Trim Installation

When the trim changes and the rest of the room stays

This is the job owners call about when the doors are fine, the floors are staying and the walls were just painted, but the casing and base look tired, mismatched or wrong for the house. A 1990s flip may have put thin clamshell casing into a 1910 four-square. Three rounds of repairs may have left three base profiles in one hallway. Or the trim is sound but painted so many times the detail is gone. We replace door casing, window casing, baseboard and shoe, and leave everything else alone.

Because the scope is narrow, the planning is about edges. New casing has to land correctly against existing door jambs, which are often not flush with the wall. New base has to meet stair skirts, fireplace hearths, kitchen toe kicks and built-ins that are not moving. We look at every one of those meetings during the walkthrough, so the written scope covers them instead of somebody discovering them on install day.

If you want doors hung, closets fitted out or the whole final layer of woodwork handled at once, that is finish carpentry, a broader job with its own page.

Pulling old trim without wrecking the plaster

In older Massachusetts homes the trim was often installed before the finish coat of plaster, or the plaster was troweled right up to it. Yanking that casing off with a flat bar can take chunks of wall with it and turn a trim job into a plaster repair. We score the paint line first, work each piece off gradually with a wide block behind the bar, and pull nails through the back when a piece is being saved for reuse or as a pattern.

Houses built before 1978 are likely to have lead paint on the trim itself. Removal follows lead-safe practice under the EPA renovation rule: plastic down, dust controlled where the cutting happens, careful cleanup, and a check of the work area before the room goes back into use. Families with small children should know that up front, and we raise it at the first visit rather than on the morning of demo.

Once the old trim is off, we deal with what was hiding behind it. Gaps at the drywall edge, broken plaster at the corners, rotted shims and old nails get patched or squared up, so the new pieces have something solid and flat to land on.

If a door needs more than an adjustment, we tell you and price it separately rather than folding it in without asking.

Re-trimming after new floors or replacement windows

Two other projects create most re-trim work. The first is new flooring. Hardwood laid over an old subfloor, or tile set on a mortar bed, raises the floor, and the old base either comes off and goes back higher or gets replaced. Shoe molding nailed to the old floor will not suit the new one. We set base after the flooring is down, so it sits right on the finished surface instead of floating above it.

The second is replacement windows. An insert window sits inside the old frame, which changes the reveal and often leaves the interior trim looking crude around the new sash. A full-frame replacement takes the old casing away entirely. Either way the inside needs extension jambs built out to the face of the plaster, then a new stool, apron and casing fitted to the new unit. That step decides whether a window job looks finished.

When the flooring or windows are done by someone else, we coordinate with them and measure after their work is complete, never before.

Choosing a casing and base profile that suits the house

Trim tells people when a house was built, so the right profile depends on the house. A Federal or Greek Revival home often carries wide flat casing with a back band. A Victorian may have fluted casing with corner blocks. A 1950s ranch had narrow, plain trim, and a modern renovation of one often goes to flat stock with square edges. We bring samples and hold them up on your actual walls, because a casing that looked right in a showroom can look heavy in a room with eight-foot ceilings.

Proportion carries the decision. Base height generally follows ceiling height, and casing width follows the size of the doors and windows. Where original trim in other rooms is staying, matching it is usually the right call even when a newer profile is tempting. A house with two trim styles reads as two renovations.

Material choices are simpler here than on larger woodwork jobs: primed poplar or finger-jointed pine for paint, MDF only in dry rooms, and solid hardwood where it will be stained.

Corners deserve a word. Inside corners on base are coped rather than mitered so they stay closed through the heating season, and outside corners are glued as well as nailed. Where casing meets base, the base should be a touch thinner than the casing so the casing reads as the stronger edge; when an existing jamb sits proud of the wall, we build the casing out or back-cut it until that relationship holds on every opening.

Trim work in a home you are living in

Most trim jobs happen with the family at home. We confirm the plan the day before, cover the floors, set up cutting outside or in the garage where possible, and keep doorways clear. Rooms are vacuumed at the end of each day and the house is livable every night.

We also check the doors while the casing is off. A door that rubs or will not latch often has a loose jamb, and fixing it with the casing removed takes a few minutes. Once new casing is nailed over a bad jamb, the same fix means pulling new trim. If a door needs more than an adjustment, we tell you and price it separately rather than folding it in without asking.

You will know what is going on. If a jamb is too far out to case without rework, or a plaster patch turns out bigger than expected, we tell you then and explain the options. When the trim is up, nail holes are filled and paint-grade joints caulked, and it is left ready for paint, or painted when that is in the scope. Steve walks the finished rooms before we call the job done.

See the rest of our structural work, or browse the gallery for rooms we have finished.