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We have old school 3/4 knotty pine in our basement. Before painting I want to fill in the deep grooves and seams. I’ve seen caulk recommended but that is a lot of caulk. Is there any issue with me using woody putty instead? The grooves are floor to ceiling.

Budcms
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    a picture would help, seams is questionable given the wood potentially changes dimensions over the seasons. what are the grooves from? – Fresh Codemonger Feb 02 '23 at 01:29
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    Knotty pine of what sort? Plywood/headboard? Actual shiplapped boards? Something else? Simplest answer may be to slap wallboard over it. – keshlam Feb 02 '23 at 01:42
  • Cover it with drywall if you want a smooth finish and paint. – Ecnerwal Feb 02 '23 at 02:09
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    Future persons might like you better for the drywall than the paint. – crip659 Feb 02 '23 at 02:19
  • Yes, you can do that. Caulk would be a lot easier though, wood putty takes a lot of manual effort that a caulk gun application would not. Caulk is also easier to sand, and you'll need to do a lot of sanding. Also be aware that the black dye in the stripes will leach out into fill/paint, so you'll have to repaint it several times over time. All in all, I can see why people recommend 1/4" drywall. – dandavis Feb 02 '23 at 05:16
  • Caulk is easy to sand, @dandavis? Doesn't it just gum up the sandpaper? – FreeMan Feb 02 '23 at 12:22
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    what is the result you are looking for? – Jasen Feb 02 '23 at 12:54
  • use painters caulk. alex plus is my fav. if you have a non-new house and don't know about it yet, I envy you, as you discover how much better it can make all your trim and surfaces; never seen a house that couldn't use a couple tubes, sometimes a dozen... – dandavis Feb 02 '23 at 18:14
  • Thanks all. I didn’t get notifications of all of these responses. I took pictures but do not know how to attach. It’s real knotty pine, not paneling. I am leaning towards drywall but I’m not sure we can get 8 foot sheets downstairs after some renovations. I know filling the spaces between the boards won’t make it a perfectly flat surface. I was just trying to lessen the impact of the joints and groves that come in the wood by each joint. I caulked a few imand it seemed to take forever. I though putty would go faster. – Budcms Feb 10 '23 at 00:36
  • To attach pictures, Edit the question , then click the icon at the top of the edit box with mountains. – keshlam Feb 15 '23 at 07:13

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I would strongly recommend covering this knotty pine with sheetrock (a.k.a. drywall) if you want to hide the outdated look of the wood. Overall you will spend less time and probably also material cost over trying to wood putty up all the groves and seams.

Once taped, sanded and primes the sheetrock wall will be far easier to paint up smooth and look loads better than what the patch job would have produced.

There will be a few things that you will have to deal with when installing the sheetrock. One is that electrical boxes at switches and receptacles will need to have box extensions installed to bring the front edges out even with the sheetrock surface. Another thing is that around doors it will require removing any casing and then adding extension jamb wood strips to widen the door jamb out to the extra thickness of the drywall. There may be similar things to deal with around windows but since this is in a basement the window situation is variable as to the types installed.

Michael Karas
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  • 1/4" drywall might be a better option here than the standard 1/2". The pine behind provides all the necessary strength, and it's possible that the OP might not even need to remove trim & casing (if they can do a neat job of butting the drywall up against it and caulking neatly). – brhans Feb 02 '23 at 13:22