Clean Caulking

A while ago we told you about replacing the missing picture rail in our master bedroom. What we neglected to mention, is that we still haven’t finished the job.

As you have already seen, it looks fine from a distance,

But this is what it looks like close up.

We still haven’t filled the joints, the gap between the wall and the picture rail needs filling and the whole thing needs painting. In order to finally complete the job, we started by filling the holes and joints with a general purpose filler.

Then for the main job – caulking the gap between the wall and picture rail. As we have already painted the wall, we wanted to be as neat and tidy as possible. To ensure that the caulk wouldn’t go all over, we used painters tape to define the area we wanted to caulk. Then the job was really straight forward.

All you need to do is apply the caulk and smooth it out with your finger. Remember to remove the masking tape as soon as you have finished caulking as, just like when painting, if the caulk/paint dries it can rip when removing the tape.

My top 5 tips for easy and clean caulking are:

1. As always, make sure the area is dust free and clean (and read the instructions on the packet).
2. Only cut a small hole into the nozzle, so that you don’t apply too much caulk in one go.
3. Use painters tape for a clean edge.
4. Try and apply the caulk as evenly as possible.
5. Remove the painters tape before the caulk dries.

And here is the finished result.

As we have already primed and sanded the picture rail, all it needs now is a final coat of paint. As it’s taken us months to get round to filling the gaps and caulking, I can’t help wondering how long it’s going to take us to get round to finishing the painting.