bridging the gap

You may have noticed in the pre-move in photos that we never really painted the bottom of the baseboards in any of the rooms upstairs. There was a method to that madness I'll explain here.

Originally there would have been a piece of trim at the bottom of the baseboards that would have covered any gaps between the 8" high piece of trim and the wood flooring. With layers of carpet added at a later time, this piece was likely removed and discarded so when we refinished the floors, we had that gap. The original piece was likely a simple quarter round but we decided to go slightly more decorative. We installed this additional layer of trim throughout each of the four rooms upstairs.

Here you can see an example of the gap which was typically filled with pens or other cylindrical items our cats got a hold of


A little prep work


measure, cut


and install. As a side note, when doing molding, a nail gun is worth its weight in gold. We bought this one for the dining room project. 


All that's left is a little caulk over the nails and touch up paint. These trim pieces were bought primered but we pre-painted them Behr 'Decorator White' before installing which made the job much easier.

The office's previous 'after' photo


and with the new trim piece


We also added the trim to the living room which served both an aesthetic purpose as well a function one, hiding the wires for the surround sound including a very thick cord for the sub which we were able to move to behind a couch.

Close up of molding installed and wiring hid underneath


I owe an after photo but here's the before where you can see the wires for the surround sound along the ground and the sub (reddish wood box to the right of the TV cabinet) is out in the open.


This project wasn't terribly expensive, I think the molding we ended up using was less than $1 a foot.  It wasn't particularly hard but was time consuming and took a lot of measuring (and re-cutting).  It was definitely worth it for the outcome though as the rooms finally had a 'finished' look to them.

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