A quick video on how to achieve perfect edges when using silicon, caulking or sealant. in this Video I will be using a paintable silicone made by Gorilla.
I tried this in our kitchen, after years of hating caulking due to challenges and mess - this approach was awesome and worked great! Thanks for posting this video - super appreciated!
@@malikmurad2989 Hi Malik - for our kitchen, I used a matching sanded grout / silicon caulk to match the grout I used for our backsplashes. For a bathroom - I would use a reasonably priced silicone caulk for bathrooms at Home Depot, Lowes or your place of choice. This method worked great to not have the hassles to keep it straight and clean. I have simply used a wet finger for years and this works with a lot of patience and usually a good deal of clean up. This was so much better and looks great!
@@malikmurad2989 silicone sealant is good for wet areas in your house.( Keith hens and bathrooms) Only use latex for paint prep( around interior trim etc) and exterior that will be painted use polyurethane. There are always exceptions but this is the basics
Don’t count on the paintability of the silicone. Paint will stick to it better than regular silicone but it is still silicone and the paint will still peel much easier than on other surfaces. Good video I have installed sealants professionally for 40 years and get really irritated when people make videos using soapy water or window cleaner to tool the joint. It is detrimental to the performance of the sealant. You did it correctly. For the best bond, after “tooling” in one direction immediately go the other direction. It pulls the sealant into the minute corner at both sides of the grout line. Nice job. BTW you are not just removing the excess when you “ tool” the sealant with your finger ,you are significantly improving the bond by pressing the sealant against the substrate.Removing very small air pockets
Why does it have to be a finger? Finger is just a tool like a professional plastic tool is. And you're pushing the said tool like you would with a finger.
@@glacialimpala first of all it shouldn’t be a finger. But most people don’t own professional caulking tools. And by the way, professional caulking tools are usually not made of plastic. And they are definitely not the caulking “tools” or “profiling “ tools sold in big box stores.Those are garbage and just scrape off the excess sealant, they do not properly tool the joint.No professional caulker uses them.
A few comments to pull this off successfully: - Be aware the kind of caulk you are using: silicone is hard to tool and can only be cleaned with mineral spirits. Latex/acrylic/siliconized caulks are water soluble and easier to work with. - Tape the joint to the exact width you expect the final caulk bead to be. If your tape is too far apart you would get a lot of smeared caulk after pulling the tape. If your tape is too close together, you will lift the edge of the bead and leave a lip that is hard to smooth cleanly. - Do not use your finger, use a plastic tool for caulking. A plastic tool will allow to tool the caulk bead in a consistent manner and you can make several passes without making a mess. If you use your finger it is hard to apply even pressure and be consistent to achieve a uniform bead. Good luck, getting perfect edges is not easy to do.
Yeah one really needs to ballance three things - distance between tape, plastic tool width and the amount of silicone. The distance needs to match the size of the tool so the point where the tool touches the wall is the exact width of the space between tapes. I'm afraid too many people just eyeball this!
Ingenious. Wish zi would have seen this before I sealed my tiles. I was told not to use silicone sealant on my tiles because it shrinks when dry. Is that true?
Does it go above the tape into the grout lines? I have a job that has black grout and they want white sealant from the countertops to the mosaic backsplash.
They make a an inexpensive edge smoothing tool that has multiple angles for picking the width of the resultant seal. This tool works better than a finger for smoothing.
Great tip, thanks. Do I need to put silicon in a corner where 2 walls/ tiles meet vertically instead of grout? I did my back splash today and didn't put grout in that corner. I will use your method tomorrow all around ends of tiles. Please advise.
Great video! Quick question - I need to silicone around my new laminate kitchen worktop, the wall is just painted/no tiles, but because the walls aren’t straight in all areas there’s some large gaps between the kitchen counter and a wall (about large enough to fit the top of your pinky finger in). If I just apply silicone to these gaps will it work? Or will it sink in down the gap? I’m not sure what’s best to plug the gap with
There is a cylinder-ish shaped foam material called backer-rod that comes in various sizes that designed to fill large gaps, after filling the gap with backer-rod then you can use caulking or silicone on top of the backer-rod to make it look nice.
I’m definitely not a pro but I like to use a razor blade when laying tape. You can lay the tape and then put the razor blade over the tape and then pull the tape against the blade to get a perfect straight cut in the tape.
I thought it would work better than it did. After carefully applying tape, I caulked. The caulk wasn’t allowed to dry at all and I pealed off the tape. The results were that the caulk edge puckered up at the edges as I removed the tape. Maybe I pulled in the wrong direction? I had to use a wet fingertip to smooth down edge.
Thanks for the awesome tips! Do you have any tips to restore quarts countertops? I have the same ones as you and they have all kinds of deep stains due to the previous owner.
Try bar keepers friend. Get the kind that comes in a gel. Widely recommended in the stone countertop industry. Acetone (nail polish remover) may work as well but use sparingly as it can etch the finish of the surface.
If you have a larger job to do like a whole shower, do you caulk it all before removing any of the tape or do you remove the tape in sections as you go?
I would just do it in sections. But if you don't need perfectly straight lines , you could also just go without the tape and just use your finger , but practice first with a very small bead to spread with your finger. But if that's too hard, just switch back to using tape.
Thank you for the tip, I do have questions, what do I use around kitchen faucet and shower walls where it meets the wall? There's too many products. Do I need caulk, silicone or any other product? Thank you.
The faucet comes with manufacturer's recommendations. Hans Grohe which I bought says silicone meant for bathrooms and such, but non-acidic kind. Pros tell me it doesn't matter if it's acidic since acid can't really rust your faucet, especially not in a couple of minutes before the acid 'evaporates'.
@@sernani99 no problem, I hope your silicone turns out looking and performing great! And thank god faucets come with masks that cover up the area that gets caulked
When not using masking take and there's a film left on the surface, how do i remove this? Do petroleum/kerosene, gasoline or thinner help in removing the silicone film? Thanks.
You can you use silicone or caulking for any edge that looks unfinished. If the edge of your tile already looks nice then don't worry about it .. but if it looks bad go ahead and add some silicone or caulking. Remember caulking is paintable and silicone is not.
Unfortunately the silicone or caulking will not stick to the freshly oiled block either. You will have to clean a small area on the edge of block to make tape and sealant adhere. Then re oil edge of block after applying sealant
Ok i can kind of see why you do this. I mean it has caulking on baseboards anyway. HOWEVER you dont need to if you buy high quality tape and actually take the time to ROLL IT WITH A ROLLER (not paint roller). We dont use caulk on cars and look how clean those are and I even did sandblasting monuments and this is what we do to get clean lines. *Good tape has teeny tiny little globules and when you roll it good these burst and adhere*
