How to install baseboard and corners like a pro

hey guys what's up Jesse here from Canadian DIY and today we're gonna install baseboard like a pro I'm going to show you how to install the main base itself as well as a corner show you how to get those perfect Meier's and we're also gonna go over a bunch of tips and tricks to make a job go from good to great I'm gonna go into a fair amount of detail on this so stick with me I'm going to show you how to do it right now okay obviously first things first you need your baseboard I'm just using flat stock here this matches the theme and the style that I'm going for in my house but if you have a very detailed baseboard at all a short anything like that doesn't matter these same tricks are gonna work secondly you want to make sure that your base is pre painted it saves you a lot of time and a lot of steps later on so make sure it's pre painted this is just nothing more than a basic trim paint it's pure white semi-gloss nothing crazy a couple coats make sure it's pre painted okay so from there what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our base now we're going to stand it up and put it up against the wall now what we're going to do is we're going to slide it that direction or that direction if that's the way you're going towards your door casing or a corner or whatever it may be we're gonna Snug it up tight now what we're gonna do is we're going to take and make a mark now we're gonna make this mark about an eighth of an inch long the reason being is you can always take more off you can't put more back on once it's already cut off we can so what we're gonna do is we're going to sneak up on this now the reason being is it's really easy to cut these miter joints too short so what we're going to do is we're going to take and make our mark about an eighth of an inch long and then we're gonna make a second mark going in an angle this will tell me the direction that I need my saw blade to go now I've already got my other piece pre-cut and this fits right in there if you want you can also make a second line and that will basically tell me where I need my saw blade to start and where I need it to finish let's go to the side and now with Slade valiantly watching our progress what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our piece of bass and we're gonna slide it back up tight just like that and then down here we'll check our fit now as you can see we are a little bit long but that's okay I said we can always take more off so what we're gonna do is we're gonna shave a little bit off the other side we're just going to take it off the straight corner now what we can do is we can take and compare it to our other piece here by the looks of that we're not overly long so we're literally gonna take off just half the width of the saw blade is all which is good now one thing I gotta mention too is when you're doing this make sure that your saw blade is starting at the front of your base and the blade is coming out on the backside that way if there's any chipping or territory anything is happening on the rear and not on the face you never want to cut your base this way and have the blade coming out on the front otherwise you're gonna have a lot of tearing and chip out that you'll have to fix later okay now I shaved about a sixteenth of an inch off the backside there so now we're gonna do is take another test fit slide it up tight we'll take our other corner put it in there now as you can see that is a perfect fit so now before you get all slap-happy and start just nailing that thing into the stud that's back here there's a trick that we're gonna do so we just spent a lot of time getting our miter joint absolutely perfect so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna keep it because what can happen is if you start just nailing this guy in this one can push or that one can push and they can move each other around sometimes the walls aren't straight and the bottom can kick in and the top can kick out and you can end up with a funny-looking joint like that or vice versa sometimes the the top can push in and the bottom can be out or whatever happy so what we're gonna do is we're going to keep our miter joint I'm going to show you how to do that okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take and we're gonna glue our outside corners if it's an inside corner you don't necessarily need to glue it but on outside corners you always want to glue it that way the joint doesn't contort or push apart or pull apart over time we're gonna use painters tape as well we're gonna tape up the joint to hold it in place while the glue dries you want to use painters tape on this it's a lower tack or stickiness than a masking tape masking tape is really really sticky you can actually start to peel away the paint when you go to take it off because just I'll have to be on there for about a half hour 45 minutes whatever your glue drying time is so what we're gonna do is we're going to take and run a pretty generous bead of glue down our board now stand it up and stand up your other piece push them together now we're going to take our tape peel off a chunk probably about four inches or so we're gonna put it on our base now we're going to pull it tight and wrap it around the other side making sure that there's flush on top you don't want one to be too high up compared to the other do it again we're gonna put this one wipe off with and glue squeeze-out pull it tight and press it in now this will hold our perfect mitre now we just gotta wait for the glue to dry before we go ahead and nail that in place alright it's been about an hour now my glue is good and dry now I should mention obviously that while you're waiting for this corner to dry you're probably going around and installing more baseboard on other windows doors casing stuff like that around other floors always whatever have you yeah this is good and dry so now we're gonna go ahead and remove the tape now we're going to remove it up to the corner and stop we're going to take this side and remove it up to the corner and then we're going to peel this off the reason being is if we just took it right around the corner you would end up the paint off see it's already starting to lift there a little bit but you would start peeling it off onto this piece of bass over there what you don't want don't worry about whatever comes up right now it's not a big deal we're gonna fix that in the next step right now we're gonna go ahead we can nail this on now the corner pieces we're going to go ahead and put two nails two nails and two nails right there just to hold this guy good and steady onto the wall just make sure that when you put two nails in this side and then two nails in that side your nails don't run into each other so just offset them a little bit push it down to the floor just like that alright so now when it comes down to putting the nails into the rest of the baseboard what you're gonna want to do is put them into a stud so we're just going to take a stud finder run it along the wall find the stud just make a small little pencil mark and from there what you can do is typically interior walls like this on a house usually will be 16 inches on center sometimes it'll be 24 so what you can do is once you take your first mark go ahead and put the tape measure down and when you go to your 16 inch measurement you should notice that there should be another stud at least somewhere in the neighborhood right here and then again after that you just keep stretching up the tape measure keep going in on your 16 inch increments until the whole piece is nailed in [Music] all right now we got the baseboard nailed in place what we're going to do now is around each nail hole the MDF the baseboard kind of swells up a little bit so if you go ahead and you just slap some paint over that right now obviously you're still gonna see the indent of the nail hole and then around that you're actually gonna see it swell up now you can just go ahead and fill the nail holes and paint them but you'll still see the little marks where it swells up depending on how the light hits it so what I like to do is just take a little putty knife and just lightly just shave the tops off that's literally all there is to it it doesn't take much just shaving the tops off of them just flattening them out as all of this now after that we're gonna take a little bit of spackling compound it's just regular old drywall spackle I like this stuff it's pink right now it turns white when it's dry I'm just gonna take a little bit and just wipe it into the holes take another finger just sort of wipe it off smooth it out just like that I'm going to go ahead and do that to all the nail holes and then from there what we're going to do is just we're going to caulk the seam all the muds drying and we'll come back and we'll paint it it'll be all good to go all right now we're going to move on to what can be the most daunting part for some people and that's putting on the silicone so now what I've got here is an actual trim and baseboards silicone now the reason you're gonna want to use something like this as opposed to a less expensive silicone again this stuff is a little bit more expensive per tube but if you read the back of it this stuff is actually very flexible if you get the less expensive stuff it is only mild to moderately flexible depending on what type you get now we do only have a small gap to fill some places you might have a little bit larger gap to fill but I've literally seen that stuff crack and the gap start to open back up again within two weeks of applying it just because the seasonal temperature changes humidity changes the ground shifting things like that this stuff is very flexible so you're not going to have that gap starting to open back up now there are measurements on the very top of the tube I've actually cut mine at a smaller than an eighth of an inch and I've cut it at a forty-five degree angle that will just help with application now the reason I've cut it so small is again we only have a very small gap to fill you can always add more caulking to the joint if need be and the same as our corner you don't want to cut it too big to start you can always cut it bigger after the fact if you need to just shave it off a little bit larger but again start small you can always make it bigger you can't make it smaller it's now just gonna load that into the tube and then one thing is with this for application we're just going to apply a very thin bead and we're going to go back and use a dry finger some people like to use a wet finger again there's no right or wrong way to it some people like to use round over tools the reason I don't like the round over tool is because if you use that you have no tactile feedback like you do with your fingers in other words if the caulking starts building up on the backside of your finger or the round over tool you can't feel that in another after it starts to build up you can have it start pushing up the wall out onto the baseboard and that's just a pain to clean so I like to use my finger hold your finger again at about a 45 degree angle and just press into it and you'll start to pull your finger across as you start to peel the caulking build up on the back side just take your finger wipe it off on your towel and keep on going other than that it's really really simple I'm going to show you how to do it [Music] [Music] all right so now the last step we got to do is just paint our nails again that's just going to be nice and simple because our baseboard has already been pre painted all we literally have to do is touch them up it doesn't take much one coat is usually enough now I'm using a tapered brush here in other words that bristles go down at an angle you can use a straight brush but a nice high quality tapered brush usually is a non synthetic fibers or is probably going to be your best bet it'll leave the smoothest finish same thing as we have on the baseboard already just go ahead dip it in we're just literally going to touch up nail holes come at it from a couple different directions just to kind of hide them a little bit better again it doesn't take much if you're worried about getting too close to the floor as well you can take a piece of paper and just kind of tuck it underneath the baseboard and then paint along that that way you don't worry about getting any paint on the floor and for our corner same thing we're just going to paint holding across the front of it at the start now we're going to touch up the nail holes at the same time pulling our paint across and I'll come at it in this way pull the paint across touch up the top well guys that's it that's all it takes to install baseboard like a pro I hope you learned something today I'll link everything I use in the description box down below and remember like comment subscribe everything like that I'll see you next time

Channel: CanaDIYan

Views: 182,183

Rating: 4.6330514 out of 5

Keywords: diy, construction, carpentry, baseboard, perfect corner, painting baseboard, install baseboard, caulking baseboard, silicone baseboard, home reno, house reno, renovation, baseboard corner

Id: 0zlgDIVqyoc

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 18 2018