Hi. I’m Bob Schmidt with Home Remodel Workshop. When it comes to painting, preparation is actually 2/3 of the work and painting is 1/3. To get a really good final product, you really need to know how to caulk well and to fill holes. I’ll give you a few tips to show you how to do it. Let’s get to work.

As you can see, cutting quarters on the preparation time when it comes to paint really leaves a final product that isn’t up the par. In contrary to popular belief, no matter how much paint you put in these nail holes, they’re not going to fill properly. You really need to use the right product to fill these prior to paint. After consulting with some professional painters, their recommendation was an ALX Plus, it’s made by DAP. It’s for paintable-type caulk. They said it stays flexible and it’s pretty easy to work with. And much to my surprise, what they pretty much all recommended for filling in nail holes is a glazing compound. This whole tub I think cost me $6, I probably have enough to fill holes for the rest of my life. But what they said that was good about the glazing compound versus some of the other compounds that they recommended for filling in nail holes is that it doesn’t absorb paint at a different rate than the wood does. So if you have a semi gloss or a shim paint going over it, that will actually not dull the paint out where the nail holes are. And what you’re trying to do is hide the nail holes, so I would go with the recommendation to use the 33.

When you first take the glazing compound out of the container, it’s kind of sticky. I was told that the best thing to do is to knead it, knead it around in your hand, roll it around and roll it on itself. Let some of the warmth from your hands soften it up a little bit. And it makes it really applyable and really workable. Once you’ve done that for a little bit, it’s ready to go ahead and put it in the hole.

The best tool to use for filling in these nail holes is your finger. So, we’ll go ahead and pinch off just a little bit of the dough, put it in the hole without rubbing directly into the hole too much. You want to leave a little bit in the hole. I was told that that won’t shrink and that will cover well. At the end of the day, as long as you didn’t let this get too dirty or anything, just go ahead and just throw it back in the container and it will be good to go for the next time.

Most small caulking guns have a little hole on the side of the handle for a spout cutter so that when you stick the end of the tube in there and you pull down like this, it will cut it off. That’s not going to give you a very clean cut on the tip of your caulk. You want to keep that small and tight as possible to keep from making too much of a mess, so I recommend that you don’t use that. Now everyone that I’ve talked to, as far as the tip of the glue gun is concerned, they say to cut a small hole in there as possible. You can always make this hole bigger in certain events. And then, they also make this little plunger on the bottom of most caulk guns that you can puncture if you have a tube in there or a cellophane in there that needs to be punctured, you can use that to puncture it.

Now typically, if this wall hadn’t been painted yet and this baseboard hadn’t been finished painted, I would go ahead and just put some caulk in here with my finger using a small tube hole. But since this is already painted and this is already painted and I really don’t want smears on either one, what I will do is I’ll spray a little bit of Windex on it and a little bit of Windex on my finger before I caulk. And when I caulk, I put in a small hole as possible, the smallest amount of caulk as possible. And that way, when I go to wipe it off, it only leaves the caulk in the hole. Now, I make sure that I keep plenty of paper towels available and I don’t go too far so as to let the caulk dry up, so that I don’t have to go back and repaint this wall and repaint this caulk to make this look good.

So there you go. A few simple little painting tips, take your time, and your finished product should turn out much better than what you’re used to seeing. Thanks a lot for watching. If you’re interested in more of our videos, please go to our home channel. And if you see what you like, go ahead and subscribe. Thanks.