Monday, April 25, 2011

My New-Found Love: Painter's Caulk

I'm still sort of a beginner when it comes to painting, but I'm starting to learn some tricks. Just recently I discovered the wonder of painter's caulk. It all started when I decided to repaint the dining room. If you remember, the dining room started out looking like this (Realtor's photo):

I wasn't a big fan of the white-beige color on the bottom part. This was actually the first room I painted, before we even moved in. I had painted the bottom part a creamy white but left the chair rail unpainted. So for the past six months, it looked like this:



Until we finished the basement, this room was set up as an office. But now that we are finally using it for its intended purpose, I wasn't quite satisfied with the paint job. I decided to try a crisp white on the entire bottom half, including the chair rail.

So I started out by sanding the chair rail so that it would have better adhesion with the paint.


Using painter's tape to create a ledge to catch dust is a trick I learned from another blog (forgot which one).

I used an oil-based primer as a first coat on the wooden chair rail. I let that dry for a full 24 hours (oil-based paint takes a lot longer to dry than latex paint). I didn't bother taping if off because I am now convinced that it is easier to create a straight paint edge free hand. After the primer, I applied 2 coats of latex paint. Here's what it looked like after 1 coat of latex paint:


Clearly it needed that extra coat.

At this point it looked pretty good... until you got close.


See the problem? There was actually a gap between the chair rail and the wall. It wasn't as obvious when the chair rail was dark, but the light color just accentuated the gap. This is where the painter's caulk comes in. I got some pretty standard painter's caulk from Home Depot. I cut a really small hole in the top of the bottle and applied a bead of caulk just large enough to fill in the gap. I didn't try to prevent it from getting on the upper beige part of the wall since I figured I would slop up on there anyway.

I didn't end up with the smoothest surface, so I knew I would have to be very careful when I painted over the caulk. I used an artist's brush with fairly stiff bristles so that I could get good control.


It took quite a while, but I ended up with a pretty good finish. See the difference?

Before:
After:

After taking this photo, I realized it needed 1 more coat to fully cover the caulk. Now it looks really awesome. (Sorry I don't have a final photo yet, but I promise I'll show you soon along with what the rest of the room looks like now that it has actual dining room furniture in it.  :)

So, anyway I'm a convert! From now on, I'm gonna use painter's caulk any time there is a crack or crevice that I want to disguise!! (And I'm going to use it BEFORE painting.. to save myself a lot of work)!

1 comment:

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