Baseboard: Another Question

If one is replacing baseboard in a room with tile floors, should one put any sort of caulking at the baseboard/floor junction? Would the answer differ if the room was a bathroom, where the floor will presumably get wet, as opposed to a living room?

Thanks for any advice...the carpeting was replaced with tile some embarrasing time back, and I really should do something about these molding-less rooms!

Art

Reply to
Arthur Shapiro
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Keep it simple: Install molding and don't caulk. If you need to remove molding for whatever purpose later, you may have to deal with removing caulk.

Unless you plan to flood the bathroom floor, I wouldn't bother with caulk there either.

Reply to
franz frippl

When you dont have carpeting to hide the floor-to-base gap then use a base shoe and a baseboard. First install the baseboard level all around the room starting in contact with the highest point of the floor. Then brad shoot on 3/4 inch x 1/2 inch base shoe so that it follows tightly the contour of the floor and hides the gap. Base shoe is cheap and worth the tight look it gives against hard non-carpeted floors, and eliminates any need to scribe the base bottom to follow floor dips for a tight fit.

As others said, there is NO need for caulk in any pro trim work. The only exception being if the trim is being nailed to stucco or some deeply textured surface that creates un-scribeable gaps. No good trim carpenter will resort to caulk otherwise.

Reply to
RickH

In our house whoever did the tile job in the bathroom just ran it up the wall about 3-4 inches in lieu of baseboard.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Friesen

I believe the OP was discussing caulk for waterproofing, not for gap-hiding.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Friesen

I would put caulk all the way around any tile floor. There is always potential for water - from spills, plumbing leak or mopping - so it protects the molding from being wet. Especially in baths, condensation forms on walls/doors and can run down to bottom. Since the face of baseboards is normally all that is finished, any water that gets under it can be soaked in by the wood and cause the paint to loosen. If you notice bathroom or exterior doors, there is almost always some warping and/or cracking along bottom edge from moisture.

We had a washer hose break in laundry room off the kitchen, and had about 1" of water in kitchen. Good deal of it flowed into dining room (tile) but went no further because dining room had fairly new tile and I had caulked all around. Given that the floor isn't perfectly level, it didn't flow to the doorways of dining room but would have likely gone under the d.r. wall into bedroom. One of our best investments has been a wet-vac - getting all the water up right away when the kitchen was flooded helped keep our new cabinets from being ruined.

Reply to
Norminn

Plan for a toilet to run over and you will be glad that you caulked. :o)

Reply to
Norminn

A quarter-round molding will hide any unsightly spacing. I used caulking in the bathroom (vinyl flooring) to keep things cleaner if there are ever any overflows or backups, but it is optional.

Reply to
Phisherman

That is the way I always do it, run a tile, or a 3 to 4 inch slice off extra floor tiles glued and grouted instead of a wood baseboard. Always looks better and will help keep any water contained. Keep the grout lines on the tile baseboard in alignment with the floor grout lines to make it professional looking.

Reply to
EXT

In that case I'd use bullnosed tiles to make the base, then an acrylic sanded caulk in the crotch that matches the grout. No wood.

Reply to
RickH

Ultimate question isn't so much about water as it is about appearance. Can you really caulk a bathroom perimeter and make it look good? Most caulk jobs I've seen look like the cobbled together mess they are.

Again, keep it simple. The best preventative for toilet overflow is showing everyone where shutoff valve is located and make certain it isn't frozen open or difficult to turn.

Reply to
franz frippl

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