Custom Trim

Michael Holigan: Now we're going to take a look at some trim in about a half-million dollar home. Probably not going to want to do this throughout your whole house, but it will give you some ideas on rooms you could work on. We'll start right here with the corner. If you have high traffic corners, where you're going to be carrying a lot of things around it, or you have cords from vacuum cleaners, you might want to go ahead and put on a piece of trim. It will protect wallpaper or the sheetrock itself from getting torn up. If you do this on every corner it's sort of going to overpower the house, so don't do that, but in high traffic corners take a look at it.

Drop down here to the base mold and we've got a very rich looking base mold, but it's not that expensive to do. This is a piece of MBF, it's basically like a particle board. It's one piece and then we put a cap on top of it. So it looks very expensive but it's not. Height wise you can get whatever you want, four inches, six, eight, just about anything you need.

Coming across, they went ahead and cased out the door with a little heavier than we saw last time, we're over three inches here. And the reason for that is we have an eight foot door. If you have a door that's six foot eight, this would probably overpower the door, but on an eight foot door it looks okay.

Our door itself is a solid core door. It's not hollow like the ones we saw before, so it's a very nice door. As far as trim, you can do any style. If you want the six colonial like we were looking at before, that's okay. We've got a two piece here. It looks good because it blends with the rest of the room and that's important, that everything matches up.

We're going to come over here to the corner of our dining room and we've got a heavy fluted trim. Now a fluted trim is like anything else, it can come in several different sizes. We've got ten inches wide here. Now this would normally overpower most rooms, but here we've got a twelve foot ceiling. So that much height in the room, it's okay to go this wide. And it looks appropriate, and that's important, makes sure it looks appropriate with the size of the room that you have.

Right below it we come along with a cap and then we go on to basically a wainscoting style look, and it's actually a three piece. We've got our base in the background, then we put a piece on between it and then we put one piece of trim to pull it all together. And it goes okay with our fluted, it does not look gaudy, and that's something that's important. We just carried it around the rest of the room. And we've got a very good classic look. Now this is going to be expensive, with the three different pieces, actually four when you count the cap, but it's not something you want to do throughout the whole house. It may just be appropriate for your dining room, maybe a formal living room. So take a look at it and talk to your trim man and talk to your builder and see if it will fit inside your budget.

Up on top we've gone ahead with some crown molding. As you can see it is very heavy. We've probably got a five or six step crown mold, so it is expensive. Remember, every step around cost extra money because of the labor and material. But it looks appropriate, again, for this room, because we have a twelve foot ceiling and we can get away with that much crown molding, just like the ten inch fluted trim. Just be cautious that if you have a shorter ceiling you just cannot do that much trim. Plus it's going to be heavy on the budget, so you may not want to.

Now let's go take a look in the family room around the fireplace and see what we can do. Fireplaces are like the rest of the house, it depends on the look and how much money you want to spend. This is a great looking fireplace, but we've got a lot of steps to this one. We've got our flat piece here that we're working off of. Then we've got four steps of trim, plus a cap here on our mantle, so it's going to be very expensive. Another added cost is going to be that this is trim that can be stained. Stained trim costs more than painted trim, so this is going to be extra. After we come down just a little bit, we went ahead and ran our fluted legs, like we saw in the dining room, but this time we're much narrower, we're not going with one foot. And the reason is we're contained on height. We don't have a twelve foot ceiling in here. We're held down to just a few feet. One little thing that's different on this fluted trim, da-da, we go inside here and there's our key to turn the gas on and off. We've got gas logs going. It doesn't cost very much, it's just basically one hinge, so if you want this done you ought to ask your builder up front. It's much easier to do now than later. Next to impossible later.

When we come on around the edge, we've got a little bit of paneling to tie all the built-ins together, we don't want to just see white sheetrock around them. Built-ins, really the sky's the limit. How much money do you want to spend. It looks good. We've got pocket doors in here, that's going to save a lot of trouble on the doors from kids hanging off of them or running into them, not going to get torn up. If you're going to do built-in, go ahead and have a shelf put in for your VCR or cable box. You're going to need that anyway. Down below, they did not set this one up for stereos, it's just drawers you can go ahead and put tapes in, that type of thing. Again, it just depends on your budget. Above it, they made room for book shelves. If you get book shelves, don't have them as fixed book shelves. Go ahead and put the pieces in that you can adjust them and change them later according to heights of books or any decorations that you might add.

Again, on the high use corners, they've come in with some trim, so we're not going to tear it up. That's coming right out of the garage so this will be high use. Down below again, we've built it up to make it look like a more expensive trim with just a solid piece and we've gone ahead and capped it. It gives a rich look to the house, so it's a very good place to spend your money on trim. Coming around, we've got stained everywhere, but once we hit this bathroom we're going to a painted trim, so we need a transition point. Builders mess this up all the time. If you've got the stained look out in this room, keep it, and make your transition point right here where the door's going to close against it. I see people carry the paint this way or carry the stain into that way. Pick your point and go ahead and stop it.

Now remember, trim can make a major change to your whole house. It can also make a major change to your budget. So make sure both fit. Get with your designer and you builder before hand, talk about the trim needs that you're going to have and make sure that it fits your budget. It can really add to your house.

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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