Fixing up the caulking (part I)

One of the big problems we had with our terrible builder was the caulking which was incredibly poorly done. Since we were forced to take responsibility to correct the deficiencies, we had to fix the caulking problems too. I have been working on it a little bit at a time, when I am able. I haven't posted hardly anything to the blog for almost two months so this represents work that has been done in that time. This doesn't show the six weeks of running around and back and forth it took to get the right brand and colours of caulking. (You have to use the same brand/colour to do any patches otherwise it will be very obvious.)

This is the base of the laundry room door. I don't know why the caulking failed so dramatically here. If we had rain with wind, we would sometimes get water on the laundry room floor - not sure if it was from this failed caulking or from the poor caulking that runs underneath the threshold (it had holes/gaps in it).

You can't put new caulking over old otherwise your new caulking is no better than the old stuff. So I had to remove the old caulking (wasn't too hard), clean out the area (there was a lot of sand and other dirt/debris in there which would prevent the caulking from sticking), and then apply the new caulking. Believe it or not, the original caulking that I removed was white, as I could tell when I peeled it off.

This is the outside of the doors to the family room. I applied a small bead of white caulking between the green brick mold and the white door jamb. There is not supposed to be a gap there, but obviously the brick mold was loosened when the door was installed.

This was one of the cracks that I had complained to Tarion about. There was just a small crack at the time and Tarion said it was a normal shrinkage crack. I thought it was a bit bigger than I would have expected for that, but since Tarion's inspectors are supposedly experts, I had to take their word for it (had no choice, actually). Clearly the mortar was too dry and it had just fractured and disintegrated.


This is what the crack looked like after I cauked it. I would have preferred it if it had straight edges and was neater.

That's all the caulking fixups that I have been able to do so far. There will be a part II, stay tuned but don't hold your breath.

Of course, I have to end with a picture of the doggies. Sadly, none of the pictures of Tawny were very good so I have chosen this one of Taz enjoying his rawhide "bone".