Michael Holigan: Well, now that we've finished the sheetrock last week, it's time to start adding the trim. Trim guy's already been here and done part of the house. We'll start down here at the floor with the base trim. This is the trim that protects our sheetrock from any shoes, kids toys or even vacuum cleaners. You always want to ask for a base trim that's at least three inches plus in height, that's from the floor to the top of the trim. A lot of builders try to get away with less than that because they can save a few pennies, but that's going to cause a lot of damage to your sheetrock when things come up against the wall, so always three inches plus.
On your door here, when you go around the edge with your trim, the width really depends on the height of the door. Now a normal door is six foot eight inches, so the trims going to be a little narrower than this. But here we have an eight foot door because we have a very high ceiling, so we went with a little wider trim. Remember, if you try to take that wide trim no a short door it's going to look a little gaudy, so watch the door height when you're trimming out the edges. On the door itself, most affordably priced homes are going to have hollow core doors, and this door here is hollow. What you want to watch for on these doors is to make sure that you get one with panels in it. This is called a six panel colonial style door, and if you count it up there's actually six panels on the door. What they do is one, make it look better, but two, they add strength, so there's less chance of it flexing, ending up warped or cracking. It just like a honeycomb on a aircraft, it does add strength to the door, so you want to make sure that you have that.
When you go up top to crown molding, that's just a decorative item. It does not really protect anything the way the doors or the other trim does. Crown molding is a personal choice, do you really want that in your house? A lot of people get it in the formal rooms, formal living, formal dining, maybe even in the master bedroom. It's just going to depend on you and your taste and what you really need.
Behind me here is a staircase, again, where your tastes are really going to be the deciding factor, plus your budget's going to be the deciding factor. These are spindles, which everyone's seen before, with a rail. Next to it here, part way across the staircase, we go to a half wall. Up at the top then we come back to spindles. The reason that's it's not all spindles is cost. This costs about $15 plus per running foot for spindles with a rail. So it's really going to be "Do you need then that bad, and is that the look that you're going for in your house".
Over at the window, we've gone ahead and put a window ledge there, plus a piece of trim below the windows. Again, that's going to be your choice, if you want to do something like that. A lot of builders will just try to go ahead and put a sheetrock return there and not trim it out. We like to go ahead and do it with trim in case we have any water leaks, plus it just looks a lot better.
Episode 014 1995 - 96 Season
| Standard Trim | Driveway Oil Spots | Custom Trim | Instant Concrete | Christmas Decorating | Leveling Thermostat | Credit: What is Acceptable? | LIST |
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