Caulking & Sealing-Preparation for Bathtubs

Joe Wise: Hi, I am Joe Wise, owner of Buildwise Construction and we are going to over the proper methods of cleaning and prepping and get ready to caulk up our tub today. First of all, these areas that are coming loose, we need to get them cleaned up and I will take a little razor knife here. You want to be careful that you don't ruin the substrate that you are dealing with and do a little scrape work here, just to get the old caulk off. Again, you want to be careful that you don't scratch your surface. I have different types of knives for this so I can come down on it and get that caulk out of there. If you don't get this cleaned properly and get it prep properly, the new caulk won't stick. A lot of times once you get one side of this loose, it will actually peel and you can actually peel the caulk off. That doesn't always work, but sometimes. If you don't get this caulk off properly where your new caulk can go on there and adhere properly to your substrate in your tub area, you are going to have problems because the water is going to infiltrate down underneath your substrate and cause damage. See how I am filling this caulk out of here, it's not very fast, but then again, you don't want to do fast, you want to do good. You want it to get nice and clean. See how I am getting that nice and clean along there? I can't really see what I am doing here, so I am going to put some power cleaner on it, some turpentine cleaner. Just spray it on there, let it sit for a second, then I am going to wipe it up. See what we got. See, we have still got a few areas here that we need to hit. See how that's turning loose? That means it's not sticking really good. So you got to take the time to get that off of there. Some of these areas don't look too bad. They look like they were put on properly to begin with. So, we are just going to clean these areas. Now, you see how much better that looks only after a few minutes of cleaning. you start to see how these cracks open in up right here where the tub meets the substrate and that is what we are going to go back and caulk. So, now you want to do all the way around the rest of the area and clean your back splash and see what areas need to be caulked there. Next, we are going to show you how to get the countertops and sinks prepped and ready for caulk.