Daily Home Renovation Tips

Today we wanted to provide you with an example of how finishing the project includes the task of finishing. And, my favorite finishing material be far is caulking.

Caulking covers up so many mistakes. And, yes, I make a lot of mistakes.

Let’s take the new cabinets installed in our laundry room. We had replaced the decaying laundry tub with a small sink and cabinet combination plus a narrow cabinet on the wall immediately above.

However, look more closely. In the pictures below you can see, possibly, that the installation has not had sufficient finishing applied. Look at where the cabinets meet the wall. Notice the unfinished gaps, especially in the second of the two close-up pictures below?

I have used caulking in other houses but never could get it to look as smooth when applied as when the professionals use it.

One technique is to apply less caulking initially than you think you will need. Another secret is to have a paper towel and a damp cloth handy as it’s about to get messy. And, the best secret of them all came from a very nice sales associate at one of the building supply stores we frequent is to simply use your finger. Yes, that’s right, the handy tool that we always have handy.

Once you apply the small amount of caulking to the area (in our case where the cabinet and the wall meet), simply press your finger against the caulking and run it all the way down the edge of the cabinet with constant pressure on the caulking. Three things will likely occur:

1. your finger will get messy with caulking - that is where the paper towel comes in, i.e. to clean your finger
2. excess caulking will likely go against both the wall and the cabinet - that is where the damp cloth comes in, i.e. to clean the excess caulking from the wall and cabinet (but hurry, otherwise the caulking will dry and you may need to repaint that part of the wall so it does not look messy)
3. you will have a smooth finish of the caulking which will finish the job

Here are ‘after’ pictures, first the cabinet in its entirety. Compare it to the same picture at the beginning of this article.

Next are the close-up after pictures. Compare these to the same ‘before’ pictures above.

The think about finishing is that if a job is truly finished, no one notices. If the job is not finished, everyone will notice and all the time and effort and money you spent on your renovation / remodeling will be for not. You may have increased functional usage of your home, but it won’t look, well, finished.