Caulking your tape Q&A. Why paint cracks over the caulking?

this paint live tv i'm chris the idaho painter in this video i'm going to talk about um more caulking your tape um scenarios i keep getting a lot of questions about uh how do i deal with the paint that cracks over the top of the caulking after it dries in this video i'm going to talk about a scenario we have it happen right here it's not something you see very often but how do you deal with it how do i deal with it i'm going to show you exactly how you deal with it in this video so stay tuned [Applause] [Music] all right so we have a scenario right here where the paint actually did crack over the top of the caulking and i'm going to talk to you uh about uh why and uh and why we typically don't see this happen very often and when we over our um or when we paint over our caulking uh the caulking itself is a latex caulking it's a water-based product our paint is a water-based product so they're both compatible but the caulking is going to shrink and as it shrinks the paint is going to expand itself and it could crack but we don't see that except only with paints that are matte or flat based paints and the reason why is they don't have as much acrylic in those paints or resins to make some flexible the resins are what give it gives it a sheen and they got to take some of that stuff out so it looks flat or matte and then the paint just doesn't have that flexibility it's really rare that we ever paint with flat paints maybe once every you know two to three years this is a bathroom customer wanted it flat to have a certain look to it and we had to repair some caulking around the um granite countertops where there was a big gap and we used a urethane caulking and the urethane caulking is going to dry and not leave a tacky surface where the caulking is exposed so that's a whole other um thing we can talk about later but we repaired the caulking went back um we used frog tape so we'd get a really nice crisp clean line on the um on the granite here and we painted over the top of um the wet caulking uh it was in the caulking i'll show you it's tower urethane elastomeric sealant and it was a gray color and then the flat paint it did crack and once again it did crack because there's not enough resins um in the paint to actually uh give it some flexibility so it doesn't split and crack but we we see it and it's not um it's it all it's always gonna happen with flat paint it will never not happen it's a very easy fix and we're just gonna be using a touch-ups brush i like to use um a premier hampton touch-up brush this is a small touch-up brush i'm just gonna go back and do my cut-ins and touch them up and touch up all the little cracks it's very simple i can go back my um everything's dry now i can just use frog tape if i don't have a steady hand i don't want to get um if i don't trust myself of getting you know on my uh caulking and messing up my line but i'm just going to take my brush steady hand and i'm just going to come down here and i like to just go right over the top of my cracks and then i brush back in an upward direction just like this and that's going to fill in my cracks right here and the flat paint so just go up and go down and just because the previous paint when i was brushing it on i was brushing this direction so i want the second coat to go in the opposite direction i'm going to come across cut and then just brush up i'm going to cut fill that in get really close there's a crack right there went all the way down to the caulking and once again if i'm not comfortable getting all the way down that close i can just remask it and i can re-mask it really fast and and then i can get really close if i'm not comfortable but i'm pretty comfortable cutting in a line with this brush and i always like to use your really new brush too this one is brand new when i'm doing stuff like this i gotta be really precise i want my filaments to be an excellent shape i'm going to get right down here's another one that's just all the way down to the the caulking so just like that you can see how it's filling it in this is how we you know deal with the cracks you know occasionally when it comes to satin and semi-gloss paints they uh typically never ever crack but if you were filling a huge gap if you if it did crack then you would just do the same technique right here and this is the same technique i'll talk a lot of people ask me you know what happens if you pull your masking and your cut-ins um need another coat this is exactly what we do we don't go back and just re-cut everything in everything that's light i just take and use my touch-up brush and i just go back and touch up any light spots of my cut-ins my cut-ins i'm typically trying to one coat my cut ends and um not have to do two coats on them but there's always there's typically always light spots in your cut in somewhere that you just got to go back and touch up it's never going to be 100 percent perfect but you can see me just getting right down there there's some you know i'm not quite close enough to the caulking but that looks pretty dang good there you can see the corner right here got some big cracks right here in the corner i'm not worried about that i'm just gonna fill these in right here the thicker the paint you put on on your first coat um you know what's gonna happen is you're the bigger your cracks are gonna be so right here coming along here i got a little bit on my caulking right here that's a pretty good sized crack right here and that's one where i would almost want to you'll put some tape i'll show you just re-masking it just that so i can fill that in really good right here so now i can fill that gap in right there and if your cracks are really big you may get a few other spots that's a split one more time just a tiny bit more and you just go back and hit them one more time and fill those in very simple and easy to do just takes a steady hand cutting in once again i can show you how i typically just do it by hand but i can come back and just re-mask because my paint is dry my caulking is dry i could re-mask here now i can just re-go over my frog tape you can see how fast it happens i'm gonna brush up and then i have a perfectly straight line again still all right there you go it's um my sink is all fixed i'm gonna come back uh check it one more time i'm working on this two bathrooms here that we're doing just uh remodeling just did the cabinets uh did the mirror and now we did the walls and doing some touch-up caulking doing some sanding and stuff and um if you got any questions or comments about the caulking method i know um i've got quite a few videos uh how to talk or how to um paint over your caulking and stuff you can go check out any of those other previous videos but this is specifically dealing with your paint that's uh cracking over your caulking which is a common thing if you're using matte or flat paints if you got any questions or comments leave it down in the comments section below if you've got any tips or tricks you want to share with us right here on paint life tv leave those down below we always learn from each other and i learn you know from going back and reading comments all the time so leave those comments if you enjoyed the video if it's helped you out please consider giving us a thumbs up and don't forget hit the subscribe button hit the notification bell next to the subscribe button or subscribing doesn't do anything it just allows you to be notified every time i come out with a new video by email simple and easy to do we're never gonna mark it to you other than notifying you when another video comes out right here on paint life tv like we always say we'll see you next time right here on the show [Music]