Handyman Articles- Interior Trim Adds Spice to Any Room
•You have rearranged your living room. You like the furniture layout. You painted the room, updated the window coverings but something is still missing. You want to give the room more visual depth without more furniture, as you like the open feeling.
Interior trim might be the solution you are looking for. The most common types of trim are crown molding and chair rails but there are many more choices to consider. This article provides a glimpse into the ways you can enhance your home's interior skin. You may find the solution you are searching for or you might need to do further research. Some of the best books on trim include:
1001 Ideas for Trimwork by Wayne Kalyn, Creative Homeowner (ISBN 1-58011-260-9)
Trim Idea Book, Taunton Press (ISBN 1-56158-710-9)
Once you find the look you want, you must decide how involved you want to get in the installation. First decide if you want to install the trim yourself, as that will help you focus your selection of materials on what you can work with successfully. For most do-it-yourself homeowners, you should stick to trim that will be painted (it is hard to hide mistakes when using stain) and only straight cuts using some of the new trims that provide coordinating inside/outside corners.
BASEBOARD Trim at the Floor
Baseboards are one of the defining features of a house providing what Tom Silva of This Old House calls the "visual anchor." In old houses, the front room where guests were entertained had the most elegant baseboards.
Today it is common to use the same baseboard throughout the house. As houses became more affordable, cost pressures drove the design of simple, one-piece baseboard trim. It is not difficult to replace your existing baseboard. You want the new molding to be at least as tall as the old to avoid having to paint your walls.
More elegant baseboards are made up of 3 individual pieces at least 6 inches high and 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick. These pieces include a flat plank, a decorative cap molding on top of the plank and a rounded shoe molding at the base to cover gaps along the floor. My Handyman often recommends adding quarter-round molding to cover cracking grout where a tile edge is exposed versus hidden under the baseboard trim.
CASING Surrounding Doors and Windows
The trim surrounding doors and windows is called casing. It plays an important role hiding the gaps between the wall material (typically sheetrock) and the jambs of the doors and windows.
Casing can be tapered (outside edge heavier than inside edge that contacts the door or window jamb) or square (same thickness on both sides). Square casings can be combined with decorative corner blocks (top corners) and/or plinth blocks (bottom corners) to add visual weight to the opening.
Casings can also be built up with additional molding to create more formal treatment such as the columns illustrated here.
Decorative WALL Trim
There
are many design options for adding trim to your walls. Many of them are
purely decorative while several offer some degree of function too. It
is wise to design the entire wall, if not the entire room, before
installing the selected treatment so that everything is well
coordinated when done.
Wall treatments include:
Chair rails
- originally created to prevent chairs from damaging walls, provide a
horizontal design element that unifies a room. Picture or plate rails
are similar in design.
Wainscoting
- covers a variety of materials and moldings used to decorate the lower
portion of the wall. Paneling or beadboard is popular below a chair
rail. Raised panels or framing can be used to create different effects.
Shelving - provides homeowners with the opportunity to display pieces that reflect their lives and experiences, i.e. a collection of glassware of children's trophies.
Chair Rail
Wainscoting
Shelving
CROWN MOLDING and Ceiling Treatments The ceiling is the largest surface in any room making it ideal for trim detail. Crown or cornice molding is used frequently to create give an elegant look. There are many choices for enhancing your ceiling. Like door/window casings, these designs often solved construction problems.
Crown/Cornice Molding - provides a decorative transition between the walls and the ceiling, and installed above windows. Cornices can be 1 piece or built up from multiple pieces of trim and fit the size of the room.
Ceiling Medallions - are often found at the center of a room, frequently with a light fixture below. Often associated with the Victorian era, size and detail reflected the importance of the room and status of the homeowner.
Decorative Beams - can hide support beams, plumbing or electrical materials. More often they are built for decorative purposes and finished with molding that hides any gaps.
Where you might think trimwork would make small rooms feel even smaller, the reverse is true. The phenomena of "geometric illusions" often makes a room appear larger and wider. Long horizontal lines create the impression that a room is longer or wider while vertical lines can make a low ceiling appear higher than it actually is. My Handyman has installed crown molding in bathrooms to provide visual appeal in place of artwork that might be damaged from moisture.
Additional Opportunities for Trimwork
Entryways and stairways are popular places to apply decorative trim with the most common style wainscoting. Fireplaces also offer great opportunities to enhance the atmosphere of a room by adding some trim. Trim can create a built-in look when installing a new fireplace (gas insert) as My Handyman did here (see below right) for a 1940s home in Portsmouth, NH.
Baseboards are one of the defining features of a house providing what Tom Silva of This Old House calls the "visual anchor." In old houses, the front room where guests were entertained had the most elegant baseboards.
