DIY: Fixing the gap in wood trim

Our theme for the month of March is everything windows and doors. When our resident DIYer Kristina Barbee told us she was undertaking an easy DIY project around her house – fixing the gaps in trim – we got so excited! The trim around your windows and doors need a bit of filling from time to time to keep them looking fresh. Here’s how to do it!

One of the “fun” perks of being a homeowner is finding all the little problems with your house and getting to fix them yourself!

Take my new flooring for example. The old carpet was a big problem that drove me crazy enough for me to rip it out and install new and the bowing walls in some of our rooms drive me crazy, so I finally took care of them!

From my nice comfy chaise lounge in the living room, I would get a nice big glimpse of this all of the time when I looked to my left:

Terrible, right? The huge gap makes my brand new trim look terrible. It wasn’t like the prior owners installed it wrong, they just didn’t finish it off to make it look perfect-o!

Fixing this gap is so easy, and shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes per side of a door.

Here’s what you’ll need and how much it’ll cost:

Material	Price
Painter's Tape	$6 per roll
Caulking Gun (if you prefer to use a gun as opposed to your hands)	$10
Tube of Caulking	$5
Scraper	$4.50
Total estimated project cost	$25.50

*Keep in mind: this is an estimated project cost!

The essential part of doing this properly is prepping!

Now, you could just grab some white coloured sealant and your caulking gun and fill it in, but then you’d have a big mess of caulking on your trim and wall and would have to touch up paint, and who wants to do that?

You’ll need some good painters tape, I don’t trust anything but frog tape now, and run it down the edge of your trim leaving just a smidge of bit of your trim exposed (maybe 1/8 of an inch). It is important to leave a bit of the trim exposed so the caulking can adhere to the front of the trim and have a nice clean line.

Also, be sure to run painters tape down the wall too, lining it up with the exact edge of your trim.

Once smoothed down perfectly, fill in the gap! Once it is all filled, you can use a scrape to smooth it down perfectly, or use your finger, both work fine.

Let it dry for about 10 minutes, then rip off your painters tape and call it a day!

Wasn’t it easy filling in that gap? Now that the trim in my kitchen is fixed, I’ve been itching to paint- and it has only been 1 day!

Is the wood trim around your windows and doors coming apart? If you’d prefer to have a professional do some repair work, take a look at our database of carpenters. These woodworking experts will get your trim back in tiptop shape!