The Best Caulking Tool
I admit it- I hate caulking. It's a messy, sticky job, with the objective to make your work totally unnoticeable. The caulk between the bathroom sink and the wall, for example, should be a smooth, seamless transition line. No bumps, no voids. It should blend in totally and completely.
It's a hard job to get right, and thus, there are a variety of tools on the market to make sure you do it right, or so they claim. Wander down the aisle at your big box home improvement store and you'll see scrapers, smoothers, edging tools, cleanup tools, blah, blah, blah. Personally, I think they all stink. You don't get the right feel for the job when using one of those cheap pieces of plastic. They press the caulk in every which way but where you want it to go and in the end, you are definitely not left with a smooth, seamless line.
In my completely unprofessional, homeowner opinion, what you want to use is the same tool you use to perform the one finger salute. That's right, the 'ol middle finger. Don't use too much caulk to start, and position yourself so that you can basically smooth out the bead in one continuous motion, from one side of the tub to the other, or from one side of the sink to the other. The idea is to press out all imperfections, using places where you left too much caulk to gather material that you will then put down in places where there was too little. It's a process goverened by touch and feel, which is why those plastic toys designed to make this easy will not work. Admittedly, I'm a novice, maybe in the hand of a master these toys turn into precision tools. But for me, and my skill, I'll take the manual approach, even if it secretly hate it.
It's a hard job to get right, and thus, there are a variety of tools on the market to make sure you do it right, or so they claim. Wander down the aisle at your big box home improvement store and you'll see scrapers, smoothers, edging tools, cleanup tools, blah, blah, blah. Personally, I think they all stink. You don't get the right feel for the job when using one of those cheap pieces of plastic. They press the caulk in every which way but where you want it to go and in the end, you are definitely not left with a smooth, seamless line.
In my completely unprofessional, homeowner opinion, what you want to use is the same tool you use to perform the one finger salute. That's right, the 'ol middle finger. Don't use too much caulk to start, and position yourself so that you can basically smooth out the bead in one continuous motion, from one side of the tub to the other, or from one side of the sink to the other. The idea is to press out all imperfections, using places where you left too much caulk to gather material that you will then put down in places where there was too little. It's a process goverened by touch and feel, which is why those plastic toys designed to make this easy will not work. Admittedly, I'm a novice, maybe in the hand of a master these toys turn into precision tools. But for me, and my skill, I'll take the manual approach, even if it secretly hate it.
