DIY Network

Finishes: Trim Molding, Doors and Hardware From "Blueprint for Home Building" episode DBHB-208

In this week's episode host Jeff Wilson discusses the finishing touches in your new home.

It's down to the final "finishes" on your new house, and host Jeff Wilson will discuss the trim, paneling, painting, stair rails, wainscoting, switch covers and more in this episode.

In this first segment the trim molding, doors and hardware are tackled. The trim carpenters and the painters are the ones that seem to find a lot of mistakes or things that need to be adjusted to a new house.

Trim Carpentry

Although trim carpentry is a specialized skill, some homeowners opt to do the finish work themselves. This is an opportunity to stamp a signature on your home.

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• The trim work starts with the baseboard (figure A), which is installed around the bottom of a plastered or finished wall, and then the floor surface is installed. But many times the builder will have the trim carpenter install the baseboard prior to the finished floor.

• The trim carpenter will identify what room is getting which flooring material -- be carpeting, hardwood, ceramic, etc.

• Next the trim carpenter will determine how far up they should let the baseboard go, and they'll put in spacers (figure B). This way they can run the flooring underneath it -- and trim off with a cord underneath it.

• A base shoe is used to put the base molding on, and then the base shoe will follow the floor exactly.

Figure A

Figure B

	Figure C
	Figure D

Ceilings and Doors

• Many homeowners add crown molding to their ceilings (figure C). If it's put in correctly, it really pays off, looks great and makes the difference between a plain room and a room that has a little bit of you in it.

• You also need to consider how to finish the casing around the door and window. The most common way to finish the door and window is with a single strip of trim called facing (figure D).

• In the trim stage it isn't uncommon for a trim carpenter to have to cut a piece of trim two or three times to get the perfect fit. This is true because everything has to fit together just right. You don't want gaps or cracks between or behind the baseboards or crown molding. If there are a few gaps, hopefully the painters can cover them with caulking.

• Trim isn't the only thing that trim carpenters do. They also hang any cabinetry and all the doors in your home. When you're planning a door you have to figure out which way it will swing -- into our out of a room, for example.

  Most standard interior doors are pre-hung, and that means that both the door and the hinges are assembled with the hinges in the background. The trim carpenter uses a template to hang doors that are not pre-hung. This template allows them to get an exact match between the hinge placement on the door itself and the doorjamb.

	Figure E
	Figure F

Hardware

The overall look of your home hinges on your hardware choices. These deceptively small details can be found in every room.

• One of the things you want to think about when looking at a door is the hardware. Do you want a doorknob? Do you want a lever? Do you want a deadbolt?

• There are many different types of locks and doorknobs on the market -- security locks that involve a keyed entryway, a privacy lock that is usually used in a bathroom, passageway knobs and locks that just keep the door closed but not locked and there's the dummy doorknobs that mount on closet doors and cabinets and are only there as a pull.

• For added security, a deadbolt lock is mounted approximately 6" above the spring latch (figure E). The uniform building code is extremely specific about this because of fire safety. It's always necessary that the deadbolt have a thumb latch and can be activated from the inside of the building.

• Hardware for windows is a different story. Most windows come with hardware, and they have a standard selection, but if you know that you are going to upgrade your hardware, it's a good idea to get the cheapest hardware you can find because you're going to end up taking it off.

  It's important to plan this in advance so that the hardware that you're going to use is compatible with the windows you've chosen.

• Hardware for your cabinets (figure F) is another choice. The important thing is to consider your cabinet hardware choices at the time that you order the cabinets. If you wait until the cabinets are installed and you're on the final finishing operation, you can frequently run into problems involving time delay and unavailability and incompatibility.

In the next segment Wilson discusses stair and chair rails, wainscoting, paneling and more.

GUESTS :

John Holton
Senior Architect
Ibacos
Website: www.ibacos.com

Al Sain
Homeowner
7117 Fairway Dr.
Butler, PA 16001
Phone: 724-865-3056
E-mail: alsain@zbzoom.net

John Harmon
Licensed Contractor
Specialized Services
PO Box 1377
Sunset Beach, CA 90742-1377
Phone: 562-592-3831
E-mail: SpecEmail@aol.com

Pierre Abboud
Designer/Sales
We apologize no further information is available.

Skip Weahunt
Homeowner
E-mail: skip@ownerbuildercenter.com

Regina Zernay
CMTS, Inc.
Phone: 310-390-9558

Bob Miller
CMTS
E-mail: robertmillerpe@comcast.net

John Owens
Consultant
1265 South Camino Santiago Drive
Pueblo West, CO 81007

Monroe Makowsky
5357 Lemon Grove
#4
Lox Angeles, CA 90038
Phone: 323-469-2551

Tony Ramos
Phone: 818-762-9318
E-mail: luisantonioramos@hotmail.com