Frugal Babe

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July 22, 2007 By Frugal Babe

We have a tiny bathroom attached to our bedroom.   Outside of the shower, sink, and toilet, it’s got about 12 sq feet of  floor space.   Pretty tight quarters, but we’re glad we have it (some models in our neighborhood have a walk-in closet in that space, and we’d much rather have the second bathroom).   When we moved in, there was nasty yellow vinyl flooring that was peeling up at the edges.   The worst peeling was right next to the shower, and we always had to be really careful to not get water on it.   We replaced the floor in our main bathroom with tile, but it was a pain in the ass to do, and we decided that having tile in our tiny bathroom wasn’t worth the trouble.   But something had to be done.   So last year I tore out all the old weathered vinyl, and replaced it with new, white vinyl.   Not very creative, not eco-friendly, not as good looking as tile, but a heck of a lot nicer looking than what had been there, and the whole project cost me about $25 (plus a day’s labor).   I measured and cut everything so carefully, but I made one mistake.   Right along the edge of the shower, the floor space juts in about an inch as it runs along the shower, and I missed this important detail.   So when I cut everything and laid out the new floor, I had a one inch gap running all the way along the shower.   Damn it all.   By that time I had been working all day, and I had used up all the flooring I had bought.   So I just installed what I had and then cut a strip to go into the space I had missed.   I cut it to match the tile pattern on the floor, and it looked pretty good, but you could see that there was a cut all the way along it, and last week it started to peel up a little bit (it’s hard to get a one inch wide piece of vinyl to stick forever).  

Yesterday, we went to Home Depot and I bought a strip of white fiberglass molding with a 1.25 inch flat side and a nicely shaped other side ($6.15) and a tube of bathroom grade white caulk ($1.89).   We already had some bathroom adhesive left over from another project.   I cut the strip of molding to fit along the shower, glued it in with the adhesive, and caulked around the edges.   The strip covers the botched floor area with about 1/4 inch of overhang, and everything is nicely waterproof now.   Ta-Da!   It actually looks much better than if the floor had been done right the first time (or so I tell myself), since it has a fancy-shower look to it now.   And we don’t have to worry about dripping on it when we get out of the shower.   It took me about 30 minutes, and it cost about $8 (and I still have 8 feet of trim and lots of caulk left over for another project).   Frugality at its best.  

Of course, it would have been better to not mess up the floor in the first place.   But mistakes happen, that’s life.   Given the situation, we could have ripped up the whole thing and started over (spending another $25 and a day’s labor), so I’m pretty proud of my out-of-the box fix.  

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