Hey friends! This week I’m sharing another home maintenance tutorial. Or maybe I should start calling these “fixes to the dumb mistakes that my husband and I make”. No one is perfect right? Well, when we renovated our kitchen a few years ago we did it right. We used the best cabinet paint, installed some beautiful quartzite countertops and a classic subway tile backsplash. Then, we got sloppy, and I mean really sloppy on the final step which was caulking the joint between the counter top and the backsplash. It’s not that we didn’t try, we’re just both horrible at laying a clean bead of caulk. I’ve since then invested in some tools to get cleaner caulk lines (tbd if they actually work). So after a few years of staring at messy caulk lines I finally decide to remove the old caulk. This tutorial will walk you through how I easily removed old caulk from my kitchen counters.

Before I walk you through how I did it, here are some embarrassing pictures of the before… Don’t laugh too hard 😉

You’ll need just a few items to follow along with this tutorial. All of the items can be purchased on Amazon. I’m willing to bet that you could get them at your local hardware store as well.

This post contains affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will make a commission if you click-through and make a purchase.

Materials

Goo Gone

Paper towels or rag

Toothbrush

Caulk Removal Tool

Razor Scraper

Directions

Step 1

First, Spray the goo gone all over the line of old caulk. Go to town with the Goo Gone. If you don’t spray enough it won’t work. You can see in the image below the orange hue. That’s the Goo Gone. Let it soak in for 10-15 minutes.

Step 2

After the goo gone has set in and started to loosen the caulk, use the razor scraper to release the caulk from the two surfaces. By two surfaces, I mean where it is stuck to the counter tops and where it is stuck to the wall.

Step 3

Next, use the caulk removal tool to break the caulk away. You can use the edge of it to pull or push at the caulk and loosen it up to the point that you can just pull it off.

Step 4

For the last step, use the toothbrush to clean out the gap where the old caulk was. Then use paper towels to clean up the mess. Finally, clean your counters using your normal counter cleaner.

And that’s it! If you give the goo gone enough time to work it will be a very easy process. Below is an after photo with the caulk removed. It looks so much better already. Now, do I re-caulk it or just leave it as is?

I hope that this post is helpful for anyone that is either renovating an old home and replacing old caulk or perhaps for those unskilled caulkers out there like me!

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<3 Hannah