How to Fix Rotted Wood with Epoxy | This Old House

[Music] everyone's house is susceptible to rot and it's often where wood meets water on this house we've got a spot here on the windowsill and you can see just how far gone that is well when the rot comes there are a few ways you can deal with it in this case we could cut out that entire sill and replace it with a new one or we could cut out just a part where the rod occurs and replace it with a wooden patch and then there's a third way the way that tommy's working on right now hey tommy hey kevin what you got over there well i actually have a mullion post between this front door and side light and uh the bottom of the mullion post was rotted so i cut out the rot i mixed up a two part epoxy and i put it in place and formed it i have a little more a little more work to do on this before i paint it all right so this is pretty far along you're almost done here is there a spot where you can chose this process from the beginning well actually on the second floor on that side of the house i actually have a window trim that's rotted i'm going to do the same fix on that all right kevin the first thing i need to do is you can see that the sill is rotted and the side casing is rotted what i need to do is grind out any rotted wood and get it down to solid wood because the epoxy won't bond to any rotted wood okay and to do that i'm going to use my router in this v-shaped grinding bit i have to scrape off all the old paint because the epoxy needs to stick to the wood now before we apply the epoxy i have to apply a bonding agent to the wood so the epoxy will adhere to the wood better to model the epoxy to this profile i had to make a knife and here's how i did it i hold the knife under the casing and i simply trace around the perimeter now i cut that pattern out using my snips now we're using a two-part epoxy in the kit you have the epoxy a and b and a gun especially designed so when i put the epoxy in the gun and squeeze it it dispenses the right amount all right that's enough for now now what i want to do is mix it together so once this is mixed tom how long do we have to work with it we get about 30 minutes to work with it so what's your little palette here it's a piece of lexan the reason i like it is because the epoxy will not stick to it all right now i'm ready to apply it simply push it right in there well you know kevin wood expands and contracts and the good thing about the epoxy it flexes with the wood so that it won't separate now i want to get a straight edge on this sill so i'm simply going to take a scrap piece of wood slide it under the sill fill in any voids with my knife and it'll be straight on the bottom now i'm ready to match the detail and to do that i'm going to use the knife that i cut that's about all we can do today we'll let it set up overnight and tomorrow we'll sand it prime it and paint it

Channel: This Old House

Views: 2,356,336

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Episode, TV Show, Tom Silva, kevin o'connor, rotted wood, rot, repair, epoxy, filler, window, paint, home, cartoon, cops, news, amazing, car, money, house, tom silva this old house, tom silva house, tom silva construction, tom silva tools, tommy silva

Id: 3l5q0xaQEf8

Length: 3min 30sec (210 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 23 2014