We’re all creatives aren’t we? How many of us are super neat, tidy and organised? I’m certainly not! The same can be said of my creative process, sometimes things get broken or are just not quite right – eggs, omelettes and all that. As luck (or design) would have it, mouldings, being versatile, innovative decorative mouldings, are very easy to put right again.

So let’s run through a few ways of salvaging your projects when you’ve made a mistake with bendable woods.

Removing Appliques

Ok, picture the scene, you’re pushing on with an upcycled furniture project, everything’s going swimmingly – perhaps a little too swimmingly? Then, blam, you’ve stuck your moulding down in the wrong place and it’s off centre! What a disaster, right? Well, not with these particular bendable wood mouldings.

It sounds a little counterintuitive, once mouldings has been properly adhered to a surface it really is stuck there, it won’t fall off. It is, however, possible to remove it on purpose, see I told you…innovative!

It’s best to do this sooner rather than later, but it’s even possible to remove a WoodUbend decorative moulding after it’s been stuck down for quite some time. Coincidentally, if you’re interested in how to properly adhere your moulding, then we have really easy to follow, informative video.

As so often is the case with these bendable wood mouldings, heat is your first port of call. Heat the decorative moulding up really well, it needs to be very pliable. Once it’s sufficiently warmed you’ll need something flexible yet sturdy to work under the now warm applique – a scraper or palette knife is perfect.

Keep heating the WoodUbend and pry the moulding off from the surface in small sections, be careful yet firm. Then it’s just a case of bit by bit until the decorative moulding comes off.

It’s worth noting that you may take a little of the paint along with the WoodUbend, especially if it has been in place for some time. So, make sure that you either have some touch-up paint or something to put over any slight marks that may have been made.

We’re not done yet though, the WoodUbend decorative moulding which has been removed is ready to go again. Once removed, there’s nothing stopping you reheating and reapplying to your craft, interior design or upcycled furniture project.

Repairing a snapped decorative moulding

In their cool state, WoodUbend mouldings have all the properties of wood, they can be sanded, stained, drilled, waxed, painted…and snapped (luckily due to our new, robust packing they will rarely arrive broken). So, what do we do if your brand new, intricately designed wood onlay is snapped? Well…grab your heat source, some wood glue and pull on your Gray’s Anatomy scrub cap, it’s surgery time.

Except, it isn’t.

Repairing a snapped WoodUbend decorative moulding really could not be easier, and certainly doesn’t take years of training – and a lot of drama along the way.

Once again, we start with heat, both sides of the break need to be warmed up with a heat gun or hair dryer until it’s sufficiently flexible. It should feel like plasticine. Next up, you need to apply a good quality wood glue to both sides of the break, we like to recommend Titebond, but any good quality wood glue will suffice. Steer away from PVA and Super Glue, they don’t have the flexibility required and your repair will be too brittle.

Press the two ends into each other and let the wood glue go to work, if possible heat the joint whilst keeping the pressure on. Don’t over force it, yes it’s bendable wood, but you don’t want to create even more breaks on the cool parts of your decorative moulding.

Once you’re happy that your moulding is fused together, wipe the excess glue off using a wet paintbrush or baby wipe and leave to dry for a while on a flat surface. Twenty four hours is best. When you come back to your repaired decorative moulding, you may need to do a little touch up.

Again, this is really simple, grab some medium grit sandpaper and just sand around the joint that you have created, don’t go overboard with this, but just blend the joint into the rest of your WoodUbend moulding.

Now you can paint right over your joint!

Just like that, your quick, simple and easy broken moulding repair will be invisible. Even better than that, the point at which you repaired it will be even stronger than it was before, so you don’t have to worry about it breaking in the future.

How to repair a moulding when some of it is missing

As we’ve discussed previously, when cool the WoodUbend decorative mouldings are like wood, they’re brittle. So, if you dropped one from a fair height, there’s a chance that a few bits might break off. Just like the previous situation with the snapped moulding, there’s no reason to despair, there’s another very quick, simple and effective fix.

This time around you’re going to have to enlist the help of a filler, something like Dixie Mud is perfect. The aim of the game here is to effectively rebuild part of your decorative moulding with the filler. Now, this may sound a little difficult and precise, but it’s really not – sandpaper and paint hide a whole litany of sins.

The best part about this quick fix is that you can do this with the moulding in situ. If you’re missing a part of your WoodUbend, glue it down where you have planned to and incorporate your repair as part of the design – there’s very little downtime too, win-win!

It really is as simple as it sounds: recreate a rough design of the section you are missing with the filler and leave it to dry. It is always better to leave to dry naturally, but you can force dry it with a heat gun or hair dryer.

Once dry, simply sand your filler down to match the existing pattern of the WoodUbend, you could even go a little off-piste and get creative with a design of your own. When you’ve finished, paint as you normally would and nobody will ever know.

This technique is equally effective if you find that there is a small gap between the edge of your decorative moulding and your substrate, simply fill with Dixie Mud, sand back and hey presto, no gap!

There you have it, three quick easy repairs to salvage your crafting or upcycled furniture projects when your WoodUbending hasn’t quite gone to plan.