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?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan_jenkins1mo ago

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

coleman.seth6d ago

I get why people say that but I've never had great luck with tape on caulk. It always seems to peel off unevenly or leave little gaps that drive me crazy later.

claire_butler11mo 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.