After the walls are painted, the floors are laid, and the cabinets are installed, baseboard moldings are installed and play an essential role in how a room looks and feels. Thoughtfully chosen baseboard moldings go a long way toward emphasizing design styles that range from streamlined modern to old-world to traditional. Installing baseboard molding is a job for anyone comfortable using power tools, making a few specialized saw cuts, and who has a knack for accurate measurements. If you think you’re not up to the task, ask your friends or local building associations to recommend a reliable contractor. If you decide to go the contractor route, obtain multiple bids for comparison’s sake. Ask for references, and check with the contractor’s previous clients. Inventive configurations and creative baseboard ideas—such as stacking ready-made moldings, expanding a baseboard’s presence with cap and shoe moldings, or opting for custom-crafted millwork—offer nearly endless possibilities for finishing off the bottom of your walls. Most home centers sell moldings of various materials and lengths that commonly range from 8 to 12 feet. Architectural molding is a durable, easy-to-handle, lightweight trim crafted of polystyrene or polyurethane that is often sold in 8-foot lengths. Medium-density fiberboard (MDF) is a lightweight engineered-wood product that comes pre-primed, so it’s ready for painting. You’ll also find baseboard moldings crafted of oak, pine, and hardwood in unfinished, pre-primed, stained, and painted finishes. Plinth blocks, corner blocks, and other specialty trim pieces are available in all materials. These pieces fit inside corners or around outside corners to accommodate straight lengths of molding, so you won’t have to miter or cope edges. In addition, these specialty blocks let you join trims of different widths and profiles and adapt baseboards to fit around floors that step up or down. Once you’ve purchased baseboard moldings, let the materials sit inside your home for a week before finishing and installing the trim. This will give the material time to adjust to temperatures and conditions inside the house. You’ll save time and protect your knees if you apply a finish to baseboard trim pieces before installing it on the walls. Protect your workplace floor with drop cloths, move in a pair of sawhorses, and set your trim pieces so you can stain, prime, and/or paint them all at once. Once the paint has dried, it’s time to install the molding. Editor’s tip: While most new houses use a one-piece baseboard, a more traditional approach is to use two or even three pieces of molding to form the baseboard. A multipiece baseboard begins with a piece of baseboard, which is installed first. It is topped with a piece of cap molding, which is small and bends easily to conform to variations in the wall. The final piece is the base shoe. To allow for seasonal movement of a wooden floor, the base shoe is nailed at a slight downward angle into the baseboard—not the floor—with finishing nails. It, too, is flexible and disguises gaps between the floor and the underside of the baseboard. Multipiece baseboards add a nice touch to a room. Some installations dispense with the cap molding and simply use a baseboard and base shoe. Place shoe molding across the lower edge of the baseboard. Nail or glue the pieces in place. Cope inside joints and miter outside joints, gluing as needed to secure. Use scarf joints to splice trim pieces on long walls. Add cap molding to the top of the baseboards for a more traditional look. Set cap molding atop baseboard trim, placing it flush against the wall. Use the same technique to install the cap molding as you would with the shoe molding.
