- Today we're going to show you
how to caulk your toilet with silicone
and do it perfectly just like the pros
in just a couple of minutes.
(upbeat music)
Hey, welcome back to the channel, I'm Jeff,
and if you haven't been here before
we have all sorts of videos for you
on hundreds of categories here,
for all sorts of remodeling and repairs around your house.
And so today what we're gonna do
is show you how to apply the silicone caulk
around your toilet with this Cramer Fugi Kit
and with a Dripless gun.
Okay, so we're going to show you
how to do this in two different ways,
on this nice smooth perfect tile floor that I just made,
and in another case we're going to show you
on a really poorly done tile floor
with practically half inch grout lines
and old, big bumpy tiles.
So we're gonna give you the best case scenario
which is this one,
and we're going to give you the worst case scenario.
Alright, so I have this Dripless caulking gun here
and then it has a cool Dripless feature on there,
there's a switch here that when you flip it
down here so that it's not dripping
your silicone allegedly will not
ooze out of the tip here, like they normally do.
So we'll go ahead and try that,
I'll put a link to this down in the description.
Now the way I usually cut these
is as small as I can possibly make it
and still make the poker rod stick through it.
So, see how tiny that hole is right there?
So I'll take the poker rod here
and we'll see if we can get it to go in there,
and it does.
Let see if it pierced it okay.
Yep, 'cause it comes back with the silicone on.
Okay, so I usually wipe off
my poker rod immediately after using it,
that way it stays clean all the time.
And I'm gonna take my tube.
Okay, so this is the type of silicone I usually use
when I'm doing toilets and bathrooms,
and stuff like that.
So this is a Tub & Tile,
and I always look for it to say 100% silicone,
right there, and 100% waterproof.
And this one here it says permanently waterproof,
and it has a lifetime guarantee.
So that's the highest quality you wanna buy.
Put the tube in there and just squeeze till it tightens
but you don't do anything yet.
Okay, so this is the kit that I use here,
this is the Cramer, they call this the Fugi,
the profiling kit for silicone,
and I use it for regular caulk as well.
This is probably the best on the planet
and there's a reason why it's $40, because it's the best,
I think you can get it in the 20's now on Amazon,
anyway I'll find a link to it
and I'll put it in the description down below,
so I'll send you the link to that,
and I'll give you the link also
for this Dripless caulking gun here.
And so let me just show you what this Cramer kit,
what you have here is,
the red ones here you use with the skids,
so this things comes with these skids too which is nice
so that if you're going over and grout lines,
you just ride along like this and it won't ever skip a beat,
if you didn't have this and you went
over a grout line, you'd bounce.
So you'd have an uneven line.
So this Fugi toolset here,
this is the choice that most of the professionals use,
the really knowledgeable guys that really wanna
up their game on making those perfect caulking lines there.
Okay, so the other thing I like about gun this,
see you can rotate this,
so if you ever cut this at an angle,
I usually prefer to just cut it straight,
but if you ever cut it at an angle
and need to get it at the proper angle here
you can always turn the thing around here, this.
Alright, so what I'm going to do here
is put down a bead of silicone
caulk right down the line here,
and I'm gonna do it both methods,
I'm going to use the finger method
and I'm going to do it with my Cramer Fugi as well.
That's what we have.
Here is, half of this I'm going to do with the Cramer Fugi,
the other half I'm going to do here with my finger, alright?
So here we go, we put it flat against the bottom
and flat against the wall, and just see if it tools in.
So as you look here you can see the profile,
it gave it more of an angular slant, okay,
now if I take and do it with my finger, watch what happens.
See how it wants to make it kind of wide,
and wavy all over the place.
So that's why the pros that do this by hand
will wanna spray with their Windex
or whatever product they decide they wanna use with,
and that way it keeps it nice and straight
because wherever they spray the soap
it will repel the silicone,
so that's how they use it to get it in a straight line.
And I don't know if the camera can really show it that good
but if we come in real close and look here
you can see, you can just about see the corner there, why?
Because my finger is concave and it forces it to be concave.
But if you look over here on this end here,
you can see that the Fugi angles it
at just the right size and shape,
it doesn't make it too thin.
And so you'll see the reason why some people
will use tape here is because of this very thing right here,
the tape will give them a nice straight line
but it can also give them a 3D type effect,
it sticks out too far.
Okay, so I always make sure that
I get a nice thorough cleaning on the floor,
and around the toilet, and everything,
make sure everything's clean.
Toilets collect up a lot of dust,
so I get everything and I try to even wedge it
a little bit underneath there and clean out underneath.
Okay, now sometimes to avoid wobbling of the toilets
I'll take my little blue shims
and I'll stick them in there like that, see.
But we can't have it sticking out
so we just snip it with a wire cutter there.
See how that takes up some of the space there.
(plastic bounces)
Okay, so there's our shim.
Now I put the shim back in there.
Okay, so as I go around and I test the profile
I think I'm liking this profile the best, number eight.
See, so it's this one here, number eight.
So I'm gonna have down a little bit thicker bead
of the caulk on there, I think, in order for that to work.
(upbeat music)
See how it made it a lot better this time around,
a lot smoother, and then you just come back around,
you get it a second time to get any of the excess
that stayed on the top of the toilet there.
There you go.
Come around from the other side.
(upbeat music)
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Okay, so you can see what a nice smooth,
even job this tool does for you,
there's no way you could do that with your hand,
you'd be smearing it all over the place,
your finger would be snowplowing it everywhere.
So see how it just goes around nice and neat there,
and of course here I trust, I did my own tiling job here,
so it's nice and flat and perfect,
and I like to use it so that
there's a minimum of grout lines,
I've just crossed over one grout line here,
and one way in the back there.
So it works out a lot better that way
when you can have control over the tiling
and make sure that your toilet is just sitting on tile.
Okay, so every time I scrape, I wipe,
you scrape and then wipe, scrape and then wipe,
make sure you get all that off
so that you're not collecting it up,
and you don't want it to snowplow up the toilet
or around on to the floor.
And also, keep in mind too,
we don't go all the way to the back of the toilet either
in case there's ever a leak underneath,
you need the water to be able to come out
so you can tell that there's a leak underneath,
and you really can't get to it anyway
so it doesn't make any sense to try.
So by time you're done, you're going to have a toilet
that looks just like this, just like the one we just did.
Okay, so now that the toilet is done
and you've gotten the caulk all the way round it,
we highly recommend that you don't use
the toilet for several hours,
until it has a good chance to cure up.
Okay, so we've put blue tape around
only where the grout lines are
because when you come by and caulk
around these grout lines here, as you can see right there,
what can happen is the caulk can start spreading
up the grout line and you don't want that,
it's very porous there so I just gave it
a boundary there where it can't
go past that particular point.
Silicone shaping products out there,
and you'll see others that look
like this at Home Depot and stuff
but I don't think they're as good,
they're knock-offs essentially.
So what you do here is we're gonna take a profile here
and we go around the bottom here, of the toilet,
and we find a profile that we like here,
and it's gonna leave like a small,
kind of a triangular shaped wedge there,
you see that right there?
Where the light's coming in there.
So we might try to do this with a five
and see if it works with a five.
It's a nice smaller size,
if that doesn't work we can go up to the number eight size,
but the idea is to keep it nice and flat to the floor here
and we're going to have to be able to go over these cracks
so that's why the Fugi comes with
it in the kit with these little black,
little standoffs here, you put these on the bottom
of your tooling piece here, and I'll show you this,
it allows you to skid right over the top of the caulking,
as you're caulking it allows you to skip
right over the top of the grout lines.
So here's what it looks like,
so we have to use the red pieces,
because only the red pieces work
with the little standoffs here.
So it acts like a sled,
and as you go across the grout,
see it allows you to keep going smooth
without getting bumped around.
The only problem is, is these tiles have a contour on them
that's gonna cause you to bump a little bit anyway.
So we're gonna see how this effects, if any,
as we go along around the edge of the bowl.
So we're gonna caulk a thin bead
of the silicone caulk all the way around the toilet here,
the front, and the sides,
and we're gonna leave the back open.
You never wanna caulk around the back
because if you ever get any water under there,
you want to be able to go ahead and
let that water come out the back there,
so you never wanna have it completely sealed 100%.
Okay, so we're just gonna do a small bead going around the
toilet here.
And I'm just gonna do the first half,
and then we'll come back and do the other side.
And you wanna put enough in there
that it will cover the opening.
Got it, here we go.
Work a little at a time.
Wipe off a little bit at a time.
That doesn't look good at all.
Alright, let's add some more.
Like that.
See we got to be able to fill in those cracks,
that's the thing, alright.
Alright so we're gonna start on the back
and just tool it to the front.
I'll do a little at a time.
And you wanna act quickly because this will start
to set up within a few minutes,
so you wanna like, all this little bit that's on the floor,
we'll wipe that off in a second there.
So I just kind of do just the front section
'cause the front section is always special,
the front section tends to lift up a little bit there,
that was a little bit further.
The front section usually needs a little bit more
material to go up in there.
Okay.
So the other problem with have here
is the builder gave us very uneven tiles,
they curve down, so the whole thing wants to sink down
into the grout lines so you just have to
keep your tool steady there,
and let it go all the way around there.
Switch directions on it.
And here we're gonna come around this way now on it
and scoop up the rest, any that lands on the bowl
you can just wipe it off with your finger or a wet rag.
See how you have that little dropout there,
'cause when we went over the grout there,
so I'll usually come in and just add
like a little blob right in there.
And then we'll tool right over it.
There we go.
Okay, now over here, I'm gonna start way sort of near
the back and just put a nice thin bead along there,
just enough to fill in the cracks.
Okay, maybe a little more there.
(plastic clattering)
Okay, so we're putting the Cramer Fugi away,
and it looks reasonably decent
considering what we had to work with,
with those grout lines there.
So sometimes what I do with these little grout lines
is I'll come back with my finger
and just mold it a little smoother
to try to get a straighter line across those,
there's not a whole lot you can do about that.
So as you saw before in the previous example
where we had the 12 by 24 tiles,
and the perfect eight inch grout lines,
and everything was perfectly flat and level for us,
that's a much better case scenario,
I mean here, when you look here,
you can see there's about an eight of an inch of lippage
from this tile to this tile here.
So those are things that are going to
create a lot of problems for you.
But that's why I say just caulk
one half of the toilet first and tool it down,
and then put another bead of caulk around the other half
of the toilet and get it tooled down as well.
That way you have enough time to play with it
and control it in to place,
and make that silicone submissive to your desire.
(upbeat music)