For Caulk Sake

So the day before I noticed a huge split between my wood siding behind one of my gutters.

We need new siding. That's just plain and simple. The splitting is nothing new. A few years back I spent a few days caulking the entire front of the house (needs to be done again) hoping to get a few more years before we actually had to get new siding.

But this split takes precedence. This one is cause for concern. It's on the western side of our house. It takes the brunt of the majority of the weather we get. Also I have suspicions the effects of this one has actually penetrated the house.

In our living room, at the ceiling along that side of the house, we have this funny thing going on with the paint. It appears to be bubbling.

Typically when paint bubbles there's some kind of contaminant. Now our house originally had popcorn (i.e. textured) ceilings. It could be this is some kind of leftover from the work done to remove the texture. Either way, I'm not taking chances and the fix (even if temporary) isn't that difficult.

So up the ladder I went.

The split was pretty bad. There appeared to be things living in there.

The bad or missing paint is where the gutter was. It really wasn't hard removing and replacing the gutter. Why the painter didn't do it (LAZY) is anyone's guess.

After cleaning out the crap, I stuffed as much of the gap with backer rod (strip of foam to fill up the space too big for just caulk).

Then caulked it. Considering the western orientation and my possible moisture infiltration, I went ahead and caulked this entire section. It's about five and a half feet wide between the chimney (which I caulked too) and the front edge of the house. I think it took three tubes of caulk, which meant a trip to Home Depot for more (I should just keep a case of the stuff around).

In the caulking mood, I decided to tackle a similar job at the pool.

Since replacing the pool skimmer, the expansion joints between the concrete pads and coping has been missing or damaged. Not only is it unsightly (especially if you're considering selling), but it can cause damage if water gets in there and freezes over the winter. The expansions joints that were there are made of some kind of really hard, yet flexible, plastic. It's a real pain to remove or work with, so I spent most of the time since the skimmer job trying to figure out the best way to remove it. Finally it came to me. I could use my pneumatic cut-off wheel to just cut it out, so that's what I did. I got the majority of it cut out and cleaned up. To replace it, I'll use pool expansion joint caulk. It's a self leveling super durable caulk that does the same thing as the plastic. It just comes in an easy to use dispenser.

I got it all cleaned up, dry and filled with sand (sand is cheaper then backer rod, since I had it free in my yard, with cat crap no extra charge!), then went to apply the caulk.

The reason why I was doing any of this caulk stuff that day was mostly because of the weather. It was sunny and 65° F all day. That's great weather for caulk. As I'm reading the pool caulk instructions, I see it's application is good down to 0° F. Knowing that, I decided to leave the spot alone for a day or so to dry out more. With a temperature rating that low, I could effectively apply the caulk one night after work regardless of outside temp (at least for a few weeks), and instead spend more time caulking other things that did have temperature limitations.

Back to the siding.

This is on the front of the house. I re-caulked (the previous owner had done it at some point) the front of the house two years ago. Most of it is still ok (just ok, not fine). I'm guessing because of the window install the integrity of this caulked area was lost. In the bottom of the gap, you can see the backer rod I put in two years ago.

The gap had gotten so big, it required two more pieces of backer rod (Yeah I know. This is like using a band aid for an amputation).

So now I'm really in the caulking mood and proceed to check out what else is in need.

Of course everything needs it. All the windows in our downstairs haven't been touched since we moved in.

Then I find our bay window is like this.

And suddenly I get bored/tired of caulking. It's late anyway. At least that helps explain why our bay window leaked last year.

At this point, all I can muster is filling some carpenter bee holes.


You'd be surprised how roomy those little holes can be.

- b