![]() ![]() “The joint is usually high enough to avoid the wet area,” Martin says, “and painting the caulk will cover small smears.” Cut the Tip, Not Too Much The trick is not to wet it too much to begin with.” For this reason, Martin sometimes switches to paintable latex silicone-where shower tile meets painted ceiling, for example-and skips the denatured alcohol. “But once it dries, the paint will harden back up. “It will thin out the paint and make it run a little bit,” Martin says. The alcohol doesn’t damage most surfaces, but be careful against a painted wall. ![]() Any alcohol that isn’t wiped away will evaporate within a minute or so. This cleans the tile, countertop, and adjacent cabinet surfaces of impurities and ensures better bonding. Clean spray bottle to mist the joints with denatured alcohol, and wipes them down with a clean, lint-free cloth. Here’s a step-by-step look at the process. ![]() The technique works only with 100% silicone caulk, not latex or acrylic silicone, and not with isopropyl alcohol. The secret to tooling silicone, which Martin learned almost 40 years ago from his father, Stanley, who founded the family tile and flooring business, is to wet the caulk with denatured alcohol before tooling. Tooling with a wet finger works with latex caulk, but it won’t work on silicone caulk, which is not water soluble. Martin uses 100% silicone caulk because it bonds well to almost any material, and because he can get the Laticrete brand he often uses in a wide variety of colors that come close to matching the grout color. ![]() I recently had an opportunity to watch Pat Martin of Country Floors in Plainfield, Vt., tool joints in the tile backsplash in my kitchen, during which he explained how he manages to get perfectly clean tooled joints every time. This may not matter much on a surface that’s not readily visible or that’s going to be painted, but it can make or break a decorative tile installation. Or, rather, it should look better, but as most of us can attest from personal experience, tooling often creates a smeary mess. Caulked joints should be tooled, mainly because tooling presses the caulk into the gap, which makes for a better seal, but also because a tooled joint looks better. ![]()
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