You'll have to forgive me if things are a little quiet around here the next couple months. I'm trading in my routine of evenings at the theater, dinners with friends, movie-going, and other more glamorous pursuits for paintbrushes and bottles of bleach. Justin and I are giving up most of our free-time to whip our new place into shape, and that includes patching and painting the entire place, sanitizing the bathrooms, and cleaning the kitchen. It won't make for much of an exciting read, I'm afraid, but I'll do my best to document it nevertheless.
Justin's already started working with my mom on the patching and painting (they began while I was in Italy), but today marked my first day of work on our condo.
While Justin and Mom started applying this deep shade of aubergine to the accent wall in our dining alcove (it dries darker than it looks in this photo), I started doing battle with our mold-infested jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom. When we had the unit inspected prior to buying it, the inspector pointed out that it was badly in need of a cleaning, but even after two cycles of cleaning it with a bleach and Cascade concoction universally recommended on the Internet, the jets were still spewing chunks of blackish-brown mold when they were activated. Seriously gross.
Unfortunately, my cleaning escapades revealed a troubling fact: our hot water runs out before we can even fill the (admittedly enormous tub). I'm not sure what this means for the usability of the jacuzzi once I finally get it clean (I'll be trying again next week), but it needs to be cleaned whether we end up using it much or not. Thankfully, there's a smaller, jacuzzi-free bathtub in the guest bathroom that I'll be able to use for my beloved baths on a regular basis, if necessary.
If your hot water is running out faster than you think it should, you may need a new water heater. If there are mineral deposits caked on the bottom of the heater, they can prevent it from heating the water as efficiently, so it won't be able to keep up when you are doing things like filling a tub or taking a long shower. Don't know if that's the problem, but a temporary solution is to boost the temperature really high, and then run a combination of hot and cold water into the tub, that way the water that you have lasts longer (the downside being that you will scald yourself if you're not careful).
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