I refinished a floor in here, and in other parts of the house,
we had the floor replaced professionally
but I still don't have baseboards
so a few weeks ago I bought a big batch of Oak
and I turned that into baseboard molding
and now I'm ready to start installing it.
This is the molding that I made and it goes straight on like this.
But before I start doing that I'll show you how
it's done normally because what I'm doing is the hard way.
So normally the molding is quite thin,
maybe ten to twelve millimeters it goes against the wall
and then against the front of that there is a quarter round
that goes on it like this.
An advantage of this approach is it's very easy
to get things all tight and flush.
So if you look at this wall there is actually
quite a gap here, about half a centimeter,
because this wall curves a little bit
but the base boards, being so thin, are quite flexible
and nowadays these are often just made of MDF,
which is so soft you can cut it with a utility knife.
But even so, if I put this on here,
I can just squeeze it to follow the curvature of the wall,
they close that gap,
and then I still have sometimes a bit of gap in the boards,
so that's where the quarter round comes in,
and the quarter round is also very good at following
any sort of vertical variations in the floor
which this would follow because it's very stiff in this direction
And normally if you have any gaps remaining
in corners like this, you just fill those with caulking,
and then paint over everything and it looks okay.
But I made myself some really nice solid oak baseboard
and I've already put two coats of varnish on there
and I'm going to install that without any quarter-rounds
on the bottom. So making this all fit
is gonna be a bit more work. We had the walls repainted
professionally but unfortunately they didn't clean up this ridge
from where the old baseboards where and so first I have to
clean some of that up just by cutting it off.
Now that means a little bit of a mess
but in anticipation of that, I actually made the new baseboards
just a tiny bit taller so that it's all covered up.
Now this is a little bit thicker than the old trims,
so I have an overhang here, so I'll bevel that.
Now I got to bend it around this curve.
It will fit with enough force,
but I don't have anything to anchor it against,
So I'm going to have to make some Relief-Cuts in the back.
That makes this part a little bit bendier.
Next challenge is this corner and you can see
the wall curves inwards a little bit.
The thing about the wall corners in drywall’s like that,
is that they're never square
because when the two sheets of drywall come together,
you put some Gypsum on here, 'Mudding' this is called,
and then some tape on there and there's a Gypsum board
over that, so that the corner is always curved in a little bit
from both directions. So, to accommodate that
I'm gonna shave it down, on the end just a little bit,
And because I hollowed out the back of these baseboards,
I only have to shave it off to the top and bottom.
Now I've got a bit of a gap underneath the baseboard,
but although for the most part, I can just push it flush
against the floor, although that still leaves the gap here
but I noticed it's making contact here first, so I'm just
gonna shave that down with a hand-plane a little bit.
Now, before I nail this on,
I'm to bevel this out-side corner a bit,
just to reduce the toe-stepping hazard.
Now, it's best to put the majority the nails on the bottom
so that this baseboard shrinks a little bit in the winter,
with the drier air, it won't open as much of a gap.
But, to figure out where to put the nails on top,
I have to hit the studs,
using a magnet to find the screws
where the drywall was attached. And that tells me
there's a stud right about here.
Now you can see I didn't actually Midas this corner.
What I'm gonna do instead is to cut the end of that
so it meets that profile and closes the gap.
This is called 'Coping' and by that I mean
the technical term. I'm just gonna check
what angle this falls on here.
Now, this fits on pretty good except I have a gap
under it here, it looks like the floor has got
a bit of a high spot right here.
I switched to using a table saw for making the relief-cuts
because the curvature of the blade allows me to haul it out
more effectively.
Man, doing all these baseboards was a crazy amount of work
because most of these pieces,
I had to do some fitting and trimming to make them fit
with the crooked walls.
And with all the tools I brought to work to work on these,
miter saw, bandsaw, table saw,
hand tools, it's like to have a temporary workshop in the garage
for the moment. If I was doing it again
I don't know what I'd do because I really like how these came out
but they're a crazy amount of work.
And, maybe make them thinner, but then I would require
a quarter-round on the bottom and also having them
varnished like that means I can't really fill them
with caulking, which would make things so much easier.
One thing is for sure though, I'd love the door trim
to be like that as well, because that really makes things pop.
I was sure glad I hollowed out the back of it
because that made it so much easier to shave it down
a little bit to fit around curved walls.
And one change I'd make, for sure next time,
is to add a relief-cut on the bottom like this
because that way it's easier to shave off that little bit