who is the caulk expert out there??

Question, I have been in our house since June 00 - I have come to the conclusion that all of my interior(bathrooms) and exterior caulk(windows) is completely shot. So, is this normal? I thought that stuff had a shelf life of 5 years.

Also- what is the best brand to use? Thanks for listening

 

for the bathrooms- get latex silicone in a tube. It says keep the tub/shower dry for 12-24 hours but we usually let it dry for two days before using the tub/shower. I like to make sure I did a thorough job. Home Depot usually has someone there that knows what to buy or ask for someone that really knows. Latex silicone that is what you need.
For the windows, you have to get that caulk gun thing and use clear for exterior: latx siiicone. pile it on.
Of course with both of these situations you have to remove the old first which is a fun job...
The bathrooms, we do one each week-end so we can use the others while one is under repair.
The people at Home Depot are pretty helpful. Even Lowe's and Home Depot have websites that you can get advice.
Oh and as far as wear, yes, four years is fairly normal.

 

yeah VM did not caulk well in the new houses. We have gobs of caulk in corners, areas completely missed, caulk smeared across tile, it's a mess and that is just the inside of the house. I now need to go outside to check the windows since it was brought up.

 

Yes - you are correct - I did the bathroom caulk (tub and shower) almost two years ago. Interesting, the outside caulk seems to bethree different kinds, white, tan and clear -
may just call a painter since I do not do well with heights-

Thasks for the advice

 

After being in our house since this last February, all of the caulk between the floors and the walls and around the tubs/showers in all of our bathrooms has cracked. They used the wrong kind of grout (non-expanding) and then PAINTED the faulty grout with cheap light gray caulk to make it match the grout color on the floors. I ripped out the caulk, which was not difficult since it was so poorly and thinly applied, and used GE Silicone II caulk for bathrooms. No water is getting through that stuff although it is a little more difficult to work with than the stuff VM painters use, but much better. As far as outside, we also had three colors of caulk, inconsistently and poorly applied to different parts of the exterior of the house. And as far as quality of internal caulk jobs--please. We actually banned all painters (hah!, that's a good one) from our house. I still have a door exterior to paint, two more bathrooms to recaulk, and some trim to finish up. Basically, I am completing our house, because everytime VM sent a sub to do the work, they made it worse than it was. The quality is pathetic for the supposed VM reputation.

 

Thanks mlayne for the report - glad to know that I am not the only one out there - Good Luck and thanks again for the information. I gave up a long time ago asking VM to right the situation - I do not want them near my house-

See ya -