Choosing and Installing our Custom Moulding and Trim

Take a look at our custom moulding, millwork and trim in our new home and learn what moulding we used and how we installed it.

Our new pole barn home may be pretty simple by design, but I plan on making it really special with the interior details – starting with the moulding and trim. 

WATCH THIS POST

See the moulding installation in action!

WHY INSTALL CUSTOM MOULDING?

It’s a well known fact that custom millwork can add value to your home, and can be a key factor in helping your home stand out among all the other cookie cutter homes thrown together by contractors.

I’d like to share what we’ve used so far for our door and window casings, baseboards and wall trim, to hopefully give you some ideas and a place to start if you are building or remodeling your own home.

The only rooms we have mostly finished in our new home is the kitchen, laundry room, master bathroom and almost our living room. But because our windows and doors were still exposed to the internal structure – which was letting in bugs and drafts – we decided to go throughout the house and ensure we had casings on the windows and doors.  This meant I had to decide now what I wanted to use throughout the house in terms of moulding and millwork.

You’ll be able to see more clearly in our kitchen how I plan to make the moulding really stand out in the rooms.  I’ve painted the baseboard a darker contrasting color than the creamy white walls, and we’ve layered and stacked the trim pieces fairly high to make them very noticeable.

We’ve used mostly the same trim pieces to frame in our doors and windows, to create a casing that is detailed, cohesive, and highly noticeable because we’ve painted them (or will paint them) to stand out against the white walls.

To make our trim choices, we pretty much stood in the trim aisle for a long time and played around until we felt we had selected pieces that would stack nicely together.  However, if you are after this same look, I hope by sharing what products we’ve selected and stacked, this will allow you with a little more time to do something other than hang out at Home Depot for your date night.

BASEBOARDS

First, let’s go over the baseboard trim.  We’ve left the bedrooms without baseboards, as we may want to switch things around once we go to design each wall and room. But for the main areas of the home, which include the adjoining living room, kitchen and hallway, we’ve done it the same.

Here is a look at the pieces that were stacked for the baseboards.

First, Kevin nailed in a 1 x 6 piece of MDF.

Second, he stacked on top of the MDF a 3 1/4 inch piece of baseboard trim.

Finally, at the bottom he nailed in a piece of 1 3/8 inch STOP trim.

CASINGS

Let’s take a look at the window and door casings, which are mostly the same pieces and process. 

First – he started with the bottom inside casing, which is a piece of 1 x 8  MDF, notched out to extend past the window.

Second – he installed the remainder of the inside window casing pieces on the sides and top with a 1 x 6 MDF board.

Third – To wrap the outside of the window, he used a piece of 3 5/8 door and window casing, which is made out of primed fiberboard.

Fourth – Next to that he layered a piece of 1 ¼ x ½ inch flat trim MDF.

Fifth – To build up the top, he used a 1 ¼ inch trim stop, made out of pine, and installed it horizontally and extending past the window trim.

Sixth – After that is a tall piece of 1 x 8 MDF which really gives the moulding some nice height.

Seventh – The window is topped with crown moulding

Eighth – Finally, at the bottom of the windows is another piece of 3 inch MDF.

WALL TRIM

Let’s talk about the small piece of wood trim that we placed a few feet down from the ceiling.  Our ceilings are all 12 feet tall, and I wanted to break up that height visually.  I talked more about the paint choices in another post, but you can probably see underneath the trim is a slightly warmer white than the ceiling and above the trim.

That little trim piece up there serves as a wonderful break between the two and we simply used a small piece of 1 ¼ inch hardwood chair rail.

TOP OF CABINETS

Other moulding and trim that we’ve used so far in this home, is on the top of the wall of cabinets in the kitchen, which is simply a piece of 4 ½ inch Crown Moulding.

We also built this shelf above the range area with a mixture of moulding and corbels.

TOOLS and SUPPLIES

A quick word on the tools and materials we used to install millwork. 

Kevin used both a Ryobi brad nailer with 1 inch nails for the smaller more intricate boards, and a Ryobi Finish nailer with 2 ¼ inch nails for the thicker pieces.

He also used a Ryobi belt and disc sander to smooth out any sharp edges and corners before installing.

To get a nice smooth finish, we use hole filler, sandpaper and paintable caulk.

I can’t wait to finish up all the millwork in our home and getting it looking good!  I hope you enjoyed seeing how our it is coming together. 

If you need more instruction on this, my blog post has some great graphics to help you understand what you need to shop for and the order to put it together. 

Let me know if you have any questions regarding the millwork and moulding we’ve done in our home.  Thank you for reading and be sure to subscribe to my newsletter and YouTube channel to watch our home come together and for more inspiration for do-it-yourself living.