Linen Closet Woes

Our house has the advantage of a very large linen closet in the upstairs bathroom. The disadvantage is that there was mildew on the walls. So I bought some anti-mildew bathroom paint and set to work scrubbing the walls down with a bleach solution. There was some nastiness when I had to scrub a spot where large quantities of soap had been spilled. It had soaked into the shelves and it took several changes of water in the bucket to get it all. There was also a spot with mysterious black stuff that appeared to be coming from under the old paint. Yuck.

The wooden shelves had strips of metal screwed to the edges, so I set about unscrewing them. That way I wouldn't have to worry about keeping the paint off of the metal. Unfortunately, many of the screws were so tight and of such a soft metal that they preferred to strip rather than unscrew.

I took a break to survey what I had done so far. I noticed that on the shelves where I had managed to remove the metal strips, it was obvious that there was some sort of black layer on top of the wood. It turned out to be some sort of foam cover that was glued to the shelf with something resembling tar. Aha! So that was the black stuff I had tried in vain to clean earlier! Underneath this cover there were at least two layers of paint. I know this because one of the layers came with the foam when I pried it up. If this stuff had been applied to bare wood, I don't think I could have moved it at all. At least not without some sort of softening chemical. As it was, there are still gobs of the tar-like adhesive stuck to the shelf.

At this point, I think it would be easier to rip the shelves out and replace them. They look like simple 1X8 boards, so that should be easy enough.

Mel's Law of Renovation #1: Every repair will take far longer than expected, and be more complicated than it at first seemed.