The purpose of applying caulking is for keeping water and moisture where it belongs and not in or around areas where it can do harm. A bead of caulk around a bathtub or shower enclosure prevents steam from invading the bathroom walls, and caulk around a window keeps the rain and weather out of your house. Caulk around finish trim gives a more finished appearance.

Laying a bead of caulk is easy, but doing it without making a mess can be a challenge, and doing it so it seals properly and smoothly is more of a challenge. Here are a few suggestions on how to apply caulk.

Keep the caulking bead neat and even:

Here is a technique I often use. Use masking tape to tape off the areas around the seam you are caulking, keeping the two pieces of tape at a distance the size of the desired bead. Lay down your bead of caulk and then use your finger to tool the caulk by pushing the excess onto the tape. After tooling, remove the masking tape and you'll find a very neat, straight, clean, smooth bead of caulk.

Shine the shower with car polish:

Next time you clean your bathroom rub a coat of car polish on the ceramic or fiberglass shower enclosure. You'll get a fantastic shine and the water will bead up and roll off before mildew or mold can begin to form. It will make your next cleaning a lot easier. However, do not apply car polish to the floor of the shower. It would become slippery and can cause an accident.

Smoothing caulk with a paint stick:

After you lay your bead of caulk, determine the width you want and mask it off with masking tape. Next, take a paint stir stick and clip off the corners to fit the desired width between the two pieces of masking tape. Smooth out the bead of caulk with the stick.

How to unplug a used tube of caulk:

Cut off the nozzle end so that the hole is slightly larger than the first cut. Drive a screw into the nozzle end of the hardened caulk and use the screw to pull the hardened caulk out of the nozzle. A screw with course threads will work the best.

How to cap an open tube of caulk;

You just finished your caulking task and there's caulk still left over in the tube, you can store the cartridge for later use using a plastic electrical connector to quickly seal and reopen the tube. This will keep the caulk in the nozzle from hardening for use at a later date.

Never use oil-based caulking around windows:

Never use an oil-based caulking compound around insulating glass such as thermal-pane windows. The vegetable oils in these types of caulking compounds aggressively attack polysulfide polymers which is the primary sealants used for such windows. The polysulfide degrades, cracks and causes the window to fail and fog up.

Expect shrinkage:

Sometimes shrinkage of a caulking bead is thought to potentially lead to performance problems with the sealant. While this can occur with some types of sealants (silicones and polyurethanes, for instance), for many other types of sealants it does not pose a real performance problem. Such products as acrylic latex, butyl, polysulfide and other caulking compounds do not exhibit severe performance problems when they experience a moderate amount of shrinkage during their cure.

Allow the caulk to cure before painting or staining:

Latex type caulks should have at least 24 hours to cure before painting. The reason is that latex caulk is much more elastic than the paint that is applied over them and the paint can't stretch enough to avoid cracking during the caulk's curing and subsequent shrinkage.

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