Caulking crown to wavy, sanded wall
I just installed large Craftsman-style cove crown moulding in our front room which has very wavy walls. I’ve caulked the small line between the top of the crown and the ceiling. But the crown to wall gap is giving me trouble. The previous owners added a grit to all the paint for an “old plastered” look so the walls aren’t smooth. In some places there is very little gap and in other places it is 1/8″. What are ways to get the caulk smoothly into place?
Replies
It might have been appropriate to scribe the back of the crown to the wall in places... depending on where, how many, and how big the waves are... but that's water under the bridge.
Assuming the crown will be painted, you can caulk the gaps nicely if you've got the patience. My approach would be to tape off the bottom edge of the crown, and tape off the wall at the height of the bottom edge of the crown... i.e. all caulk is going to be on the *back* of the crown, and on the wall *behind* the crown. I would gun the caulk into the crack, wipe it with my finger so that it's slightly concave, pull the tape, and walk away. Make sure no caulk is on the wall or on the trim where you don't want it.
After it cures, come back and reapply new tape, gun in a small amount of new caulk, and use a scrap of laminate or sheet metal to tool it. The "tool" would be maybe 1/2" wide x 3" long and would have an sharp square corner. Use it to dress the caulk flat and in plane with the bottom edge of the trim... extending the trim to the wall.
Hopefully that cures without shrinking and you're good to paint. This should be done with good light, the right ladder height, etc., and you need to use caulk that's friendly for this type of tooling. There is certainly the possibility of doing this in one pass if you put backer rod in the gaps first and use material that doesn't shrink, but I find that most of the latex caulks shrink a little and ruin the effect. Also depends on how picky you are.....
1/8" isn't bad. Many people
1/8" isn't bad. Many people don't relize it but some gap is good as it allows the caulk to get between the two pieces, rather than just being smeared on the surface in a thin layer. 1/16" might be more optimum though.
Just do as David says. The tape helps for someone who isn't a expert caulker (painter) who does it every day.
For future reference 2 or 3 pc crown mostly illimates these problems. The idea is you apply a piece of molding to the wall - say upside down base - and then install the crown to that. The gaps are split between the different joints so they aren't as bad. A pc of molding on the ceiling does the same thing. Again though, 1/8" isn't bad, and it is right within the range of what caulk is meant to fill.
Here is the thing though. USE GOOD CAULK. I like somethign called SW SherMax available at the SW paint store. It has a fair amount of flex so it won't crack later. That is pretty common with crown - the joints crack after a few heating/cooling season cycles. If you use cheap caulk I can guarantee it will crack later.
It's amazing to me that as many caulk products they sell at the big box there are no products that are really good for this type of application.
Make sure to let it cure a little longer the wider the crack you are filling. I have had some latex caulks taking a week or longer to cure on some larger than normal cracks. This caused it to keep shrinking long after I had thought that the job was completed and painted. If you are able to install some backer rod in the larger gaps to limit the amount of caulk being used then you may be able to control the amount of shrinkage better.
The way Dave describes it is very good.
I'd probably put the first layer on without taping and by careful placement with either a good small tip or even a pastry bag with a #3 tip for great control. Keep a number of damp t-shirt material rags handy and only put enough caulk in to barely fill the cracks--this layer will dry and some parts will pull apart and leave a new crack which is filled with the subsequent layers.
Personally I get better results if I don't tape because I can see exactly what's going where and I don't mind wiping a great deal. For the largest gaps you might need to tool the gap--personally I use a very sharp and hand polished 1" putty knife which probably works well for me because that's the only other tool I might use other than my finger or a small size nail set (with t-shirt rag wrapped around it it makes very nice corners).
I was once given a tube of exterior caulk that was amazingly shrink proof, but it's been discontinued and I haven't been able to find a good replacement. The old stuff could be tooled across a 1/4" gap with almost no noticable shrinkage. Cleanliness was of utmost importance because it wouldn't clean up with water, but for a few hard to fill areas (especially legs of paint grade door casing butchered by a tile guy leaving huge gaps) it was worth it's weight in gold. :)
In the future you could snap a line where the crown meets the wall and use a carbide scraper to carefully take off the tops of the wall texture. In the highest places a small amount of the crown can also be shaved.
Best of luck!
Here's a great trick for
Here's a great trick for controlling caulk.
Cut the nozzle at 30* angle and pretty small, ideally just enough for the piercing rod on the caulking gun to fit in.
Take pliers and pinch the nozzle end so that the opening is oval instead of round. (This also works on openings that were cut larger) Now you can squeeze out a very narrow bead of caulk.
Now for the best part of the trick, push the tip of the gun along the crack instead of dragging it. That way, the tip smooths the bead for you and sort of presses the caulk into the crack instead of leaving it on the surface.
Where the crack widens, slow down to allow more caulk to fill the crack and rotate the tube so that the oval opening still bridges the width of the crack.
All I'll add is to reaffirm
All I'll add is to reaffirm the importance of removing the tape before the caulk dries. I think this is common knowledge, but if you don't the caulk can attach to the tape if it's dry. that's what happened when I did my molding. It still looks good but there is a very slight gap I shouldn't have from letting the caulk dry before removing tape :)
One trick if the walls are very wavy is to avoid a color change on the wavy line, as that will accentuate the waviness. It is especially noticable where the two colors are very contrasting. in this case that would mean bringing the wall color onto the bottom edge of the crown, so that the color change is along the straight edge of the molding, you can hold it back from the edge also and that would also work. I often use this trick on baseboards on wavy walls.
Another good way around this problem is to use PVC molding: it conforms real well to wavy walls and nont-flat ceilings.