Caulking a bathtub took me 5 hours. Should have been 30 minutes.

I decided to recaulk the tub in my guest bathroom last Saturday. Watched a 5 minute YouTube video, thought I had it handled. Ended up spending the entire afternoon scraping out old silicone with a razor blade, trying to keep the gaps even, and fixing all the messy spots. I got there eventually but it was way more work than I planned. Anyone else get tricked by a simple DIY job that turned into an all day thing?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_jenkins2d ago

Huh, next time use painter's tape. It makes the cleanup way faster.

claire_butler12d ago

Oh man, I feel your pain. I did the same thing last spring and it took me almost 6 hours because I kept messing up the bead and having to redo it. What really saved me was using a small plastic tool from the hardware store that's made for smoothing caulk. You just run it along the edge and it pushes the extra stuff off clean. Also I learned the hard way that you gotta clean the area with rubbing alcohol first so the new caulk sticks good. Now I can do a tub in about 45 minutes but it took a few tries to get there.