How often should you reseal your bathroom silicone?

Why bother

Cracked sealant lets water behind the tile to rot. A thorough-tier job. Skippable when life's busy, worth it when it isn't.

Why it's a range

Check yearly, full reseal every two to three. Good silicone in an aired room can go five.

What the job involves

1. Cut and strip the old bead out completely. Run a utility knife or razor scraper down both edges of the joint and lift the lot, then pull any loose grout while you're in there. New silicone won't stick to old silicone, so leaving it is a waste of a tube.
2. Treat any mold you can see, then clean the joint with mineral spirits or rubbing alcohol. Let it dry properly. Fresh caulk laid into a damp joint just seals the damp in.
3. Run a thin, even bead along the joint with a caulk gun. Use the mold-resistant bathroom stuff, not whatever's nearest. One steady pass beats three nervous ones.
4. Smooth the bead with a wet finger, wipe the excess before it skins over, and keep the joint dry for about 24 hours while it cures. No shower, no splashing, no using it as a soap shelf.

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

Yourself. A tube of mold-resistant bathroom silicone is about $8 to $12, plus a caulk gun and a scraper you keep. The job is fiddly more than hard, the only knack is a clean bead into a bone-dry joint. A pro recaulks a single tub or shower for roughly $105 to $290, and a full multi-joint bathroom can reach around $500.

What skipping it costs

$700 to $3,500 is the price of putting the floor back once a cracked bead has been letting shower water into the wall and subfloor for a while. That's the standard end state of an ongoing leak around a tub or shower, on a 40 to 75 square foot bath: rotted subfloor, sometimes a joist, and the finish floor on top. If the damp brought mold with it, remediation adds roughly $500 to $1,500 more. A $10 tube of caulk and an afternoon sits at the cheap end of that.

Signs it's overdue

• The bead is cracked, peeling, shrinking, or pulling away from the tub or wall, leaving a gap for water to slip behind.
• Black mold or mildew growing in or behind the caulk that won't scrub off.
• Soft spots, discoloration, a musty smell, or warping on the floor near the tub or shower. That's water that already got past the seal.

When to start thinking about it

A few days' warning does it. Grumpty grumbles 4 days out, then leaves you alone. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every 12 months, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.

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