LESLIE: Steve in Arizona needs some help with a tiling project. What can we do for you?
STEVE: Yes. I have an all-tile floor.
LESLIE: OK.
STEVE: And of course, around the edges of the tile, the grout is cracking.
LESLIE: Around the edges of the room itself?
STEVE: Yes.
LESLIE: OK.
TOM: OK.
STEVE: So I want to see what you would recommend to replace the grout with, because obviously I don’t want to put grout back …
LESLIE: Mm-mm.
STEVE: … because that’s just going to crack, so …
TOM: Yeah. No, not between the edge of the tile and the molding.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) And the wall.
STEVE: (overlapping voices) Exactly.
TOM: What you want to put there is a piece of – another piece of molding called shoe molding and that covers that gap, because you’re always going to have expansion and contraction between the baseboard and the tile.
LESLIE: It’s like a quarter round.
TOM: Yeah. It looks like quarter round.
STEVE: So some kind of caulk …
TOM: No, no.
STEVE: … would not do the trick?
TOM: Well, no. Not if – I mean …
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Depends on how big the gap is.
TOM: Yeah.
LESLIE: I mean that’s something that I’ve done in a bathroom situation, where it’s tile to tile. I’ve used caulk to bridge the gap rather than grout because the grout is just going to crumble away. But in a kitchen or a finished room where you have baseboard, the shoe molding – it looks like a quarter round, so a circle cut into fours – and that just sort of covers up that whole space and you paint it the same color as the baseboard and it vanishes.
STEVE: Oh. OK. Thank you so much.
TOM: You’re very welcome, Steve. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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