Shelf Upgrade

As promised last time, here's our last major main bathroom upgrade. Our downstairs shower didn't have any built-in shelving except for a soap dish. We inherited the last owner's scummy over-the-shower-head plastic shelves and eventually bought a metal 3-shelf stand from Ikea. It held its own for a while, but rusted over time until it was rather nasty.

So during our do-it-yourself remodel weekend, we decided to install real shelves. My mom planned ahead and ordered us some shelves from here. They had a lot of color and style options to choose from. We chose flat mount, since we were not about to cut into our existing tile. We went with black to match the soap dish. We decided to mount it to the wall next to the shower fixtures, so "normal" was the best size to make sure it didn't interfere with the faucets.

Mom did more research and figured out what kind of glue we would need. She came prepared with some waterproof (not resistant) sealant.

Then came the hard part. Once we decided where we want the shelves, we put the glue on the backs and stuck them into place. The problem was that this stuff took a while to dry, so we held it in place forever all the while trying to use a level to make sure that we weren't accidentally sliding it off balance. We were. Frequently. We held it for a long time and then taped it up, as you see below.

Then we checked back about 30 minutes later and they had slit and gone off-kilter. Again. You might be able to see a tiny bit of brown above the lower shelf in the picture above. That is the glue, as the shelf slid down the wall (it was not fun to scrape off afterwards). So we slid them back, re-held, and re-taped. It was pretty miserable.

But finally we ended up with something more or less level and even and (more importantly) dry. We left the tape on for days before we were brave enough to remove it and then we waited even longer before caulking. (Remember, we're not really using this bathroom right now.) Here's what the glue looked like once it had dried. Pretty solid but obviously with space for water to get in. Even though the glue said that it dried in a few hours, the instructions that came with the shelves said to wait a few days to make sure it was really dry before caulking, because once it was sealed it wouldn't be able to thoroughly dry out any more. So we waited until we got up the nerve to try it, which equaled a couple of weeks--plenty of time for the glue to be good and dry.

Time to caulk. This was our first attempt at having to use a caulk gun on something that actually had to look nice. It was quite a challenge and very gooey. But D did a great job while I assisted with a  rag and a finger to help wipe off the extra.

Weeks later, the shelves are still up and I think they look pretty nice, even if the silicon lines aren't exactly professional. It sure beats a slimy plastic or rusty metal shelf!