Ever since having our floors refinished, I’ve been slowly but surely going back and touching up, refinishing, repainting or replacing most of the baseboard molding throughout the house.
This whole project was probably something we could’ve done in a weekend, but somehow, here we are 6 months later, its winter and I’ve just finished replacing the molding in the living room.
We started the project in our dining room and our hallway. This is the room that has what looks like the newest trim. It seems to be a pretty decent quality wood in good shape, so we refinished it.
The pieces were stained a dark color, so we sanded, primed and painted them white to match the rest of our trim. We added quarter round, and came out with what I think is a pretty clean look.
The method of installing molding to the wall, like most things, isn’t without debate. The route we chose is especially contentious. For the new install in the living room, we chose pre-painted white MDF. Medium Density Fiberboard is much cheaper than regular wood, and in our case makes the risk worth it. The stuff chips easily, and in my experience doesn’t take well to being nailed to the wall. See the photo below for an example of that issue.
Instead or regular nails we used Liquid Nails adhesive to adhere the board to the bottom of the drywall.
Overall, with the quarter round, the final product looks better than what we began with, so I don’t mind the risky cost savings. I would have kept what was already there, since it was in decent shape, but it didn’t really lend itself to quarter round very well. Take a look at this “before” photo for proof.
And here’s the after, aka the finished product.
The gap between the wall and floor wasn’t too bad in most places, probably less than a quarter inch, but in other places the floor boards seemed to end leaving an inch or so. Quarter round was a necessity.
This sort of project seems to be a never ending one for us. Even in the photo of the “finished product” I can still see some things that I’d like to fix. The trim around the door frames in the living room doesn’t really match the base molding anymore. If we don’t replace it, it at least needs a fresh coat of paint to match the new molding. Once we get into that. I’m sure we’ll notice all of the other spots in the house where trim and molding needs a touch up. I guess its just one of those things that we’ll always be working on.
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