If you caught our latest post about building a board and batten accent wall, then you’ve seen most of our office room by now. There are a few angles and furniture pieces that we haven’t shown yet, so stay tuned for our whole office reveal in the near future! What you probably don’t know about the office is that we started working on it over a year ago when we painted it (during the pre-blog era). In this post, we’re recapping a simple yet effective thing that we did in here to really make our paint job look professional: caulking the trim!

Before Caulking

We all love a good before picture, right? Here’s one of the office that we took during the prep stage of painting. We stopped ourselves before opening up the paint cans and made a point to snap this picture before we forgot. Anyone else guilty of getting so wrapped up in their projects that you forget to take pictures? 😅

It was the same story as the rest of our house: dingy, off-white walls, brown trim, and no overhead lighting. Nothing some cosmetic updates couldn’t fix! First, we hired an electrician to install four recessed lights (pictured in this photo) and put them on a dimmer switch so we can control the brightness of the room. Then, we freshened everything up by painting the ceiling, walls, and trim. Paint is the simplest and most transformative DIY project if you ask me! The ceiling is flat white ceiling paint, the walls are a blue-tinged white – Maui Mist by Behr, and the trim is our go-to Ultra Pure White by Behr. You can see a full list of our house’s paint colors here.

After we painted the office, we sort of pushed it to the back burner and moved on to other projects. We used it sporadically for storage, but never made it a true office. Then, COVID-19 hit, and Pete needed a designated space to work from home in. So we turned our attention back to the office, and realized that our original paint job was missing something…

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…caulk! Do you see all the gaps between the trim and the walls?? The problem here is simple – we didn’t caulk the baseboards or the trim around the windows and doors before we painted. So we were left with gaps where the trim isn’t 100% flush with the walls (which is common in older homes). And since our paint colors are so light, the dark gaps really stand out.

The solution here is to fill all of the gaps with caulk, which is so easy to do! No matter how experienced a painter you are, using caulk will always give your paint job a seamless, professional look. And it’s quick, too. With the two of us, we got most of the caulking done during halftime of a Patriots game. Here’s what we did:

10 Simple Steps for Caulking Trim

1. Wipe down the trim with a damp rag to remove any dust.
2. Use scissors or a utility knife to cut the tip of your caulk tube. TIP: cut it at a 45-degree angle, and don’t cut too much off. A smaller bead of caulk is easier to control and reduces wasted caulk.
3. Load the caulk tube into a caulking gun.
4. Squeeze the trigger of the caulking gun to run a continuous bead of caulk along the trim where it meets the walls.
5. Dip your finger in water, and smooth the caulk bead by running your finger along it, pressing down lightly.
6. Wipe off excess caulk onto a paper towel.
7. Repeat steps 4-6 until you’ve caulked all the noticeable gaps.
8. Let the caulk dry per the caulk tube’s instructions.
9. Paint over the caulk with your trim color (paintable caulk NEEDS to be painted, or it will turn a gross yellow color and attract dust).
10. If the caulk smeared onto the walls at all, paint over it with the wall color to prevent discoloration.

That’s it! Caulking is cheap, effective, and doesn’t require special tools besides a caulking gun (the one we use is under $7, and our favorite brand of caulk is under $5 a tube). We only used half a tube for this small room, so we kept the rest for another time. To store caulk and prevent it from drying out, we cover the tip with plastic wrap and a rubber band (making it airtight). We keep our caulk tubes at room temperature in a spare closet with our leftover paint.

After Caulking

In a perfect world, you’d want to caulk the trim in your space before painting. Don’t be like us and learn the hard way! With a little more DIY experience under our belts, we know better now. We still have a few rooms that we need to revisit and caulk, but we can happily check the office off our list! Here’s what the trim in there looks like now:

Everything is nice and seamless now, and most importantly, no more gaps! A little caulk and touch-up paint (and patience) was all it took. Maybe we’ll get the motivation to caulk the rest of our house soon 😉