Caulk and Painting

When you take a piece of previously-stained furniture or cabinetry and paint it, caulk is super useful.

For instance, this little railing above my kitchen cabinets had a groove in it that was nigh onto impossible to paint. So, I caulked it, and then painted over the caulk (you can see the un-caulked area on the left.)

That was so much easier than trying to shove paint in there. I also needed to use caulk where the bottom piece of the fence part meets the cabinet frames…it didn’t fit evenly and that was evident once I painted. A little caulk took care of it very nicely, though.

This picture doesn’t show it very well, but the place where the cabinet frames and trim met got wider and wider toward the right.

Oh, and all those little spindles? I tried painting them with a regular paint brush, but that was super difficult. They’re just so very tiny. Fortunately, trying a little watercolor paintbrush occurred to me, and that did the trick very nicely.

My cabinet doors have all needed caulk too. When they were stained, the places where the panels didn’t fit quite flush worked out all right. But once white paint goes on, all those areas are super visible.

Like here:

Much better after some caulk.

My favorite caulk is Dap latex. We’ve tried some cheaper caulks in the past when we’ve done other projects, and it really is worth it to pay a little bit more for the Dap. The kind I’m using here dries in 15 minutes, so you can caulk and then put a coat of paint over the caulk in short order.

(And you do not want to skip painting over caulk. Unpainted caulk might look good at first, but it will darken in color over time and will be very hard to keep clean.)

The weather has been pretty perfect for painting this last week or so, and I think in a day or two, I will be very nearly done with this project.

And then we can have some fun after pictures. Yay!