Recaulking Bathtubs

Yes, it’s somewhat of a very random post here, but this is a very in depth and rather nice description of how to do this, and do it well. Although it seems like a relatively easy task, if not done correctly, you’ll be doing it again soon. So, I thought I’d post this here to perhaps help someone else, but mainly so I could find it when I have to go through this again.

Courtesy of Nestor Kelby at diychatroom.com:

Recaulking bathtubs is probably one thing that perplexes more homeowners than any other job. One thing that people should realize is that silicone caulk can be difficult to remove if you don’t know how to do it, and NOTHING sticks well to silicone caulk, not even silicone caulk.

It’s because people don’t know how to remove old silicone caulk COMPLETELY that their new silicone caulk doesn’t stick well, and that results on garbage advice being given, like filling the bathtub with water before caulking, which is likely going to result in trying to caulk a wet joint which will yield predictable results. Garbage in, garbage out.

If you remove the old silicone caulk COMPLETELY, the new silicone caulk will stick to both tub and tile like chewing gum to the underside of a church pew.

This post is in 4 parts:
1. How to remove old Silicone caulk
2. What silicone caulk to buy
3. How to place new silicone caulk
4. How to clean mildewed silicone caulk

1. How to remove old silicone caulk:
The way to do this is to first remove as much as you can by mechanical means. This means scraping as much as you can off with a razor, or if you have a fiberglass or acrylic bathtub that may be damaged by a sharp razor, use a Tungsten Carbide paint scraper or a plastic windshield scraper or any other reasonably sharp but relatively soft material that won’t damage your fiberglass or acrylic surfaces.

Next, apply a product called “Silicone-Be-Gone” which is made by DAP and can be found in the caulk aisle of most home centers. Silicone-Be-Gone is nothing more than gelled mineral spirits. If you can’t locate Silicone-Be-Gone in your area, just buy some mineral spirits (or paint thinner or “solvent” or Varsol), get some strips of paper towel wet with the stuff, drape them over the silicone caulk and cover with Saran Wrap for an hour or two to prevent the paper towel strips from drying out.

Web page showing Silicone-Be-Gone:
http://shop2.aol.ca/shop/product–ca…d_3298009.html

Neither Silicone-Be-Gone nor mineral spirits will “dissolve” cured silicone, it will just make the silicone swell up and get much softer so that it can be more easily removed by mechanical means. After letting the Silicone-Be-Gone work for an hour or two, scrape the silicone caulk a second time and you should remove more silicone (that will accumulate on your razor blade or scraper). Apply more Silicone-Be-Gone and spread it with your finger this time so that the warmth softens the gel and you apply a thinner coat.

After leaving that Silicone-Be-Gone sit for another hour or two, scrub the area with a green or white Scotchbrite pad (or the kind sold in grocery stores for scouring pots). The difference between the green and white pads is that the green pads have an abrasive mixed into the plastic before drawing that plastic into a fiber. The white ones are pure nylon fiber which doesn’t contain any abrasives. I use the green pads on my enamel steel bathtubs, but I’d probably use a white pad on fiberglass or acrylic tubs to avoid scratching the fiberglass or acrylic material.

After scrubbing with the Scotchbrite pad, clean the Silicone-Be-Gone off with clean water and dry with a cloth or paper towel. If you’re using paint thinner, I’d use Simple Green to clean the paint thinner off first, and then rinse the area with clean water. There should be little silicone left, but any that is left will prevent the new silicone caulk from sticking at that spot, so we need a way to confirm that there is ABSOLUTLEY NO residual silicone caulk remaining.

Remember that the Silicone-Be-Gone makes the silicone caulk swell up and get soft. Get a small quantity (a photographic container full is plenty for one bathtub) of a very fine powder (like Portland Cement, drywall joint compound, or probably even normal baking flour would work). Use a small brush to apply that to the area where the silicone caulk was, and then rub the powder with your finger.

If there is any residual silicone caulk remaining, the fine powder will become embedded in it, thereby revealing it’s location. If there is no residual silicone caulk, the powder will be wiped cleanly off the tub by your finger.

Mark the spots where the sticking of the powder reveals the existance of silicone caulk with masking tape or something, and redo just those areas again with the Silicone-Be-Gone. You should find that the residual silicone caulk is so soft now that it can be removed even by scraping the surface with a popsicle stick sharpened in a belt sander (or a plastic windshield scraper). Then, check those areas again with the fine powder.
Once the powder doesn’t stick anywhere, let the area dry and start putting the new caulk on. Maybe wipe down the area where the silicone caulk was with mineral spirits (paint thinner) and allow to dry. It will evaporate completely without leaving a residue, so there’s no need to clean again.

2. What Silicone caulk to buy:
Silicone caulks come in different price ranges. The more expensive caulks will contain more mildewcide, which means that the caulk will be more resistant to attack by mildew. I personally have found that Dow Corning’s “786″ silicone caulk is better in that respect than DAP “Titanium II” silicone caulk. If you’re buying GE silicone caulk, pay a bit more and get their “1700″ silicone caulk instead of their regular “Tub & Tile Silicone Caulk”. Not only will these caulks be more mildew resistant, they will stick better and cure to a stronger rubber than the regular silicone caulks.

However, in the last section of this post, you’ll find out how to clean mildew off of silicone caulk, so you can keep any silicone caulk clean, not just the better ones.

3. How to place the new silicone caulk:

Use masking tape (1/2 or 3/4 inch wide) to mask off the joint you’re wanting to caulk. Use 3/4 or even 1 inch wide masking tape if you have little experience caulking. Put the edge of the tape about 1/4 inch away from the joint on both sides of the joint. That means stopping the tape about 1/4 inch from any vertical joints you want to caulk as well. This can be done by gripping a single edge razor blade in a pair of needle nose style locking pliers. Put the tape in place and then put the edge of the razor firmly on the masking tape, and then pull the tape at an angle so that it tears off at the razor’s edge.

(If you do a lot of caulking, you can probably just caulk the tub freehand without even bothering with masking tape, but I’m writing this up for new homeowners who want to get a good looking job without the caulking experience to do it freehand.)

Before putting the new silicone in place, press down the edges of the masking tape so that you’re sure that the new silicone won’t get under it.

Squeeze out the new caulk onto the joint and wipe it down with a dry finger so that it’s relatively uniform in thickness all along the joint. Don’t let so much caulk accumulate on your finger that it starts getting on the tub or tile on the OTHER side of the masking tape. At this stage, you simply want a relatively uniform amount of caulk all along the joint, and how you accomplish that really doesn’t matter.

Once you’ve got the new silicone caulk reasonably uniformly distributed along the joint, pull the masking tape off.

Give the new silicone caulk a few minutes to “skin over”. This is a good time to mix up a 50/50 solution of liquid dish washing detergent and water.

“Tool” the new silicone caulk with the diluted soap solution. The soap in it will both act as a lubricant and will prevent the silicone from sticking to your finger. Basically the procedure is to dip the ends of the thumb, forefinger, middle finger and ring finger of your working hand in the soap solution, rub your fingers together, and wipe a 6 to 9 inch length of the new silicone caulk fairly lightly to give it a concave shape. Then, rub your finger tips together again to reload your working finger with more soap solution and do another 6 to 9 inches or so. Keep going, rubbing your finger tips together to soap up your working finger tip. As you do this, soap will come off your finger and coat the silicon caulk. After you do the whole joint, you can run your finger from one end of it to the other just to ensure it’s more or less uniform.

Also, at this point, if you wipe the silicone too hard and remove it from one area, you can simply add a little more caulk to that area and spread it as best you can. I can’t explain why it sticks with the soap solution on the existing caulk, but it does. If you put on too much, scrape off the excess with a putty knife or something.

Allow the silicone caulk to cure overnight and you can shower the next day. Don’t put any shampoo bottles near it for the first 2 or 3 days, tho.

4. How to clean mildewed silicone:

Mix up some baking soda with straight bleach to make a paste that you can spread with a tea spoon (even a plastic tea spoon). (I use a small oval painting spatula that you can buy in art supply stores for painting with thick “paste” style paints that come in tubes.)

Use a putty knife to scoop the bleach/baking soda paste out of the mixing container and hold it near the silicone caulk. Scrape the paste onto the silicone caulk and spread it with the teaspoon.

Cut Saran Wrap (or any clear food wrap that will stick to tub and tile) into 4 to 6 inch wide (or so) strips and put them over the paste so it doesn’t dry out, and leave it overnight like that. My experience is that it won’t do any harm to ceramic wall tiles or enameled steel tubs to leave it for several days like that.

When you pull the Saran Wrap off and remove the paste, your silicone caulk will be white as Manitoba snow. And, you can do this repeatedly to the same caulk to maintain it in a mildew free condition.

You’ll find when you’re doing this that the baking soda settles out of the bleach so that it’ll be necessary to continually mix the paste up before scooping some out. If you’re doing a vertical or joint on a ceiling, you CAN mix Vim Thick Bleach (made by Unilever Canada 1-800-896-9286) which is just gelled bleach with talcum powder to make a paste that sticks well (and behaves all the world like joint compound). (Adding baking powder to gelled bleach results in the gelled bleach becoming ungelled so that you ruin it.) However, since Vim Thick Bleach only has a sodium hypochlorite content of about 3.5 percent, it’s not as effective at killing mildew than regular bleach which is 6.25 percent NaOCl.

I save the old paste and reuse it. Just add some more bleach and mix it up, and it’s ready to be used again. I think talcum powder is less dense than baking soda, so I’m going to try making paste from talcum powder and regular bleach when I run out of paste made from baking soda to use.

Hope this helps.