Caulking Cost Calculator

About $220 to recaulk a tub or shower, which is 20 linear feet and the most common job — the national average for a caulking job is around $200 with most falling between $105 and $290. Interior trim is $370 for 100 feet, six double-hung windows are $350, and caulking the exterior of a house is $725 for 150 feet. Reported figures are $1.25 to $4.00 a linear foot generally, $2.00 to $5.50 for interior trim, $2.45 to $5.03 for a house perimeter and $40 to $100 a window.

Because a tub is only 14 to 20 feet of joint and the work is an hour regardless. The old silicone has to be scraped and cut out completely, the corners cleaned with a blade, the surface solvent-wiped and sterilized if it has gone black, and then left to dry before anything new goes on — and the new bead itself takes about ten minutes. So $220 for 20 feet reads as $11 a foot, and the per-foot figure simply does not mean anything on a short run. On 200 feet of baseboard the same work is $3.12 a foot.

Four different products, and using the wrong one is the commonest fault in this trade. Interior trim and baseboard want paintable acrylic latex, because clear silicone on trim is a permanent glossy stripe no paint will cover. A tub or shower wants 100% silicone with a mildewcide and nothing else — acrylic latex in a wet joint fails within a year and the mold then grows behind it where you cannot reach it. Windows and doors want a sealant rated for movement. Exterior joints want polyurethane or a hybrid that stays flexible for twenty years rather than hardening and cracking in three.

No, and this is what the cheapest quotes do. New sealant does not bond to cured sealant, so a bead laid over the top looks right for a few weeks and then lifts off in one piece, often taking fresh paint with it. The old bead has to come out completely: scraped, the corners cut out with a blade, solvent wiped, and on a failed shower joint sterilized with bleach or a specialist solution and then dried fully. Removal is most of the bill on this page, which is why a quote that is much cheaper than the rest is usually a quote to skip it.

A closed-cell foam rope pushed into a joint before the sealant, and it is needed on any gap over about half an inch. Sealant that deep sags before curing, skins over while staying soft inside, and tears away from one face the first time the joint moves. The rod lets the bead form a shallow hourglass bonded to two sides rather than three, which is what allows it to stretch. The rule of thumb is a bead about half as deep as it is wide. A quote for a wide gap that does not mention backer rod is a quote for something that will fail, so it is worth asking purely to find out who you are dealing with.

Twenty-four hours, and it is a real instruction rather than caution. Silicone cures by reacting with moisture in the air and it needs a dry surface to bond to, so a joint that gets wet before it has skinned and cured will not adhere properly and will fail early — which looks like the installer's fault and is usually the schedule's. Some products claim three or twelve hours; take the longer number on the tube and add some. The same applies to the surface beforehand: a shower used the night before needs drying out before anybody caulks it.

Do your own interior trim and baseboard. Acrylic latex is forgiving, it tools with a wet finger, and any mistake wipes off or gets painted over — materials are $0.05 to $0.20 a foot plus $10 to $30 of supplies, so 100 feet costs about $30 against $370 to have it done. Pay somebody for a tub or shower you care about, because silicone is unforgiving and a wavy bead across the front of a bath is visible every day for years; for the exterior, because of the ladder work, the different products and the fact that missing one penetration defeats the point; and for any wide or irregular gap, because of the backer rod.

A good silicone joint in a shower lasts five to ten years, and the signal to replace it is not age but behavior: any crack, any lifting at an edge, any black that will not scrub off, or any gap you can see daylight or water movement through. Interior trim caulk lasts as long as the paint over it. Exterior sealant is the one to inspect deliberately — once a year, looking for beads that have gone hard, shrunk away from one side, or cracked along the middle, because that is where water gets into a wall and nothing tells you until there is damage.

Yes, and it is the main saving available. The trip, the masking and the cleanup happen once whatever the length, which is exactly why a single short joint costs so much more per foot than a long run. Walk the house with a notepad first: every bathroom, the kitchen counter and backsplash, baseboards in the rooms that need them, window and door perimeters, and outside the siding joints, trim boards and every penetration through the wall. One visit covering all of it beats three visits at a trip charge each.

Some, and it is not the main reason to do it. Sealing the gaps around windows, doors, penetrations and the sill plate does reduce air leakage, and air sealing is generally the cheapest efficiency work available on a house. But the stronger argument is water: exterior sealant is what keeps rain out of the joints in the cladding and around every pipe, wire and vent that passes through the wall, and water in a wall cavity causes damage that costs multiples of any heating saving. Treat it as maintenance rather than as an upgrade.