Hi! I’m Mark Donovan from HomeAdditionPlus.com, and today I’m going to show show you how to install a baseboard trim. So the first place I’m going to start is in this corner, we’ll attach a straight section of baseboard trim and have a smaller section that goes on this wall where we have a caulk edge that will feed into this strip of base board.
So the first thing I did is I painted the 3-1/2-inch baseboard trim with a semi gloss finish that’s the same color paint as the paint on the wall itself. I then square cut each end of the board to the appropriate length and I’ve also made some marks on the floor with some masking tape where the studs are. We’ll attach this to the wall; we’re going to make sure that we nail this in to the wall studs, if I nail this into just a dry wall it won’t hold. To fasten the base board trim to the wall, I’m using a finishing nail gun with 16 inch 2-½ nails. I find this work better, they leave a small hole, easier to fill and it really does a neater job.
And now that the nail is in we can simply remove the masking tape and we’re ready to move on to the next piece. So for this next piece I’m going to put in, we need to caulk this edge so that it slides up and over against this piece of baseboard we just put in. We’ll use a coping saw to make that cut. And then after that, we just cut out the back end to the light to butt up against our heating element. So to make the coping cut I have a small section material, and I lay it on the back side of the material that I want to cut. Simulating how the other board will slide into it, I’m going take a pencil and trace it.
Now that I’ve made the mark, we’ll then cut this out with the coping saw. And then this piece will slide up against and up and over the existing wall piece. So again using my coping saw, I’m cutting along the line I traced out on the sectional material. Put the straight portion, I just used a standard hand mitre saw and I cut along the straight line trying to back cut such as the 4 edge and the outside edge is actually sticking slowly farther than the back edge this ensures a tighter seam with the corner.
Now that we seamed with the edge cut or caulk we’ll lightly sand it. So with the caulk edge cut we’ll just lightly sand, smooth out the edges and then we’ll be ready to nail it up. And that’s it, we’ll put a little bit of wood filler in here caulk along the top and then lightly paint over and we’ll be all set. So we’re continuing to make our way around the room installing the baseboard trim.
Again, basically it’s a square edge, flat piece on both sides followed by a coping edge on the butting up edge. And we just work our way around the room. One little trick I’ll show in terms of wires. We run some speaker wire and made a little bit of a dimple, if you will, inside the base of the trim just using a drill bit and now my wire can sit neatly underneath that and I can fit into the stereo system. You may want to think about that, and this will butt up on the other, and we’re just about done. After this we’ll again fill the nail holes, caulk along the top of the seam and then touch up paint.
And all you have to do now is put another section here with a scarf joint, this is a 450-angle cut, we’ll put another one with the opposite 450-angle to make a nice clean scarf joint. And what we’re doing here is adding a latex silicon caulk to the top of the base board trim to make a nice seal with the main wall. We’ll put down a slight ink and then we go back to wipe it off with a damp rag. Now we’re filling in the nail holes with a little spackle and a putty knife and then we’ll plainly go over with a damp cloth after they dry to smooth it all down. So, that’s it. All we’re doing here now is touching up the base board trim with a little bit of a paint that we applied on the first coat and this projects done. If you have any other home improvement questions, visit us at HomeAdditionPlus.com today.
