good to be able to paint the walls also underneath where the silicone went. It makes the edge nicer.


I taped all the areas where I used silicone so the silicone wouldn't go all over the place. Then I squeezed silicone on the joint and went over it with a wet finger. Many times I had squeezed way too much silicone on the joint so I ended up removing lot of the silicone with my finger. I would not like to waste, but on the other hand the silicone wont stay soft in the tube for that long, so it would go to waste anyway.


I removed the tapes immediately, since the silicone dries fairly fast.


In some places I either pressed too hard or my fingers are too smalll so the corner in the silicone joint came a bit too small and in some places the colour from under the silicone can be seen. Like in these tiles which had a dark unfinished edge.


But I think that's ok. The silicone is so, so much better now than it was, so I'm not going to be discouraged by few minor details. I will most likely show you more of the toilet renovation on friday, but we'll see if I get the finishing done.

4 comments:

  1. Nice - you are so handy!

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  2. Looking fresh and clean. I always get a little carried away with silicone...

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  3. I think that's one of the prettiest silicone jobs I've seen. :) You are so neat about it, I always make a huge mess.

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    1. Thanks, those are the prettiest places that I took pictures from, of course. Some didn't end up as nice but not too bad either. Silicone is very difficult, so sticky, I tried to clean my fingers often enough with a wet rag. I think that helped.

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