March 4, 2016

Make your own trim molding

One of the simplest ways to enhance the appearance of any room is to add trim molding. You can buy pre-made strips or save a little money and make your own trim molding. Basic trim molding is pretty easy to make with a table saw and router.

For my bathroom remodel, I made four kinds of molding. It’s amazing how much nicer the room looks!

Door Frame

I began with the door frame molding. The thickness of these boards tapers towards the door. To cut this, I set a zero clearance in my table saw and set the blade to a 10 degree angle.

I used a feather board to help keep the board pressed against the rip fence, then fed the boards slowly through the blade.

Using a roundover bit on my router, I slightly eased over the edges.

I used my miter sled to cut the angles where the three boards will meet around the door.

Mostly it was a lot of cutting, fitting, and cutting a little more until I got a good fit.

Baseboards

I used 1/2″ (12mm) thick lumber for the baseboards. The only embellishment on these is an s-curve I cut with a roman ogee bit on the router. I think baseboards need to taper in some fashion to the top to help prevent dust from settling on a horizontal surface.

Corner Molding

I cut the inside curve of the corner moldings using a cove bit. Once the cove was cut, I cut off the excess length of the board on my tablesaw.

Crown Molding

You get get very complicated with crown molding, but I chose to keep my simple, to reflect to square theme of the bathroom and echo the style of the doors on the vanity cabinet. So they are just 1/2″ (12mm) thick boards with one rounded edge.