You may not realize it now, but caulking is integral in preparing your kitchen for durable and long-term use. Sealants can prevent many maintenance issues due to wear and tear over time. Regardless, caulking enhances your kitchen’s performance and extends its functions’ longevity, preventing problems such as mold and mildew growth from happening due to moisture seeping into the walls and floors. In the long run, it can help you save a significant amount that you would have to otherwise spend on replacing and repairing different parts of the home and heating and cooling utilities during the winter and summer months. Overall, caulking is a cost-effective solution for many of your maintenance requirements. Read on for three essential things to seal in the kitchen during a kitchen renovation.
Kitchen Cabinets
The last thing you will ever want to witness is having the kitchen’s aesthetic be affected by an uneven surface and gap between the cabinets and wall. This could cause the end product of the kitchen to feel unfinished and unpolished. To solve this issue, you can seal the gaps with a silicone sealant or a polyurethane sealant – if you’re planning to paint over them to achieve a uniform color. Filling in these openings will not only help complete the look but prevent moisture, air, and external contaminants such as mold spores from entering your cabinets and latching on to surfaces with moisture. Overall, caulking helps to retain your cabinets’ quality and value over time by preventing damage.
Windows
While windows are important for ventilation, they play an integral role in protecting the interior against the elements such as rain and snow, which can seep through the openings and gaps between the moldings and trims of the window frame. Unfortunately, this can cause mold and bacteria to grow along the supporting walls and the window material in the long run. Subsequently, causing structural damage to the home that can be costly and a hassle to repair. Additionally, sealing the gaps in the trims and moldings will greatly help with temperature regulation by keeping the heat in during the cold winter months and retaining cool air in the home during the warmer summer months. This means you can spend lesser expenses on amping up the airconditioning unit during the summer and turning up the heater during the winter, making your home a more energy-efficient one.
Sinks and Countertops
Similar to the windows, you will want to seal the kitchen sink and countertops with a waterproof sealant to prevent water from seeping through the cracks within the walls, resulting in gradual structural damage. Again, these cracks would be an ideal breeding ground for mold and mildew due to the warm and moist climate, which can be unnecessarily costly and will be a hassle to remove. In the long run, if these moldy areas are untreated and are allowed to spread, this could result in more expensive replacements and repairs when the surrounding kitchen cabinets start to degrade and rot. Therefore, prevention is always better than cure, as you will always want to ensure that air and moisture cannot penetrate through the cracks.