When we
bought our house, we didn't like the trim and molding. Actually
there's a lot of things we didn't like, but removing the existing
trim and molding was probably the most destructive. It was big and
very plain.
It's been a little over a year since then and
we're finally getting around to putting up new. First task was
setting up shop. In the (attached) garage I set up Bill's saw on
this cabinet to make a cutting table of
sorts.
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First room to get done was
the
kitchen
. The cabinets
were never finished out with trim, so we got the imitation oak foam
stuff and trimmed out the cabinets as practice for the rest of the
house. This is the cabinet over the refrigerator. Turns out, the
kitchen was a lot harder then I expected for practice. The cabinet
faces were wider then the sides, thus creating a slight overhang or
lip around the corners. Because of this, I had to rip all the face trim to fit the sides
that went over the
lips.
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Not so easy, but
looked really sharp when
completed.
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Another before
example.
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Looks so much nicer.
It's amazing the difference a little detail can make.
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A little manual
work coping a joint.
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I
had some concerns about this corner. I wasn't sure if I should notch
over the countertop splash gaurd or put a return in the trim
before it got to the splash gaurd. As you can see I decided to
notch over the splash gaurd and cope the bottom piece over the
notched verticle Turned out pretty nice despite my concerns.
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When I was nearly done the kitchen, or just got
bored of it, we went out and bought a bunch of molding (case, base,
& shoe) to do the office. We ended up at Lowes because they had
the best selection. Our first choice was this cool victorian profile
fiber-board stuff. It was cheap, primed and looked pretty cool. As I
was loading it into the cart, I noticed it wasn't very durable. It
was nicking and denting quite easily, so we decided on using wood.
In the back, they had this fancy-shmancy stuff with the profiles and
pieces Jen liked, so we loaded up with that. $300 later, we were
on our way to having trim in the office.
The fancy-shmancy
wasn't primed, so we set it up downstairs and Jen went to priming
it.
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The first task in the office was the door
casing. We had removed everything but the jam. Preparing this one
made me think we should have removed it too. Layers of paint, cracks
and warpness made it not so nice.
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Tadah! Not bad for my first door casing. Ok,
there's a lot of things I could have done better, but I was quite
happy with it being my first. It's actually a two-part casing
(nothing's easy with Jen). There's a smaller inner casing surrounded
by a larger - gives it a robust and classy look. I didn't get the
inner and outer to meet up as well as I would have liked, but I
think the gap is small enough for the paint to fill in. I
figure a gap that
small isn't too bad.
The outer pieces are
designed specifically for door casings, so they only come in seven
foot lengths. By running a smaller inner set within the larger
casing, we ended up extending the required length of the outer by
1/2 inch. A simple little splice at the bottom, filled in the gap.
Like everything else, the first one was a little ugly, but the
second (after some practice) is hardly noticable. I'm sure by the
time I do all twenty door faces, I'll be a pro.
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With
the door casing up, I could throw on the base modling, though this
is only 90% of the base. Like the casing, Jen wanted a more classy
(complicated) look and put together another two piece design. The
cap for the base is pretty small, but has to wait till it's all
on before I can go back and install it. The coolest thing about
the base molding was the auto-leveling laser level we bought. You
set it up in the middle of the room, it draws red lines on your
walls, locate the lowest point, compensate for the height of the
molding, then start nailing. Voila! No chalk lines, pencil marks or
remeasuring. Once you get one piece up, use it to guage the level for the
other walls (assuming the first piece was on the wall with the
lowest
point).
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