You’ve heard me say this, sometimes small upgrade can make a big impact to a room. We have done quite a few small upgrades ourselves and we love how they instantly changed our lives (here and here). This time, we tackled our kitchen and bathroom, and our target is the old, dingy caulk.

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Yeah, they were pretty bad. We are disgusted by the look, and more importantly, caulk is supposed to close the seams to seal areas and corners that are susceptible to mildew and mold damage. When they crack and become discontinuous, they can no longer to keep the area around sinks and tubs watertight.

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The part we are mostly worried about is the seam right below the bathroom window. Somehow the window sill was installed wrong with a slope going outwards, so water sits there and we are so worried that the water gets into the wall.

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And the caulk here could no longer prevents water from seeping down into the wall.

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When you think that our master bath is bad, here comes worse.

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These are taken around our kitchen sink:

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And here is how bad it was around the backslash:

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If it was not dingy and moldy, it was missing:

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So when Slav finally got a couple days break from his work, he stripped off all the old caulk and applied a new layer while I was at work.

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Slav even caulked the gap between our counter top and the stove:

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Everything is SO. FRESH.

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The kitchen became 100 times brighter – without changing a light bulb! And the bathroom? With white tiles and fresh caulk, it is like a heaven:

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The window seam now looks like this:

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Slav also ran a line of caulk around the edge of each window, where the glass panels meet the metal trims to seal the cold draft.

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Quite a change, isn’t it? Who would knew that fresh caulk can have such an impact? I have been talking about painting the bathroom walls a lighter color since our moving day. But with white doors and bright new caulk, the blue walls actually look lovely. It is such a easy and quick way to make a big change!