Hi everyone. A relative recently asked me to trim the upstairs of his home because his wife is having a baby soon and they can’t get a regular carpenter on such short notice. Most of my experiance is with furniture and cabinet building. The house is done in oak and there are 5 windows and 8 doors as well as 200′ of baseboard. all the windows need extension jambs and the doors have to be hung. the guy also wants stools and aprons on the windows trim but is undecide on whether he wants mitred colonial casing/base or butted square stock casing and square base with a cap. The question is this: which is faster? And how long should this take? I’ll be working alone before the carpet goes down. I realize there are a lot of variables including my skill but any help would be appreciated.
thanks,
Tac4
I am not a liberal.
Replies
I would match trim with whatever is on the first floor. I don't think either way is faster, you still have to measure, cut and nail it. How long will it take? Well...how fast and experienced are you? Too many variables to give you an answer on that.
Coming to you from beautiful Richmond, Va.
The first floor has stained pine colonial that they would like to replace to match the upstairs. At least that's the plan. I'm a litle nervous about cutting a bunch of miters accurately and efficiently.I am not a liberal.
>>> I'm a litle nervous about cutting a bunch of miters accurately and efficiently.
If you're not that confident about this, maybe that's NOT the way to go?
I would like to help but I am a little confused. You stated in your first post that you have experience building furniture and cabinets. I am not trying to be offensive, but how can you build furniture and cabinets yet be nervous about cutting miters accurately?Coming to you from beautiful Richmond, Va.
I'm a litle nervous about cutting a bunch of miters accurately and efficiently.
why?
Jeff Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
Working alone, that's a two- to three-day job, max (staining apart, of course).
Use the colonial stuff. First of all, it will match the first floor; the prime consideration. Secondly, a square base with a cap means you gotta go around the room twice: once for the base, another time for the cap. And a third time if he wants shoe.
Save youself some trouble and talk him into using plinthe blocks on the doors. Make them outta 5/4 stock and bevel the edges 3/32 x 45 degrees (except for the floor edge which you leave square). The plinthe block should be ½" taller than the base and 5/16" wider than the casing.
Cutting the mitres shouldn't bother you if you have a CMS; depending on the size of the base you might get away with a 10" but if you have 6" base you'll need a 12" blade to cut the stuff vertically against the fence (much the better way to cut those mitres).
Stain and rub all the stock beforehand. Then just use a rag or a small European cutting-in brush (the round pointy kind) to stain the end cuts before you nail each piece in place.
Rent a 16-ga. pneumatic finish nailer if you don't already own one. It will halve your installation time. And use a hot-glue gun to attach the mitred returns. If you try to nail them in place they'll just split to smithereens.
Minwax colour matched crayons to fill the nailholes, and you're outta there....
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
If you go with the mitered casings, can't you order prehung split jamb doors with the casing already applied? That would be the fastest by far - way far. My trim carp charges twice as much to case the doors as I can order them and twice again to do butt moldings with 2 piece pediments over the doors and windows. He also charges twice as much for 2 piece base verses 1 piece "speed base" which is made to look (somewhat) like a 1x? with a base cap molding applied. All these "times two" multipliers are simply based on time to install.
Around here, the upgraded version of the trim package you are talking about would be more for $500k+ homes. Is that appropriate for their price range of home? (BTW - I don't live in NY or Calif.)
Sounds like easily a few thousand dollars worth of work - don't let yourself get sucked into doing it as a favor or real cheap and taking your free time away from your family for the next month or more. Price the job fairly for both you and them.
Based on what you said about your experience I have little doubt that you could do this and do a good job, but you will be slow (or very slow). Re doing mitered vs butt joints it's not any harder either way, it just sucks when everything is all out of square - either way. You need a good power miter box though.
Re butted door/window casings - One of my favorite FHB articles was about 8 years back - 10 Rules of Finish Carpentry or something similar... One of the rules was "use reveals", and their example showed having side casings maybe 3/4" thick and the head casing 1" thick. The idea being don't try to make things come out flush... cause they won't.
In a furniture shop, you don't have to deal with warped stock or out of square installation. And I'm not good at those things. That's why this a project I'm doing in a pinch, not as a career. Thanks everyone for the advice. Matt, I'm going to look for a copy of that book. And thanks for the time estimate, Dinosaur. I'll add a day for my slow speed.Tac4I am not a liberal.
It's not a book - it's a magazine article. Taunton/Fine Hoome Building used to have selected articles available for free on their web site. As nearly as I can figure it, you have to buy them now.
If you buy the CD of articles from FHB you get 800 articles for free for 1 year.