How to Re-Caulk a Bathtub

Original post by Sarah @ Renewed Upon a Dream, please visit her website for more great ideas!”

Remember in my declaration of Operation Love My Rental when I talked about our lovely bathtub & how I wanted to re-caulk it.  Well I did it, which means Operation Love My Rental has commenced!  *trumpets sound here*  It was so easy to do it was kinda crazy that I put it off for so long.  This is going to be the least glamous post eevvvaaaaaa!  But oh well, it’s necessary folks!

So here is where we started in this little shindig.

Lovely right?  Mmmm mold.  Does this happen to everyone’s caulk or just mine?  I wonder if they used the right kind of caulk?  Whatever.  I took myself to the Home Depot of amazing-ness & bought some caulk.  I don’t have one of those fancy caulk canister squeezer things (what that’s not what they are called?  Oh a caulk gun… I had to look that up.) so I just got a tube of caulk that you could just squeeze the caulk out of.  I think it was about $4.  Yep, a whole $4 for this project.  Make sure you get a caulk that’s made for kitchens & baths!  I think that this will help it not to mold as quickly.

So first things first, I must tell you that I pretty much followed this video tutorial exactly.

Once the old caulk was out, I took an old toothbrush & some soapy water to the cracks to clean up area & get rid of any straggler pieces of caulk.

Dry it off with a towel, then it’s caulk time!  For my tube, I just had to snip the end off with some sissors.

Then lay a thin squeeze of caulk down along the lines of the tub, where the old caulk was.  Once you’ve done a little line, you’ll want to smooth it out.  I just did this with my finger.  Wet your finger in a bowl of water, then run it along the wet caulk flattening it out so that it looks nice. 

And that’s it!  Make sure you fill all of the cracks where you took out the old caulk.  Give it plenty of time to dry too.  Mine took well over a day.  If you have another shower, use that for a couple of days while the caulk dries.

I can’t believe how much of a difference this made!  This picture is in the same exact spot as the “before” picture at the beginning of the post.  Such a simple fix, and it’s made me feel even better about the changes I have planned to make.  The bathroom still isn’t done yet, gotta tackle that window, which you notice in all of these pictures I never showed you, it’s right above the pictures in all of these.  but the one change really does make me feel a little better.

So if you have some caulk in your bathroom that’s bugging you, even if you’re a renter, go ahead & fix it!  It’s worth it for only $4 & so simple I promise you!!

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