What is the best type of caulking to use around a bathtub? It is currently flaking off and needs to be redone. Do we have to scrape out all the old first or can we just patch it?
Joan
Tom: Okay, a couple of things. First off, the easy answer is bath and tile caulking. It’s meant for tubes and around sinks and things so that would be what you would buy.
Charlie: That name will throw you off every time.
Tom: Right, right. It’s not like door and window but here’s the deal. If you have some areas that are still in really good shape, yeah, you could just take out the areas where you’re going to caulk and you can blend the caulk together. It won’t be perfect because the old caulking will not match the new bright white color that you’ll probably use. Here’s what usually causes that problem of coming out is too much caulking.
What you want to do is put it in there and take just a damp sponge and just rub it along that caulk edge until you hardly see any at all. It’s when you put a big glob of it is when it all curls up and cracks out so that’s the key. If that’s what is happened then it’s best to take it all out, obviously, and redo it and redo it right and that means less is better. That’s where people have problems. You go to hotels and you see where a guy with the biggest thumb in the world just put that stuff everywhere. It just look terrible and that’s not what you want in your house.
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