The Holy Grail of Baseboard Repair

You've read the list. You've done all the chores. You are all ready for the big game. So it's only going to take a few minutes over a couple days to get this horrible looking baseboard repaired and looking brand new. So what we're going to need to get that done, you're going to need some sandpaper. If you want to get super fancy you can get some 150 and 120 grit. You kind of wood glue will work for this. And then you're going to need some wood filler. I like this stuff from the Home Depot. It comes in a squeeze tube. It's Elmer. This stuff's natural. They also make it in white which would probably work well for white baseboards. You want to avoid using Drydex for like a corner baseboard repair because what happens with Drydex, it's quite crumbly. Like you see I can just crumble that right off with my with my fingernail. You come over to the wood filler and it's just, ow, I hurt my thumb. It's hard. So before you get rolling with the filler on a repair like this you have to remove or sand away any of the loose impediments here because if you just fill over top of them they're just going to crumble off. So what you want to do is I got the 120 grit sandpaper here. The first step is just see if it'll sand off nicely. This is sanding off pretty good. So you'd want to sand that off. You could take an exacto knife and chop some of the little fuzzy bits off as well. Yeah you just want to make sure there's no protrusions there. That's looking good. And then you might want to just wipe that off with a little, not a wet rag, but just slightly damp. So now you're ready to get to the filling and rebuild this corner. So you're going to need to build that up with some wood filler. Now what I like to do with this wood filler you don't necessarily need the glue but the glue helps it just so it's not going to want to crumble off. I like to just take a little bit of glue. You really don't want to have too much glue otherwise it's going to crack the wood filler. So just take a little bit there and put it onto the wood fibers. It just kind of moistens the fibers down a bit and then it's going to help with the wood filler sticking on there nicely. I am just going to get some of this wood filler on my finger and try to build it up the best I can. You're better to have a little too much than not enough but you don't want to go crazy. So that's one coat on there. It's not, you know, it's not a work of art. We're gonna have to sand it to match the existing profiles. So it's on there pretty good. I'm gonna go ahead and hit the other little defects around here and then let it dry. So the filler set up overnight. It's good and hard. It's good to go. So what you're going to want to do at this point, I like to switch to the 150 grit. It's a little easier on the filler. You're going to want to cut up some various shapes and sizes depending on the profile. It's a bit of trial and error. So now the key to when you're sanding this stuff is you want to get the sandpaper riding on the profile surface and then coming away. You don't want to just start sanding back and forth because what ends up happening is you just wear the filler down way too quickly that way. Sand away. You get a feel for the pressure on the fixed part of the board and then as you come away, just nice and light. And then what you're going to want to do when it comes to the profile section, every base board is going to be different, but essentially you want to just get the paper. I mean if you had an object that you could place in there, that would work, but you can just hold the paper to kind of match up with the shape. Test it out. Make sure it's running nice and smooth. Pull it away from the corner here and don't go back and forth. That's looking pretty good. Yeah, so then with these tiny profiles here, you're going to want to maybe just try a few different shapes of sandpaper. You can curve the paper a little bit with some type of an implement. I have a little drill bit here. Get a little bit of a curve on it and then yeah, it's just a little bit of trial and error. So it's all sanded up. In real time, you have to take your time. That took about like five minutes of concentrated sanding. I didn't think you wanted to watch all that part, so I cut it out. And now what I'm going to do, it's looking pretty good. It's about 85-ish percent. There's a couple areas on this top profile here that need to get filled in a second time. So take a damp cloth. Give that a wipe off. A couple spots on this left-hand side that need a little bit more wood filler. And then on that second coat, just to make things easier for the final sand, when you put the filler on, get some moisture on your finger from the rag or some spit, and then just smooth it over a little bit. One hour with the fan is ready for the final sand. The repair is looking tremendous. You're on the one yard line. You're ready to score. What you don't want to do next is throw the quick slant. Otherwise Malcolm Butler's going to steal all of your dang dreams, like all of them. What you want to do is click on this video right here. Get this thing painted up like a professional. People, we're not working with a ton of talent here. We're just making the videos as best as possible. Sometimes it's a struggle.