Casing and Base Molding Decisions

Heading back up to the bed/bath project, one of the major decisions we had to make when redoing these rooms was the trim. This was particularly important because it would be what we would replace the entire house with one day, so no pressure!  I needed to pick the base molding, (somewhat easy), as well as the casing molding, (so much more difficult than I thought).

The base was somewhat easy because we knew we wanted to beef up the 3 1/2" dark-stained base the house currently had. We came from a charming 1927 house with most of it's original trim and loved the large base molding.


I didn't want to copy this exact style and found a similar style that I thought was more appropriate for our new home's style and age.  Instead of the 7 1/4" height, I went with 5 1/4".  Still substantial (and much better than the builder basic), but the shorter style felt more appropriate for this 1970's home.  The cheapest I found locally was from Lumber Liquidators.

We actually bought a piece similar to the old style for different project and you can see the difference between the two.


We're working smarter, not harder, on these remodels and bought everything pre-primed.  It's saving me tons of time and that's a hot commodity over here!

For the window and door casings, I struggled for awhile on the style.  I couldn't find a lot of inspiration out there, mostly because the rooms I looked at were styled rooms and the trim details usually gets washed out in all the pictures.  It wasn't until I noticed the casings in Young House Love's Instagram progress photos of their duplex that I found the style that I wanted.  It's a simple Craftsman style casing, without the top casing cap (illustrated below).  I loved the simplicity, and it worked well with the base molding.

 Source unknown

Since we started in a room that had two large door openings (the sliding exterior door and the 4 bi-fold-door closet) Mike needed to come up with a method to create the profile while using readily available pre-primed pieces.  That's the reason we bought the 7 1/4" base shown above, it came in 12' pieces which he needed.  He ripped that down and used it for the top casing.  We still have to sand and paint everything, but here's where we're at right now:


We also are updating all the doors.  We went with a three-panel shaker style solid core for the doors and think they'll not only update the style of the house, but provide some necessary sound proofing as well.  We haven't had many instances of brothers waking each other up with crying, but I'm not risking it!

Once every things painted, we'll be adding matte black hardware.  I'm excited to try something different.  Even though I loved the black doors in our old house, this house needs more lightening up, and I think white doors and trim will make everything look completely different and updated.     

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