I confess, one reason I write this blog is purely for therapeutic reasons. Sometimes the work is somewhat traumatic. There is an unwritten rule in the home repair biz which is, “make it easy for the next guy.” Alas, this guy did not do this.
Case in point, a while back a friend bought a house and asked me to remove the glass doors in the tub. Hey, I thought, no big deal, demolition is easy, just take it apart and go home . . . WELL . . .
I got the top piece off easily enough, it was just on there with gravity. And with it went the doors. So then all I had to do was remove the two screws holding the side pieces, break the silicone seal with a knife, and done. SO I THOUGHT.
I quickly learned that the previous owner was seriously into overkill. I started to try to remove the side and bottom pieces, and I discovered that he had used, what 6 tubes of silicone caulk? Maybe more. The 3 metal pieces were glued on there. Insane.
The right side piece was glued on so tight that it pulled 3 tiles off the wall when I pulled on it. Had to replace those, see below . . . Client is redoing the whole thing next year so we just did a patch.
More pix . . . The pieces were not only on like crazy, but when I pried them off and went to the next section, the previous section would fall back and re- glue itself, so I had to use shims all the way down to keep pieces separated:
Yes, no joke, he really did use this much caulk. The thing would not come loose until I pried loose the last 3 inches.
So got it all off and put some silicone on the top edges to just waterproof the thing til next year. What a frickin nightmare.
