Easy Update: Caulk Re-Do

Sometimes it's the smallest details that make something look polished and "done". Definitely the case in the latest easy update we tackled: Re-doing the caulking on our kitchen backsplash.

Granted, this wasn't a project we really set out to tackle initially - The wood backsplash that came in our kitchen is not exactly our idea of dreamy, and it had to come out to lay down our countertop. Since that went in, we sort of just had it tacked back in place with the nails it had in it as a stop-gap measure before our "real backsplash" (aka: tile) came to fruition.

Makeshift dining chair sawhorses.

Well, it's not coming as quickly as we had hoped based on other projects that have taken priority. So! Rather than continue to have the random wayward water spill around the sink drain down behind the cabinets, we decided just to caulk it on the bottom and keep things dry until the "real" version gets put in down the line.

Safety first - Avoiding flying caulk scraps.

The builders did a pretty horrendous job of being tidy with their caulking job, so I scraped and sanded as much of their remnants off that I could without doing too much damage to the wood itself.

White now, but will dry completely clear.

Then once the nails were tapped back into place, a layer of clear caulk went down, followed by a swipe with one of those fantastic triangular squeegee tools (sort of similar to this).

See the line of where the caulk was previously? Yikes!

Now really, builders, how hard is that to make tidy? If I hadn't had to clean up their job, this whole thing would have taken about 10-15 minutes. Since I did, the job ran Nate and I about 40 minutes, but hey, under an hour for turning something irritatingly messy into something I can live with is pretty great.