If caulking is an art than I've found another art form that I'm no good at!

A few days ago I was presented with a challenge from my father. There was a piece of trimming at the bottom of a door sized window looking out onto his deck that had rotted out and needed replacing. He proposed that I should fix it and being a decent son, I accepted his challenge figuring what the heck it's not my house.

The first step was to remove the remnants of the existing board. This was simple enough. I used a utility knife to slice through the latex paint and a pry bar to pull the wood out. I didn't get any pictures of this because I didn't think about blogging this until after I screwed up the caulking procedure. Half of the board had disintegrated. Somehow water had gotten in behind it and wood rot had gone into full effect. Strangely, the other half of the board was completely sound, but I discarded it out of spite. If it's not going to take of it's other half than I have no use for it. If one half fails the whole fails. I know it's a stern lesson, but how else is that board going to learn that it needs to tend for the wood around it?

The second part of this labor was to find a replacement board. You would think this would be simple, but it wasn't. I went to a Lowe's Home Improvement store with my dad in search of the perfect piece of lumber. We were looking for a board that was one half inch wide, one and one half inch tall, and thirty one inches long. Unfortunately this isn't a standard size for boards in the exciting world of lumber. We weren't too concerned with the length because we could trim it down. It was the height that was the problem. There were one inch tall boards and there were two inch tall boards, but wouldn't you know it, no one and a half inch tall boards. This wouldn't have been a problem if we owned a table saw or other similar power tool, but we don't. So it came down to, do we buy a table saw for a couple hundred dollars and a two inch board, or do we just buy the two inch board, slap it on and call it done. Well we took our time and did the math, and after completing our price comparisons, my dad decided that we'd probably get the best bang for our buck by converting the window frame to a new two inch form factor. Sadly, I was forced to concur, though I still think that you really can't put a price on the joy of owning a table saw, yet somehow Lowe's found a way to put just such a price on their table saws and therefore I was left wanting as it was not my buck that we were trying to get a bang out of.

The third thing that had to be done was to kill the mold and mildew that was growing on the frame where the board would attach. This was accomplished with bleach! What would the world be like without bleach? That stuff is fantastic! I put some bleach in a spray bottle and spritzed away. I figured, what's the harm, I'm going to be painting the thing white anyway, so what if it bleaches a little. Of course, after I put the bleach on I had to give the boards some time to dry out. I originally thought I'd give it a day, but somehow I got distracted and this stretched into a couple days. During this time, I thought to myself, "Bleach is good, but what if it isn't enough?" At this point I remembered back to my time in the pest control profession that boric acid was often used in the treatment of lumber to make it resistant to molds, mildews and wood destroying organisms. So I diluted some boric acid dust in some water and treated the raw wood with my concoction. I then had to let the board dry again. By this point the exposed wood was looking much lighter than it had just a few days before and I took this to be a positive sign.

Finally, installation day arrived. I measured my board and cut it to the correct length. Actually I cut it a little long, only to discover that I had actually cut it to the correct length. This, of course, is in keeping with the old Carpenters adage, "Measure twice, add a little on, cut once, don't curse your life and those around you." Ah Karen, where would we be without you? As I was setting it into position and admiring my good fortune at cutting it so correctly, it occurred to me that I didn't currently posses any sealant with which to caulk the board. This necessitated another trip to my friendly neighborhood Lowe's. At Lowe's I perused the sealant section trying to look like I knew what I was doing as much as possible. I studied the various labels with great care and I only needed the store attendant to point out that I was looking at the wrong product once. Eventually I whittled down my choices to a product produced by GE and a product produced by DAP. This was made all the simpler by the fact that there were only two choices to begin with. I eventually settled upon the DAP because it had a name, namely ALEX, so I could relate with it, I also having a name. However there was a bit of advice on the GE tube's label that would have saved me some trouble had I heeded it. It seems GE knows a thing or two about caulking and they recommend putting down tape on either side of the area you'll be caulking so as to make cleanup a little easier. Oh, if only I had heeded that advice! However, I didn't and the rest is, as they say, history.

Back home, I nailed the board in place with some surplus nails that we had laying around. My dad has an excellent collection of old hardware, so finding the proper nails wasn't difficult. Then I began the caulking procedure. I cut the tip off the tube and inserted it properly into my caulking gun and away I went. Everything was going fine until I got to the first corner. At this point I had a big goop of caulk and I thought, "I'll just smooth that out." I first attempted the procedure with a putty knife which was a little futile. I then resolved to use the greatest of all tools, my finger. I smeared that blob out quite well, I then decided to even out the entire line I had just put down and try and blend it into the board to make for a smoother paint job. Bad decision. Before I knew what had happened I had caulk everywhere. To make matters worse, when I set the caulk to the side to focus on the board the caulk kept exiting the tube without my permission. It just kept pouring out. Several paper towels later I got the project to a point I could live with and decided to just paint over the mistakes.

Painting was an easy enough process. My dad had some spare paint laying around. I had to choose between two varieties, and of course I chose the wrong one. We had some Valspar American Tradition Exterior 100% Acrylic White, and BEHR Premium Plus Ultra Pure White Exterior Semi-gloss Enamel. I was seduced by the patriotism of the Valspar. I also wasn't sure about that semi-gloss concept. Is it glossy or not, make up your mind. So I opened up the Valspar and set to stirring it. It wasn't long until I noticed that there was a lump in my can, no not that can, the paint can! Anyway, I didn't let that initially stop me. It was only after I started painting that I allowed my doubts as to the paints condition effect me. I began to think that if it wasn't mixing properly then maybe it wouldn't last as long and I'd find myself back outside replacing another board. So I decided, out of self-interest, to switch to the BEHR paint. It wasn't until later that I noticed the bold lettering across the front of the can that read, "Ultimate Durability, Improved Hiding Power For Great Coverage." Had I seen that in the beginning I would have selected it, because if there was anything this project needed it was "Improved Hiding Power".

I painted the section where the board was and then I noticed it wasn't quite matching the rest of the bottom, so I decided to paint the entire bottom of the frame. My dad really liked that so he had me paint the bottom of the other side as well. He thought it was looking a little shabby and of course they all needed to match. This was all really uneventful. In the end I think I did a pretty good job and if you don't look to closely, you can't even notice any of the flaws, well except for the copious amounts of sealant that made its way onto the green parts. I think that could be a good life lesson, but what lesson is it? Don't look to closely or you'll see the flaws? Don't tell your dad a board is rotting? Use tape when you caulk? I'm not sure, but I'll think about it. At least, until another project or random thought comes my way.