And so the trim work begins

Ghosts of the Old Baseboads

Spring 2009 - So when the electricians went through to rewire the first floor of the house, that involved removing many of the original baseboard moldings in the living room and dining room.  Well, "removing" is probably too gentle of a word.  It was more like "forceable ejection by hammer."  So that left us with old trim boards laying around and large areas of plaster missing where it had ripped off or crumbled away with the removal of the baseboards. 

Unfortunately, given that the outlets from the old electrical system were cut into the baseboards and the moldings were in rough shape, it didn't make sense for us to try to reuse them.  So we looked to find a replacement that would maintain the historic character of the house.  Fortunately, Lowes, in cooperation with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, carries a selection of historic reproduction trim pieces from a selection of famous historic homes throughout the United States.  We chose baseboard molding that was reproduced from the original trim from Belle Grove Plantation, located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virigina (GO GENERALS!).  This was not only the largest base molding in the product line, but it also matched our original stock the best. 

I had to rebuild and patch the missing areas of plaster.  Then it took John and I the course of almost an entire day to install the molding in just our living room.  Granted, we had lots of bizarre angles to match and none of the walls were square, but we got it done.  Thank goodness for painters caulk to fill in some of our joints that weren't exactly "perfect."

A little while later, Monica and I installed the base trim in the dining room.  We also decided to install a chair rail in the room, so we also chose the Belle Grove chair rail molding and installed that.  Luckily, the more trim I install, the better my joints get and the smaller our caulk patching budget gets!

As a testament to how our house projects tend to go, we still haven't finished the trim work in the living room and dining room well over a year after we started.  All that is left is to install quarter round shoe molding at the bottom of the base molding and it will be finished.  We bought all the quarter round we needed and we were all ready to prime and install it, but then 15 other projects interceded and the trim pieces are still laying in the basement.  Maybe some day I'll get to completely finish a project!