The Best Caulk to Use When Painting Your Home

It’s very important that when you hire someone to paint, you understand exactly what you’re getting and what materials your contractor is using.

As we’ve mentioned before, Sherwin Williams offers different grades of the same product. So if your contractor tells you “Oh, we use Sherwin Williams,” it’s important to understand, and that they give you in writing, what grade of product it is.

The Low End

Let’s look at the different kind of caulk Sherwin Williams offers. At the low end, they have a product called 850A, which is their least expensive. It’s a good product and it could last you 45 years. However, that’s 45 years in perfect conditions. Once you’ve put it on the outside of your home where it’s exposed to the elements, it’s going to deteriorate in a much shorter time.

What We Use

What we normally use on every one of our projects, whether it’s inside or outside, is Sherwin Williams’ Power House. Sherwin Williams says that this will last about 60 years. For any project we do we give you a 2-3 year warranty, depending on which package you go with. But this is the caulking we use.

If You Live in an Area With Foundation Issues

Every now and then you may have an area that keeps cracking, even though you keep repairing it. When that happens, we use Sherwin Williams’ Sher Max caulk. This is an elastomeric caulk which means it expands a little bit with the surface. If your house moves a lot you will have cracks—there’s not a lot that can be done about that. But if the movement is slight, we recommend the Sher Max caulk. It stretches up to 1/4 inch, depending on how thick you apply the caulk.

So as you can see it’s very important that you understand what grade of product your contractor is using. Just knowing what brand they use is not enough!

If you have any questions about a bid you got from another contractor, we’ll be more than happy to give you a free estimate!