How to PROPERLY Re-Silicone a Shower?

I'm afraid it's not the most pleasant job in the world today, but I'm going to show you how to

properly

re-silicon a

shower

screen. Hello friends, welcome back to Gosford Handyman. I'm Andy Mack and I've run a handyman business over the years. I've done a lot of resilient work and it's one of those jobs that looks like it should be easy, but it's not, and it's also one of those jobs where, if you do all the prep right, the final part of the actual

silicone

will be quite a bit. fast, but it's a very time-consuming preparation and if you don't do it correctly, you will fail very quickly and you will have wasted all your time, so you might as well do it correctly.

This

shower

screen here is a real horror show of almost everything that can go wrong with silicon over the years has gone wrong with this, it's an absolute disaster and it really is an example of what happens if you just do piecemeal repairs one on top of the other. I have all kinds of horrible problems in the shower on the inside edges, I mean it literally looks like it was spooned on. It's really very bad on the outer edges. Here there are leaks in several places on the inside rim. Someone around here has had a stroke.

You are also sealing it with cork and by the way, never use cork in a shower tray. It's

silicone

, you need to use cork, it won't work, but yes, someone tried to use cork and it came off half way and then half way. doll again in the shower we also have a small problem with limescale around many of the joints and the limescale is probably what is causing a lot of the silicon to fail as well because the limescale has sort of grown and pushed the silicone away from the gasket, so before we go ahead and fix this, let me quickly explain to you how shower screens work and what parts you should use silicone and what parts you definitely don't want to use silicone, so, first of all, I would say that all shower screens shower screens are different, so if you can try to find the original instructions for your particular shower screen, if possible, now I understand that in the vast majority of situations that simply won't be practical, so I'm going to explain how to 90 of the screens of showers that I have installed, repaired and worked with have worked over the years and 90 of them work this way some don't work this way try to find the instructions but if you have problems with showers leaks or buildup of mold in strange areas and things like that, then keep in mind what I'm about to tell you, first of all, generally speaking, you should always silicone all the back corners of the shower so that the two bottom edges are against the wall . between the tray and the wall you should apply silicone and raise the back edge now in this particular shower, for some reason they stopped halfway and it looks horrible.

I'll do it correctly and silicone from the floor to the ceiling and that will look much better in terms of the outside edges, all of these should also be coated with silicone, so both sides of the studs and along the front edge of the roof between The cabin and shower tray must be sealed along this outer edge. The important thing to remember when you shower: Water can run through all sorts of small spaces and cracks around the edge of the shower screen and that water needs to be able to escape and flow into the shower. tray for example on this edge here you have the main stud that attaches to the wall and then you have the adjustable bit type that attaches to the stud and water can easily get between those two pieces of aluminum and if it does you need some way to flow down into the aluminum cavity and then out and into the shower pan.

Now what people usually do is they seal the whole bottom edge here and the water can't escape and what happens. is stagnant, the horrible minion water builds up inside this stud or inside the gaps in this bottom section here and then it will start overflowing in strange places, it will usually end up overflowing out of the shower and you will have strange leaks because of As I say, Not all shower screens work like this, so you should check the instructions and read them very carefully, but I would say that 90 of the ones I have found tell you that it does not seal the inside edge of the shower screen door.

For that same reason, in this situation, this bottom edge here would be sealed, this side edge would be sealed but this front edge would not be sealed in the same way in this other corner, the left edge here would have to be sealed, the joint between the stud and the wall should be sealed but this edge where they tried to cork it along this front edge which shouldn't be sealed anyway, that whole edge should be left clean so the water can run down and into the pan if you follow that In mind, as a general rule of thumb for doing this type of work then everything should be fine, let's take a look at the type of tools you'll need, so don't panic, I know there's a lot of stuff here, but you're not going to need all of this, but I just wanted to show you all the things that I would generally accept on a re-silicon job with me because there are many types of troubleshooters here, first you're going to need some type. of silicone remover I have generally found, as well as sensible sealant removers, work quite well.

I tried this unibond material and was never very happy with it, apparently you can use wd-40. I have tried using wd-40 and it works, the only problem is that it leaves a sort of oily residue and you need to remove that oily residue before you can get tough and that can be quite tricky to remove. You'll also need a selection of scrapers to get the No silicone now what I like to use is just a standard utility knife. I also have some sort of handle knife, a big knife about four inches that holds a four-inch razor blade on top and that works very, very well.

I also have a selection of plastic scrapers. You'll probably also need some kind of mold remover or bleach or something. HG mold spray works great sometimes, just that, all you know is to kill mold and mildew. mold and milk, sometimes just a standard bog mold, and sometimes just a standard bog mold. Damn, mulder, damn, sometimes just a standard bog mold and mildew remover will work perfectly fine, plus some kind of plastic scrub brush is very useful, especially if it's a thin one like this one. very useful, you will need an egg like the one on the blue roll and you will also need some old cloths.

I also like to use methylated spirits to clean everything before finally applying the new silicon, so there are only a couple different types. of methylated alcohols we have the pink one and we have a clear one for some reason, I'm not sure what it's called in the states but I'll include it below and let you know what methylated alcohols are. I also keep a small portable hair dryer in my silicone bag. The only use I will have for a hair dryer is if you have all the joints pretty wet and if the grout is wet after you.

You've already cleaned everything you need to get it absolutely dry, so having a little hairdryer in your kit to sort it out is handy or ask your wife, very kind. Oh no, I wouldn't dare use my wife's hair dryer, would I? It wouldn't even cross my mind to make that pain. I grabbed your iron, yeah, and your measuring jug, and yeah, okay, and finally we get to your actual silicon and I personally like to use the dow 785 bacteria resistant silicon that I've always used. I had very good results with it. I've also heard good things about always white silicon.

I don't even know if it's silicon, it's much lighter than the dow material. I don't know if it's silicon, but it says that. It has a proven 10 year protection against mold and fading, so I don't know, I've never used it. If you've used the Forever White, let me know. Many thanks to Sealand Wholesale, who sent me this and not that. sponsored, they just sent me a few tubes of several different sealants to try, obviously you'll need a sealant gun, it's not the best sealant in the world but I've had this for years and years so I know where I stand. with it I have a bunch of spare nozzles that I also carry just in case and I also have spare blades for that scraper and probably the most important thing is that I have the fuji kit or the fugi kit which is the silicone type what do you do with the silicone former?

You use this to drag the joints and get nice clean silicone joints. Is it worth the investment. They are not that expensive. I'll include a link in the description below if you'd like. to pick up one of these other things you will probably need you will also need a dust sheet many dust sheets because it is a messy job you will need a bucket or container to put all of your leftover blue paper in because there will be a lot of paper covered silicone and things like that so make sure you have somewhere to put it and obviously since we're dealing with strong chemicals here you might want to wear gloves, I personally don't, but it's up to you if you want to wear gloves, wear gloves, if you want to wear any other protective gear then feel free to do so, let's get it sorted and finish this and dust it off.

I'd give myself a good half day to do this, if you rush you'll come back later to redo it, so you might as well spend your time doing it

properly

, give yourself a good half day of work and I'd say don't fix what's going on. It doesn't break, if the seams are fine, then leave it, for example, the seams on that edge over there and that edge over there are absolutely fine, so I'm not going to touch all the other seams, along that back edge here and to the top. That wall I'm going to redo and do the full border along the outside front side of the tray and by the way, I suggest you do this when the shower is dry, so I would say try to give it a good type. than 12 hours since the shower was last used on its last use, dry the entire shower thoroughly with some blue roll and just let everything dry, maybe open the bathroom window and that just means then We're Working in a dry shower instead of a wet shower, it will be much easier to do this repair if the shower is dry to begin with, so the last time I used this shower was yesterday afternoon, I dried it completely and now we are in The next morning we are ready to start work and then I won't use it again until tomorrow morning, so I brought all the parts I need to start and I've also already taken care of the limescale.

I'm not going to go into the lime scale in a lot of detail, all I did was take some toilet paper and just lined it around all the edges, soaked it in vinegar, left it for about half an hour more or less and then I went back and removed the limescale, just check from time to time that it is not causing any damage to the actual aluminum or chrome finish of your shower. I would test it on a hidden area first because obviously the acid in the vinegar can potentially damage the shower, in this case it was absolutely fine and as I say after about half an hour the limescale came off quite easily so I'm dressed in my monkey clothes, I've got some knee pads on and I'm ready to bust out. so the first thing I like to do before I start anything else is apply the silicone remover because you have to leave it for a while so all I'm going to do is apply this liberally to all the places where I want silicone. eliminated once again with these types of products, I mean I have used them a lot and never had any problems with them but I would always suggest that you try it first like a small hidden area just to check that it doesn't work. cause some damage to the shower screen or the tray or something, but I've used it so many times that I've never had a problem with it, so once you're done with all that, you can have a little rest, you just have to leave it for half an hour if possible, but yeah, leave it, what does it say?

The instructions, let's look closely, the instructions say to leave it for 15 minutes, but I've always found that the longer you leave it. If it's better, I suggest you try it and find what works for you, but you know if you can leave it for half an hour or an hour. I've found that it works pretty well, so while it's doing its job, I'm going to go get a cup of tea, I'm going to get a bucket and everything else I need to do the next part of this job right, so that's over. a good half hour and we're ready to start removing the silicon and you know it's ready because it's got some sort of ripple along the edge of the silicon so you know it's ready to peel off, some will come off pretty easily some will be a real challenge.

I'm going to start in the shower because the silicon is much thicker in there and may need a couple of applications to come out. I'm not going to show you every second of this because it's going to take a couple of hours to clean everything up and put everything away. I would say use your selection of tools you have on hand, anything that can scratch, use plastic tools if it's things liketiles and other things, you can probably get away with the metal scraper, but be careful not to. damaging your tiles, scraping metal is really a last resort, but I can tell you right now, looking at this silicon, there is a lot of last resort silicon in here that will be a challenge to remove, so that's most of the old silicon that is removed now .

There are quite a few places where there is mold growing, or water has managed to get behind the old silicon or they just applied silicone over the top of the mold and left it, so I'm going to quickly spray everything that's moldy with mold spray. molds and then I go Go away, have some lunch, come back, clean everything up, let it dry a little bit and then we're ready to make the final silicon. By the way, it's pretty strong stuff, so I suggest you open a window while using it. I'll include a link to this in the description if you're looking for it like I say and I'll use any kind of bleach or anything but this works pretty well so all I'm doing now is constantly running around with a hair dryer blow drying. each joint just making sure everything is completely dry, remember that silicon does not stick to wet surfaces so you need to leave it completely dry and this is also a good opportunity to use the hair dryer to blow away any remaining dust and turn them into a little leftovers.

There are also bits of silicone residue left from any of the joints, so people guess what we are actually ready to start applying silicone. Almost, we have to let this dry completely now, obviously, we've dried the hair. I'd like to leave it for a little over half an hour, now is a good time to do a quick clean too, so I'll wipe down the dust sheet, wipe down the shower tray, put away all my tools and stuff while I'm waiting for it to dry and then we will do the last thing. I'm giving all the joints a good final clean with methylated spirit, this gives a really nice clean surface, ready to apply the silicone.

Then it is just a case of application. the silicon itself and removing the excess with fuji forming tools. I'm adding a slight return on the bottom pillars stopping at the edge so the water inside the pillar can drain. I wouldn't normally recommend this, but I don't know what. Say the silicon is behind the studs, so this is just a belt and braces. Actually, just be sure not to seal the entire bottom edge on the inside of the shower unless the shower door manufacturer specifically recommends it. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here and tell you how to use the fuji james kit from plumber parts charlie from charlie diy chess from ultimate handyman and skill builder everyone has made great videos on how to use them.

I'll leave some links to their videos in the description below My main advice for this is don't rush, know when to stop and make sure you have enough blue roll and you're good to go. I'm dusted it's not the easiest job but as usual it's all in the preparation if you spend a little time preparing the silicone part itself will be easy so let it dry overnight. I'm going to leave this until tomorrow morning. It will be absolutely fine and ready to use tomorrow morning and what I would also suggest is that the first time you use the shower just watch out for leaks or anything in case you missed a bit or something and you can fix it later , but I hope I've gone around and checked everything I could.

I don't see anything I missed. It's substantially better than it was before. Is not perfect. At the end of the day the shower has been like it had been fixed on the floor using silicone everywhere and it does a bit. It's difficult, like where to stop basically, but like I say, it's a huge improvement and I hope it doesn't slip away anymore. A couple of little tips for you before we finish if you make a mistake with your silicone once it starts to peel. You will destroy it if you go over it, but sometimes you can use it like a diluted soap and water mixture, if you literally just quickly spray soap and water, go over it with a finger or a tool, sometimes you can fix mistakes that way, but sometimes you can also It can make it much worse, so it's a last resort.

If it's started to peel and you've made a mess, you can quickly spray it with soap and water, but remember the rule: silicon doesn't stick. to get things wet, so if you get it too wet and then put silicone on top, you might as well just take it all out and start again, another quick tip to keep the silicone from getting moldy in the first place. try not to store bottles and toothbrushes and all that kind of stuff right in the corner of the shower on top of the silicon because if the silicon never has a chance to dry, then you're fighting a losing battle. you want plenty of ventilation in your bathroom try not to keep things wide open it's okay to have bottles in the shower but don't place them directly against the silicone try to leave a little air space and then the silicone will dry out between uses and last much longer time as usual this is just my method of doing it I'm not saying it's the perfect way to do it I'm not saying it's right or wrong it's just the way I do it if you do it a different way let us know in the comments below and we can all learn from each other and as always it's a beautiful thing friends thanks for watching take care be kind see you next time Teddy bye.