Caulking Baseboards for Dummies

Caulking baseboard top

Not a day goes by without one of our researchers finding DIY "help" that was obviously written by freelancers who had abso-friggin-lutely no idea what they were talking about. Some of them know so little that they don't even head in the right direction when they do their "research" (such as it is). Today's one such day, and our DotD is one such freelancer: she's Lara Webster, and her HomeSteady.com post is ostensibly about "How to Caulk Tile on the Bottom of Baseboards."¹

We can see why Webster had a problem with the OQ's query (which Demand Media scraped from Google, we suspect): it doesn't make a lot of sense, but we guess the closest approximation of the question is, "How do you caulk the gap between a baseboard and a tile floor?" The answer, unfortunately, is "It depends." Most builders, however, don't caulk the line between tile and a baseboard, so that makes the job "easy." If, however, you're hellbent on caulking the baseboard, you should definitely be caulking the top of the baseboard where it meets the wall. But you should look probably somewhere else for help, because Lara has no idea what she's talking about.

For starters, Lara claimed to have used two references, neither of which had anything to do with the question at hand. One was about caulking the joint between wall and baseboard, and the other was about caulking a tile shower. Sorry, Lara, we gotta ding you for that.
We also have to ding Webster for her "instructions":

• "Fill a caulk gun with caulk that is a blend of acrylic and silicone. Hold the gun at a 30-degree angle above the baseboard crack and squeeze the trigger."
• "Squeeze out enough caulk so that it rests slightly higher than the baseboard and slide the gun slowly along the baseboard as you work. Cover 24 inches at a time."
• "Use a putty knife, when necessary, to lightly scrape caulk from decorative notches at the bottom of the baseboards or the surface of the tile."

Our thoughts on Lara's methods:

• We aren't sure why she specifies  a "blend of acrylic and silicone" (latex is probably sufficient for dry spaces) but we did learn that Lara doesn't know caulk comes in cartridges, because she never says to a) cut the tip off the cartridge or b) pierce the foil cover... Oh, yeah, and how big is the hole in the tip supposed to be?
• Ummm, not sure what "slightly higher than the baseboard" means, Lara. Oh, and do you push the caulk gun, or pull it?
• What the heck are those "decorative notches at the bottom of the baseboards"? 

We don't have much respect for people trying to give us do-it-yourself help when they haven't Done-it-themselves. In fact, we have so little help for them that we regularly hand out Dumbass of the Day awards to them. Here's yours, Lara...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_7975779_caulk-tile-bottom-baseboards.html

copyright © 2019-2022 scmrak

DDIY - FLOORS