What to Caulk on the Exterior of a New Construction Home | Caulking Tips for a Weatherproof Finish

So today I'm out here. We're going to be working on a new construction exterior. Looks a little bit different than a typical new construction interior cuz I started this in the winter time and the roof was going on. I couldn't because of weather, snow, rain, uh temperature. I couldn't paint the whole entire house. I wanted to get uh the paint the fascia painted before the roof metal drip metal went on and the roof went on. So I went around hand rolled all the fascia. wanted to get that on uh or painted before because it's a lot harder to cut around the gutters, the down spouts and the drip metal. And and then they, you know, because of the house raining, snowing, water was being splattered on the house, you know, during the winter time, they ended up putting the gutters on up here, installed the gutters also to stop, you know, the mud and everything from splattering on. So, not your stereotypical new construction house. So, I got to deal with that kind of stuff. But I'm going to go over caulking. So, uh even though the ciders very stereotypically they do the caulking and they don't do in my opinion or up to my standards thorough enough caulking. I'm going to walk around show you you know some of the stuff I touch up fix caulking coaul miss stuff. You are going to see, you know, painting corner boards, uh, bottom part of the siding. You're going to see a lot of, um, black. It's a color called green black. Just because I was doing the fascia everywhere, I figured you might as well I might as well just hit all the corner boards, down, batting boards, hit certain areas to give it a coat of paint on before I spray the whole thing. And it's typically on a repaint. This is what I typically do on a repaint. typically hand roll, back roll the bottom two boards, back roll all corner boards, batting boards and stuff before I spray. I never back roll after I spray. This is all it's going to be interesting. The whole house, entire house is going to be this green black. So, it's going to be uh kind of something different. Haven't done something like that in a lot of years. But going to walk you around, show you your typical new construction, what it looks like. um the job that the citers did cocking and see if I can find anything that I need to, you know, final coaul before we spray this thing. I'll show you the product I'm using. This is the actual product that the ciders use also too. It's usually specked out. Hardy board, cement board siding, uh big stretch is usually what's specked out for this type of material. If you use a cheap um sealant or coauling, you're going to have major problems of it separating and not bonding very well. So definitely, you know, use Big Stretch. I highly recommend you using this product. This is what I use just everyday interior exterior caulking. So it's white. So let's walk around. I'll kind of like uh point out some things I'm looking for to actually um caulk. Now, one of the cool things is is the way they installed this sighting. The nails, they nailed it on, but the nails are hidden. So, I don't have to caulk any nail heads. But I don't see anything that stands out, you know, here. Uh they typically on houses when they'll install metal vents, there's going to be metal vents under there. Uh the metal vents are never the sideers don't ever those. These are actually vent set boards that have slits in it. So there's no cocking that needs to be done on the vents. So I'm going to cruise cruise around here, kind of look and see um what I can see right up here in the corner. You know, there's a hole missed where a piece of batting right there runs into the corner boards. Um that's something that I'm going to caulk. I'm going to come over here. You'll look in here this side. Um, and I have to say I saw the person caulking this side of the house and the person that was doing this. Um, she, it was a gal, she actually did a pretty good job. As you go around, she eventually wasn't here anymore. And they, uh, the guys were caulking it. Pretty apparent they didn't have nearly as much experience caulking. So, over on this side, I'm not going to see much. I do see a um, got some drip metal up here. I'm going to coaul, you know, this drip metal underneath it. Um, seam board right here, trim board where it meets the top trim board that was missed right there. This was installed after the ciders, the garage door. This needs to be cocked. Every one of these nail heads on the um the weather strip needs to be cocked. So that's um right here. There's, you know, big spots right here, holes that are cocked. Now, just going to fill that in. I typically on exteriors wear gloves when I coaul. Um because you got a lot of grain, a lot of wood right here. Your caulking doesn't have to be perfect like it has um in an interior. So, my caulking looks a lot different on the exterior. I don't have to sit there and sponge caulk everything. So, walk around this side and we'll show you what we got going on on this side. Um, high side right here. I'm going to look at the windows. This starts getting pretty dang sloppy right here. Um, here's hole right here that was missed. Looking around window trim. This starts to get man unfortunately pretty dang messy. Um, and I'm not sure like, you know, how well the paint job's going to hide this disastrous mess right there. And I'm not sure how much better I can make that. We've got a seam right here. It looks like there's definitely if the house wasn't going to be dark, you know, some of these pin holes and stuff would be showing up. I'm going to try to like, you know, coaul some of these things that I can actually see that you won't like see due to the color of the house. But if this house was painted white, this would actually look like like really bad. Right here, we can see along here some holes that need to be filled right there. Um, we got seam, you know, they missed the seam right there where the it overlaps. got a saw cut in the trim board, you know, that wasn't cocked over right there. So, this right here, you know, this is um the carpenters installed the door jamb. This door jamb hasn't been cockked yet. So, this is going to need to be cockked right here. Due to the winter, uh water be before the down spouts and gutters were put on. Water was down here splashing up here. You can see it like absolutely destroyed the door, too. But this all the primer, it just wore the primer right off. So, we're gonna have to sand that and uh reprime that. Um that fill uh spackle um and coaul that. I'll give it to the um siders. You know, it was probably like it was below freezing when they were actually cocking this. I was out here, so I know um the caulking managed to still dry, but you know, your fingers are aching. I'm hurting. You know, you're caulking when it's freezing cold. So, that's not fun. But you can see how the caulking, they cauled it right here. And while it was raining and snowing and the caulking wasn't dry, so it got it all wet is actually washing it off under here. You can see it's kind of washing off. We get to the entryway. We want this to look, you know, really tidy and nice. all these seams right here. I want these to look a lot nicer, be filled in, and make it have a really nice, you know, seams. That is just one freaking mess. Holy cow. This is where paint does um wonders with covering some of this. And you know, but here they just put a big old smooth spot right on, you know, the wood grain and um all these are going to show up like really bad. This has to be the worst caulking job I've ever seen in my life. Um and I've been painting for a lot of years. Now we're back to the other side. So that's what it looks like. Um, what I'm going to do caulking wise