Space Between Baseboards and Hardwood Floor – How Can I Fill Them?

LESLIE: Tim in Maine is on the line with a flooring question. What are you working on?

TIM: Oh, I bought an old house and I ripped up the carpet in one of the rooms to find really old pine board. So I paid to have them professionally finished and they look amazing. And my question for you is – there are gaps around the – under the trim around the entire room, upwards of ½-inch. It’s pretty noticeable and there’s a lot of them. And I was wondering what my options were for taking care of those gaps.

LESLIE: So this is between that first board and your baseboard piece, correct?

TIM: Yeah.

LESLIE: So what you can do – and of course, I don’t know what the style of your baseboard is. And perhaps, at the bottom of your baseboard, is it just flat/straight? You’ve got a clean edge?

TIM: Yeah. It’s your standard, white sort of baseboard.

LESLIE: You know what you can do is you can do either a quarter-round or a shoe molding. And then come in a variety of sizes and those can be painted to match your baseboard or stained to match your baseboard.

TOM: Or even they could be natural oak and match the floor.

LESLIE: Yeah. That’s another way to go. And then you’d use that to sort of bridge the gap between the baseboard and the floor so it sort of just covers over that.

And you can get it in a ½-inch depth, which isn’t terribly gigantic. But that’ll cover your whole area. So it sort of acts as an application onto the baseboard. It attaches one side on the baseboard and the other side sort of rests on the floor, so it’s L-shaped with that quarter-round in between.

Or you can do a different type of molding. I mean there’s a ton of different kinds of moldings – whether it’s a shoe molding, either a square or a quarter-round – depending on the look and the style of home. And then you can use that to bridge the gap.

TIM: OK. Is there any – so there’s no type of putty or filler or caulk or anything that I could put.

LESLIE: You’re going to have too much movement in the floor and it’s going to – whatever you put in is just going to break out and bounce out and it’s going to be a disaster that you’re constantly fixing.

TIM: Oh, that’s right.

LESLIE: And this is going to be such a minimal addition that’s truly going to cover up this opening that’s bothering you. And you won’t even notice it.

TIM: OK.

LESLIE: Alright. Thanks so much for calling The Money Pit.