A baseboards' story: from sad to awesome!

When we first saw our home we knew that there were many things we would have to do to bring it into the 21st century. One of my most favorite updates to the house, so far, has been our baseboards. My DH came up with this idea all by himself! I am so proud to have a hubby that is super handy like that!

Our home, like many others, was equipped with thin, brown, base moulding - in poor shape, I might add. Part of the charm of a house is given by its architectural features. Moulding being one of the least obvious, yet very important of those features. So how could we give our home more depth of carachter? Off course we could have gone to a large home improvement center and purchased new trims...but that would have been very costly for an entire house! Being on a budget, big bucks were not in the picture. And this is when DH came up with the awesome idea to just literally add a 'base' to our existing moulding. It was a stroke of genius! I just couldn't believe how simple of an idea that was, yet how truly marvelous. I wondered why I did not think about it myself, the queen of thrift! LOL.

Off we went to the home improvement store looking for some trim that would meet our requirements. It needed to be super simple and to be the correct size. We found something that would work at Lowes. The strips were not super nice, DH spent several minutes picking out the straighter ones...and it was no easy task. But with $100 we had enough to modify all of our home's baseboards.

Then came the labour-intensive tedious task of removing the boards carefully, gluing all the trim to the original baseboards, nail it in place using a nailgun, and giving it two coats of primer and two coats of paint. * Insert official thanks here to my sister Y for helping me with some of the painting. *

I did not take enought photos for this to be a true step-by-step tutorial, but I did take a few shots of the 'before' and of the 'after'. So I hope you can get the jist of how this went down, to help you create your own super thick moulding. It is incredible what a difference thick, crisp, white moulding makes to the entire look of a home! 

This is what we started with. Thin, brown baseboards that had been stained a dark mahogany color.

This is a shot that shows the before, during and after. The top moulding is the original one, the middle is the baseboard with attached to it the strip of trim (just simple pine), the bottom one has already been primed twice and painted twice as well.

Here is a close up of what they look like. I still need to do paint touch ups on both the baseboards (to cover up the nail filling) and to the walls (to cover up the caulk) but they already look sooooo much better! Don't you think?

This is a cross section of the moulding. As you can see the added trim is lined up on the back of the baseboard to keep it flat against the wall, we left the excess in the front to make another interesting groove that blends with the rest of the trim once painted. DH spent countless hours caulking around top and bottom of ALL those baseboards. This ensures both energy efficiency but also, it keeps the bugs out! A big hurray for smart ideas and hard labour!

It's amazing how, once primed and painted, it is almost impossible to tell that there ever was any addition! It looks just as good as a thick baseboard you can get at the store. Off course they are not perfect, they still retain dings from wear and the little nail holes...but once they are installed, and surrounded by other pretty things, they look so good it's hard to even notice these small flaws. This is a shot of the hallway the day we closed on the house.

This is a shot of the same hallway after the refinished baseboards, doors and trims (and new floors and painted wall...off course!).

I know it may seem trivial for most, but trim size & color makes a whole lot of difference in the look and feel of a home! I just can't believe what a difference it made! :)