LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — It's time to fix up the house, as we're all inside for this quarantine. If you have baseboards and quarter rounds that have seen better days, let's fix them!
You'll need a few things: Gloves, liquid sander or de-glosser, and painters rags. You may also need sandpaper or a sanding block, wood putty and a two-inch spackling knife.
After vacuuming up the boards and molding with a brush attachment, liquid sand the wood, making sure not to get any on the floor.
"Some of this is too strong for liquid sander," said THV11's Rob Evans, "so I'm going to use a sanding block. Medium grit, and it has angles that help get into the hard parts."
Take a two-inch spackling knife and put it over your painters rag with liquid sander on it, and run it along the top of the baseboard to clean that part.
The quarter rounds are cheap to replace, but they're a pain. So if it's a little damaged, you can repair them with wood putty or even spackle. A little bit at a time, several coats.
Sand it down, clean off the dust and lay down some covering because it's time to paint. We used Sherwin-Williams Natural Choice with a foam roller.
"With a foam roller," he explained, "the edge gets about half of the quarter round at the same time."
And of course you have to do the crown molding to match!
Caulk the corners where needed. We didn't use a brush to paint the quarter round because the bristles can jam under molding and look bad. Instead, we used a high-quality painter's tape directly against the edge and used the same roller gently up against the tape and the molding.
Make sure the roller is rolling, not skidding.
Two coats later, the tape came off and there wasn't a drop of paint!
"I'm shocked," he said. "That's amazing. You remember the repair of the baseboard, I don't see it, do you?"
The very last step is to take the trim brush (1.5 or 2 inch angled firm brush in this case) to do the very tops of the baseboard.
If you do get a little paint on the hardwood, just grab that putty knife, wrap your damp painters rag around and it slide it on the floor up against the board a few times and it's perfect!