Repair & Improve

The Finishing Touch

Ideas and innovations from America’s popular home improvement radio team

Tom Kraeutler & Leslie Segrete

From House Beautiful Home Remodeling & Decorating

Tom Kraeutler and Leslie Segrete host The Money Pit, a nationally syndicated radio show that fields hundred of calls each week from listeners seeking advice on everything from soup to nuts and floor boards to shingles.  In this issue, Tom & Leslie tackle your questions about how to punctuate your project with picture perfect trim.

Q: We just bought our first house and to save money had to opt for a newly built home when we really had our hearts set one that was more historic and traditional.   How do we add some historical characteristics to our plain white box?

A:  Buying a home that was built ages ago has its pluses and minuses.  Older homes maintain the personality and charm of the era in which they were crafted.  But newer homes offer far better energy efficiency, an important cost-saving consideration today more than ever.  Fortunately, with a bit of trim work, you can have it both ways.

Installing crown molding around your ceiling is a great place to start and offers you the biggest bang for your buck. It can range in price from under $1 a linear foot to hundreds of dollars per foot depending on how ornate the molding is and the type of wood used.

Chair rail molding is probably the easiest to install and is great for a kitchen, home office or den.  It adds a nice accent and gives you the opportunity to choose a darker paint for the lower section of the wall and a brighter shade for the top, giving the room a much larger feeling.

Molding is available several ways, with varying prices. 

• Clear – This is the most expensive as it has no visible joints and is designed to be stained and finished with a clear polyurethane or varnish.
• Finger-joint – This wood trim is less expensive than clear and is designed to be painted.  It is made up of several smaller piece of molding attached together with a wood joint.
• Primed – Typically this is finger-joint wood trim that is already primed.  It’s very handy to start with this as it is easier then having to prime it yourself.
• Synthetic – Various types of synthetic molding is available.  It could be urethane, PVC or even a composite mixture of wood and is available to be painted, stained or left in its manufactured color.  Unlike wood, synthetic will have no defects to cause it to twist or turn. 

It’s usually best to attaching everything with an air compressor and brad nailer.  These tools make the job simple and will have you tackling projects like a pro.  There is a great new compressor available from Tom Boy Tools (see www.tomboytools.com). Its compact one-gallon size makes it very manageable but it still packs a real punch when you need it.
 
Just because your house is from a more modern time doesn’t mean that you cannot make it look wise beyond its years. 

Q:  We have a beautiful dinning room but the walls are boring and our art work and photos look pretty lonely. Is there any way to give the room some extra pizzazz without doing a paint treatment or wall covering? 

A:  Walls are an amazing blank canvas for your inner designer to create a showcase for the decorative items you already have in your home.  While wallpaper and painting treatments are great options, you can also use molding to create an equally interesting effect.

One idea is to showcase your art and photos on your walls by creating a sectioned area to hang these treasures within a molding detail.  To start, deciding which of your artwork or photographs would look nice showcased together.  Once you have grouped these items, lay them out on the floor to determine a plan for how they might look good on your walls.  Using the floor as your temporary canvas, arrange low-profile moldings to frame these groups together.  For example, a series of rectangles of two-feet wide by four-feet tall starting at about two and a half feet up from the floor can make a great focal feature in your room and allows for plenty of space to highlight your décor.

Once you have nailed-down your design, paint the molding detail the same color as the trim in your room for a traditional look or be adventurous and choose a color that complements your wall color or brings out the color of your eyes.

Q:  We have a very small bathroom that has no character at all.  How we give that room the decorative makeover it needs?

A:  Bathrooms can be challenging spaces to work in but by adding wainscoting, you can make the room really stand out no matter how big or small the space is.  Traditionally wainscoting is about three feet tall and mounted along the bottom of the wall.  The easiest way to add wainscoting is to by “bead board,” Bead board gives the illusion of having been made with many different small pieces of lumber, but is in reality a sheet-good that can be cut to fit any size space. 

Glossy white looks great on bead board for a bathroom and will stand up to the moisture that space can dole out.   AZEK, a manufacturer of cellular PVC trim products, also makes bead board that won’t rot and never needs painting.  See www.azek.com.  To create a finished edge along the top portion of the bead board use a decorative trim molding or combine two or more moldings to create a narrow ledge.  For the base of the wall, use a baseboard a quarter rounds molding to give a finished look. 

You can also enhance a bathtub with a combination of urethane window panels and molding. Because urethane does not absorb water, the panels and trim are ideal for upgrading a master bath area.  There is a huge selection of urethane moldings available from Fypon.  For more information, go to www.fypon.com.

Q:  My kitchen isn’t that big and my one window is a precious source of natural light.  Can you suggest any window coverings that provide style but don’t block out the light?

A:  Actually, no.  Because in your case, we’d recommend you “go naked.”  Well, not you exactly – but your kitchen window!  A naked window is one of the newest decorating trends and refers to the concept of using either no, or minimal window coverings such as a valance at the top.  Finish off the project by trimming out the windows with plinth blocks at the upper corners and decorative trim.  By leaving the window coverings off, you’ll deliver maximum light to the kitchen space and act as a visual gateway to the outdoors. 

Q:  I grew up in a home in Southern Georgia with beautiful columns on my front porch.   Somehow I can’t get those out of my head and was wondering if you had any ideas how I could use columns in my much more modern metro bi-level.

A.  Absolutely.  Technology comes to the rescue once again with many manufacturers offering a huge selection of both columns and vertical pilasters in both urethane and cellular PVC.  There are multiple installation options as well.  On a bi-level you can use pilasters on opposite sides of the doorway to give height, warmth and a bit of southern elegance to your entryway.  Inside you can use also half columns or pilasters to frame in an archway, or add a pediment to the top of the opening.

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