In case you didn’t notice when we painted the studio, we snuck some baseboards in on ya between the “during painting” and “after painting” photos. Well, here’s a run-down of how we pulled that off.
When we first bought Heardmont, Stephen and I decided we’d replace and paint the baseboards as we changed out the flooring and that we’d paint the original wood trim around all the windows and doors to match. Needless to say, we had never installed any kind of trim before this project, but it was pretty painless. Because we knew we’d be using any extra trim on other rooms in the house eventually, we decided buying in bulk was the way to go.
We picked up 8 – 16 foot long pieces of standard 3.5″ baseboards, some caulk, a miter box and saw, a coping saw, and some nails for our nail gun and then loaded up the Subaru.
First step was to measure the first wall we were trimming and then cut the trim to that same length.
Here’s the miter box in action. We decided a $10-15 miter box and saw was more cost effective than a $80+ miter saw for our one-room-at-a-time approach to trimming.
Each piece after the first one also had to be coped – that is, cut to fit up against the piece before it with the coping saw.
We installed all of the baseboards by nailing them in place with our pneumatic air gun (on permanent loan from a friend). We marked the studs ahead of time with blue painters tape so we knew we were nailing into the strongest parts of the wall.
As you can see we were no experts when it came to fitting those corners together, but that’s where caulk came in to save the day!
Now we promise there’s a reason we chose gray caulk over the typical white variety. It’s because Stephen picked a slightly unconventional color for the trim in this room. What color did he choose? Stick around for the answer and more progress pics!
