How to Caulk Skirting Boards & Baseboards - 2020 Update

A couple of years ago I made a video on how to apply decorative cork to base

boards

. Now that video has been fairly well received, but some have criticized me for my over-reliance on a certain profiling tool with some justification, and of course there's always room. to improve, so here is my video completely improved and

update

d. I'm going to discuss all the main techniques for applying decorative cork and explain what techniques I've used and why for the base

boards

I recently installed. my room and finally I went through all the comments from my previous video and I'm going to pass on to you some of the best tips and advice I've received in today's toolkit.

We have our cork applicator gun. more on this in a minute on the decorator's cork. I've used geocell a lot in the past, but I bought this version of the evo stick about a week ago and it worked well. I will also use this adhesive to fill gaps for reasons I will explain shortly, if you are

caulk

ing the traditional way it is a good idea to have a small piece of foam on hand, the smaller the piece the better and you can improvise with what you have. have at home and apply alternative plugging methods. I'll show you how to use a profiling tool.

I bought this Kramer 5 kit a few years ago for applying silicone in the bathroom and more recently upgraded to the profiling kit 7. Kit 7 with its extra tools is worth getting as they are similar. price, although I won't be using the extra tools in today's video, these kits cost around £20 in the UK and if you're looking at this in the US, you'll find it for a similar price at Home Depot, which also has a cheaper dap kit and at lowe's you can buy this kit in australia at bunnings you have this kit and here in the uk you can get a cheap copy from byq but in my opinion the profiles on this tool are also too big to be practical and it's always worth having a damp cloth on hand as well as a bucket of water and amazing decorative wipes and finally it's worth having a roll of tissues and a bin or bag nearby while you work so you can remove any waste and dispose of it. to keep your work area clean.

The details of all the tools today will be in the description below the video where you can also find a link to my new Amazon store which basically links to my entire tool collection organized into useful categories now a quick word before we start about the gun

caulk

ing itself In the past, when I bought cheap caulking guns like this, I found that they broke very quickly, as you can see from this reviewer here from April of this year, or the component breaks. or the pressure being supplied is not constant, so it is worth spending a little more, between £10 and £20, on a better quality, heavier duty roof gun, and then you will have something like this that has lasted me from 10 to 15 years. a quick talk on decorators cork is water based, it's great for filling small gaps between

baseboards

or

baseboards

in walls or between architraves and door or wall frames and crucially it can be overpainted but it's far from Being perfect being water-based, it shrinks, so for larger spaces like the ones I have, as you'll see in a moment, it's not great and if you use it for larger spaces, you may need at least two applications because to shrinkage, it is also a limited use as Adhesive is fine for stable materials like mdf, but for natural woods, if the wood moves it will probably leave the cork behind, as you can see here on my newly installed baseboards, which brings us to space adhesives.

I actually bought this one from my local lumber dealers. when I bought the baseboards now, if you watched my last video on installing the baseboards you will know that I didn't actually use it to glue the baseboards in place, but I had very large gaps between the baseboards and the wall because of the extent to which my joists were warped, I decided to use this adhesive to fill the gap before caulking like the cork. It's also water based and I would really recommend the gap filler adhesives for larger spaces like mine. The adhesive is paintable, doesn't shrink like the cork did and is a much better adhesive that actually bonds my baseboard to the wall in a way that the decorator's cork didn't, but research carefully before purchasing because while This space adhesive can be worked with as easily as cork decorators.

Other gap adhesives, such as the original grip filler, certainly cannot, obviously it is more typical to use adhesive on the back of the

skirting

board before pressing it into place. Now for completeness, I should mention that it cannot be used. silicon instead of cork for decorators on things like baseboards, build architraves anyway when you want to paint over them because you can't paint over silicon, although this may be obvious, the reason I mentioned this is because I had some comments on my last video to ask me. why would you use silicon and I suspect this is due to a confusion and a difference in terminology because here in the UK when we talk about cork we're really just talking about cork for decorators whereas I think in the US. and possibly in other places cork is a much more generic term and can be subdivided into decorators cork for roof repair cork for concrete repair cork the list goes on so now we move on to the question of at what point in the decoration process we should apply cork If your walls are freshly plastered you will want to remove the fog layer before installing baseboards and before caulking.

The bad coat is the layer of water-thinned emulsion that you paint on the walls to seal them and prevent subsequent layers of paint from peeling off and it's a tricky process because it's thinned so you have to get this out of the way first. A link to a recent video I made about this will appear on the screen. Now you will also want to cork before painting the walls with the last two top coats of emulsion. Because? You'll want to paint or cut the walls down to the included decorator's cork. I made the mistake in my last video where I got some justified criticism for not doing this, I discovered it after applying the final motion top coat and this.

It was a risky strategy because many paints like this flat rug that I painted this room with cannot be repaired without removing the paint, unsightly patches appear on the surface of the paint that are annoying since I painted this room. Johnson has discontinued that paint and Now I bought this mat perfect if you want that chalky finish and apparently this paint can be patched but it is still advisable to cork before applying the last two top coats of emulsion to the walls. How much to paint baseboards before caulking? A little more complicated I figured it out before priming mine, but I should have done it after priming as this would have saved me the whole process of cutting the primer off the Zinza container all the way to the cork.

I didn't want to apply the final top coat before installing my baseboards. some people do it because i was screwing my baseboards to the wall and i would have had to repaint the baseboards completely as there would be very obvious patches or flashes of paint if i had tried to paint the filled screw holes ok some quick tips before We move on to the caulking techniques, obviously you have to cut the tube, which you can do with a foot knife or a molded tool like this one, then you need to cut the nozzle as small as possible.

Notice that I cut the nozzle straight. rather than diagonally, anyone who has seen my silicone videos will know that I do this to maximize the amount of cork that goes into the space. If you cut it in a straight line, you are forcing it into space. If you cut it diagonally, there is more. from a tendency to drag the silicone and not put in as much to caulk, I wouldn't get too obsessed with this and if you prefer to cut diagonally, do it the smaller the spaces, the smaller the nozzle and the less waste, you will have to release the pressure in the gun after each pass so that the cork does not continue to come out.

I talked before about the benefit of a roll of paper to keep the mouthpiece clean between corking passes, but I also like I have the bucket of water so I can clean my finger when using the finger technique to cork and also clean the corking tools. formation when I use them and of course any stains or stains on the baseboards, okay? To caulking techniques, I'm going to go over the tool-free technique using your finger with or without a damp cloth or foam, and finally, I'm going to go over the benefits of using a molding tool. Now the first technique came from a comment.

In my last video the idea is that there is no need to clear or form the bead in any way if you place a proper bead in the first place, some pros obviously do this but I think we can discard this technique and move forward quite quickly, which is difficult for We DIY to put a clean bead without smoothing as it takes a lot of practice to do it and we are usually caulking unevenly, plus even a clean bead like this will have some area that is not well attached to the surface. Below I can see the benefits of this technique if you have, for example, oak

skirting

boards that you are not going to want to paint, but even in this situation a shaping tool, as you will see in a minute, comes into play and in fact even This guy recognized that when he has large spaces he uses the training tool, so we are in the traditional finger, the choice of most professional painters combined with a damp cloth or a little foam, is the most used technique because We all have at least one of these and as long as it's done correctly you can achieve fantastic results.

What do I mean that bead is too thick and when you apply it even with a wet finger you will end up with a wide smudge? a blob of cork stained along with the baseboard and wall, yes you can cover it with paint but maybe I'm the one with obsessive compulsive disorder but I like a nice strong beard cork with distinct lines it makes the process easier cutting. You can wipe it down a few times with a wet sponge to tidy it up a bit, but without additional water you'll only increase the chances of it shrinking, so if you're going to use a finger technique, I'd say be very careful with the cork you apply, make sure it is beautiful.

A thin steady line like this remember to release the pressure on the gum, wet your finger a little and then very gently run it like this that way you don't smear excess cork on the wall or baseboard, there is no excess cork there is almost no waste and I have used this technique a lot combined with the foam in this bedroom to achieve really nice results, so we move on to the final section of this video and the third technique, the contouring tool, and I'm going to be focusing mainly on this tool with its five and eight millimeter diagonal profiles and its concave profile and, to a lesser extent, in this tool with its 90 degree profile, but if the finger technique we just described is so good, why do we need use a profiling tool?

You ask well, there are a few good reasons to start: You're not using water in the machining process, which is kinder to your paint job, especially if you've just applied a coat that can be erased quite easily and you're maximizing the endurance. of the bead and minimizing the chances of shrinkage, secondly, you get a consistently high quality professional bead every time you use the tool, whereas if you rely on the traditional technique, you have to really concentrate on your game to place it perfectly. Count every time you cork, Thirdly, it is the ease of use and speed of this tool that really attracts us, especially for us DIYers only doing this occasionally.

You see here that with a misplaced bead like this and taking the concave profile of the tool, you can carve. The bead has an almost perfect finish. The fourth point to note is that this tool really comes into its own when you have big gaps to fill. I made the mistake of purchasing pine skirting boards for this room, which warped when I brought them home, leaving me with eight millimeter gaps in some places. After an unsatisfactory result filling one section with decorator cork, I decided to fill the rest of the gaps. with the space adhesive you saw before.

The idea was to use the 90 degree profile for a bead that was flat to the top. of the baseboard so we can add a concave or diagonal final profile before painting, and of course, because we have already filled the gap with the gap adhesive, the final profile, whether concave or diagonal, is less likely to shrink. I got criticized for using this 90 degree profile in my last video because the spaces were very small and any movement would be susceptible to cracking, but for large spaces like this, when you add an extra bead afterwards, it really stands out andI'll mention this because people sometimes ask, but it's a smooth, not beveled, side that you're dragging onto the decorator's cork to form the bead.

Now the main criticism that is leveled at this tool is the amount of waste it creates, which by its nature it is going to do because obviously, it is about eliminating everything that the decorators captured to create a wonderfully ordered profile to minimize the waste before To start, cut the nozzle a fraction wider than the profile you selected and then experiment on a short section that you'll know if you haven't removed enough. Because the tool will not properly form the bead, you can use the right angle profile to remove it, recut the nozzle and start again, but you can minimize waste by putting the excess cork back into the gap as I have done I. done here or again on the bead you are forming, if for some reason it misses a bit, another criticism leveled at this technique is that this tool is primarily designed as a silicone tool for smooth surfaces, so running the tool along length of the socket isIt will wear quickly and there is an element of truth in that, if you look at the right angle profile here you will see the wear, but a little gem of wisdom came from Arthur Kloss in the comments section of my last video. where he suggested rubbing it with fine-grit sandpaper, as if you were sharpening a knife.

I was a little skeptical about re-polishing a plastic tool with sandpaper, but with a 2000 grit wet and dry that I bought at Halfords years ago, I thought I'd do it. Try it, I put it on my kitchen table instead of your more sensible suggestion of using some marble tile, but even with that, to my complete surprise, it worked just as you described and I basically now have a Kramer tool that is re-honed to factory conditions, so thanks Arthur for that brilliant advice. Would I be tempted to leave the cork at 90 degrees like you saw before with the hollow adhesive?

Well, no, because it's very difficult to cut to paint a 90 degree angle instead of a concave one. profile or the diagonal you see here I personally prefer the diagonal profile due to my experience with silicone where it produces a much stronger bead than the concave, but I accept that I may be wrong here because as you can see in this image it produces a very strong profile . The line on the wall clearly wouldn't get this line with a concave profile, but the problem with concave profiles is that with large eight millimeter gaps like this, the tendency is for the cork to shrink below the baseboard line, creating thus a dust trap and this dust trap will be less pronounced with the diagonal profile where the cork bead is much deeper where it hits the baseboard than with a concave profile where the cork is very prone to shrinking where it effectively lies flat with the baseboard at this point here marked with the arrows and don't forget that in the small spaces the diagonal profile actually becomes concave when the cork shrinks anyway just make a diagonal because no one is going to scrutinize your cork like I have to do in this video , but maybe Let me know in the comments section below what you think painting the module was in the end, it was made a lot easier after listening to a radio 6 show with an amazing interior designer, Abigail Hearn.

We were going to paint the baseboard as a contrast color, but in the end we decided to paint the ceilings, walls, baseboards, windows, all the same color and I'm so glad we did because it makes the room look much larger and not It's distracting with the contrast paint, so after all this, what technique do I use? I think it's better, as you have seen today, I have used all the techniques to make this video which I really enjoyed and what it made me realize is that I use all the techniques except the no tool technique and I just decide which technique. is more appropriate for the particular thing I'm caulking, so for example, for this tricky space where I inscribed the baseboard into the architrave, I started with a forming tool, then used a razor blade and a wet piece of foam was literally the thing. only. tool that could form the cork around the toroidal profile of the baseboard and if I'm honest, for a lot of the court beads that I just moved with my finger, I ended up using them with a concave profile on the cream tool because I love it.

The efficient, cleanly tooled cork line you end up with and machining awkward spaces like this also becomes easy when you use the right angle profile on the cream tool. I leave you now with the hope that you are armed with all the techniques you need to complete your caulking job and As always, keep the comments coming because I think they provide a fantastic resource for anyone who finds them, so today has been another long video. Congratulations if you made it this far and thank you very much if you found it useful. Click the Like button below, don't forget that the details of all the tools I have used today will be in the description below the video which of course you can access from your smartphone by clicking on the little arrow and on your PC by clicking on the program. plus button in the description you will also find a link to my paypal page in case you want to send me a quid or two to help me continue creating this free content.

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