Some Trim Issues...

Occasionally, despite your best efforts (and mine), things don't fit together quite right.  Even with practice, and, in my case, years of experience, mistakes still happen--we measure wrong, cut wrong or just plain think wrong.  The good news is, most mistakes are easily fixable.  Don't panic, don't beat yourself up--do remain calm and assess, exactly, what is going on.  Some common issues...

Ripped wallpaper--you pulled the masking tape off the wall, and the wallpaper came, too.  Sometimes, if it's just an edge, you can glue it back into place.  Carefully--and gently--dab a small amount of white craft glue onto the underside of the tear, and press the wallpaper back into place.  Make sure you have clean fingers, and use very gentle pressure to rub the paper back into place.  Always rub toward the tear, never away.  If an entire spot of wallpaper is gone, then you might want to consider changing the decorating scheme of the room.  The good news is, nobody knows what your final design is supposed to look like!  Strategically added baseboard, chair rails or even floor to ceiling paneling is going to disguise almost any flaw.

Gaps in your trim.  Below, you can see that there's a small gap between the window and the window casing--how ugly!  Here, I'm adding a small bead of paint, which is filling it in.  This also works well for gaps in crown moulding.  However, if you're adding paint to crown moulding after you install it, make sure you use masking tape to protect the wall and ceiling--otherwise you might end up with a big blob of trim paint where you don't want it!

Sometimes, you wind up with even bigger gaps--gaps that no amount of paint can fix.  This is from a roombox I've been working on over the past week.  The room has twin inset bookcases in the wall.  I thought, when I did the design, that I'd accounted for the depth of the wainscoting adequately.  When I inserted them into the wall, the bookcases were supposed to lie flat against the framing trim.  As you can see, clearly, they were supposed to...but they didn't.  It's a little hard to tell from this picture, but the gap was quite sizable--about 1/16".  That's fairly small in a real house, but huge in a dollhouse.

I cut a second layer of framing trim from 1/8" quarter round trim.  Below, you can see it where it's going to go.  I wanted to make sure that it fit snugly and securely before I finished it.  As it happens, I liked the bookcases better with the second layer of framing trim.  Mistakes are really just opportunities to learn new things and, sometimes, they force us to be more creative with our designs than we might otherwise be.  

Are there any other trim issues that you want me to discuss?  

Trim Part III

Now, it's time to install the trim.  I prefer to start in the back of the room, and work my way to the front.  Sometimes, if you've cut the pieces really tightly, there's an issue with fit--and it's a lot easier to find out that the trim along the sides of the walls is slightly too long, where you can make a nice, straight cut to reduce the excess.  Here, I started with the baseboard.  I ran a bead of epoxy along the back side, and then pressed it into place.  I used the other two pieces of baseboard to press it in place and clamped them along the edge of the roombox.  For the sake of realism, it's important to get a nice, tight fit with the wall--and wood tends to bow out.

Generally, it's important to double-check your marks and measurements before you glue, and, after you set the piece in place but before the glue dries.  I'm a big fan of using scrap wood to hold pieces in place, since, particularly since they're often at odd angles.  It's impossible to use a standard clip on crown moulding, for example.  The consideration, here, is not gouging the floor.  I tend to put a piece of scrap wood, or paper, under the scrap wood to prevent any accidents.

Here, the room is complete.  Make sure you allow adequate drying time for each piece before you remove any clamps and supports.  Generally, I try to allow at least 25 minutes, for epoxy.  You need to allow more time--at least an hour--for tacky glue.  If the glue isn't dry when you remove the clamps and supports, then the piece is going to pop right back off the wall.  This is especially common when the pieces don't fit quite right, or there's any other type of stress on the wood.

Once the inside of the roombox is done, you can complete the outside.  This roombox has a false back, which is going to become the alley.  I saved it until last because I needed to install the door and window.  Now that the trim is all in place, I don't need to reach inside anymore.

Trim Part II

Stairwells can be incredibly challenging--what do you do about trim?  Do you continue it along the wall?  Do you run it around the outer edge?  In real houses, both solutions are common.  My recommendation is, study a few different stairwells at a few different houses.  Here, I chose to continue the trim along the wall.  First, I cut the baseboard and the trim.  Second, I cut a strip of wood to fit between them.  This solution is certainly not the most complex, but it looks nice in most dollhouses.

Trim Part I

Today we're going to go through some basic cutting techniques.  Tomorrow, and later, we'll be addressing some specific techniques, as well as some common problems--like stairwells.  What are you supposed to do with those things, anyway?  I honestly have no idea, I think the majority of kits don't anticipate most finishing issues and concerns.  Here, I can offer you my solutions, but, keep in mind, they're solely the product of my imagination.  They're certainly not the only solutions out there--and your imagination might provide you with much better solutions!

The room we're starting with today is a roombox I'm building for the Sturbridge Miniatures Festival.  When it's done, it's going to be a Victorian kitchen.  I've already installed the door and window, which are going to, when the roombox is complete, face out onto a narrow alley.  The opposite wall is going to be a brick wall, the side of another townhouse.  Victorian London was, architecturally, very similar to parts of New York and Boston--even the very rich lived in narrow, tall townhouses, squished in together side by side.  Space was at a premium, so it was important to use every inch.  Commonly, kitchens and garages were in sunken half basements.  Not only did these basements have limited light, but also they were much closer to the noise and smell of the street.  It's hard for us to imagine, today, but in the days before indoor plumbing and town garbage disposal, city streets were very smelly places.  In class conscious Victorian London, everyone--including the servants--expected the servants to be content with such quarters.

This is something you want to keep in mind, as you start trimming your room--what's the room's purpose?  Who is going to use it, and for what?  A Victorian kitchen, particularly in the home of the very rich, was a utilitarian space.  Encaustic tile was durable and stain resistant.  Baseboard (and crown moulding) sealed up cracks in the wall and kept out drafts.  Chair rails protected the wall against scuffs and scratches from chairs and tables.  While today, with our advances in construction techniques, these trims are purely decorative, back then they served important functions.  The Victorians tried to make them as pretty as they could.  Here, I'm using simple tile and trim, to reflect the room's function.  I'm staining the trim with an oak stain, because, while paint was expensive, back then, wood was still cheap--the reverse of today.

I start by using my mitre box to cut the trim at a 45 degree angle.  I usually sand the cut lightly--very lightly--to remove any "fuzzies" from the wood.  Make sure that, before you cut, you're cutting in the right direction!  It sounds silly, but mistakes do happen.

I like to start with the side walls.  Push the trim all the way in to the corner, but don't mash it.

Lightly mark the edge, where you want to make the cut, with a pencil.

As you're preparing to cut the trim, keep in mind which side of the pencil mark you're going to cut on.  Otherwise, your piece is going to end up either too long or too short.  Measure twice, cut once--it really is true.

For the back wall, I use what I like to think of as the "paper technique."  Trim usually comes in 24" lengths, but roomboxes usually come in 12 or 15" lengths--and therein lies the problem.  The trim you have is almost always longer than the space.  You can use a ruler for this, but why?  Particularly if it's an odd length, a ruler can be sort of ineffective--you end up cutting closer to the nearest mark on the ruler, even when it's not entirely accurate.  So, I push a sheet of typing paper into the corner, and mark along the edge where the trim piece should end.  It's not rocket science, but it works for me.

Here, I make my mark just at the edge of the door.

Now, I hold the trim against the typing paper.

Here, note that it's important to push the edge of the trim right up against the edge of the typing paper--you want to make sure you're going to get a tight fit.  A few millimeters here or there can add up to visible gaps.

I lightly continue the mark on the typing paper onto the trim.

I use a short piece of trim for the corner.  Remember to cut the 45 degree angle at the end before you measure the length of the trim!

Now, I'm ready to cut the chair rail.  I start the same way I start with the baseboard--by cutting the trim on a 45 degree angle.

I want my chair rail to be at a 2.5" height, all the way around the room.  Here, I'm marking that height very lightly with a pencil.  When I hold the trim against the wall (or the typing paper), I want to make sure that I hold it along the pencil marks.  If the trim is crooked, then it's going to be the wrong length.

The trim should fit snugly in place, but you shouldn't have to force it.  If you have to force it, then it's too long.  Here, the chair rail fits tightly enough to stay in place without tape, but I can easily push it out.

After I cut the trim, I taped it in place with masking tape.  Next, I need to stain it to match the door and window.

Finally Trim!

By now, your house has all the basics--floors, walls and ceilings.  Fun, isn't it?  Believe it or not, you're over the hump.  Yes, adding trim is time consuming, but it's also a lot of fun.  It's the part I always look forward to when I start a new house.  So now you need to ask yourself, what kind of house do I want to have?

Now, more than ever, you need to plan.  I cannot stress this enough.  Why?  First, trim is very expensive.  I bought trim yesterday for four roomboxes and a small dollhouse, and it cost me about 150.00.  You need to know, before you go into the store, what kinds of trim you want and how much of it you're going to need.  Of course, don't discount the value of in-store inspiration--one of the reasons I actually trek to New Hampshire to buy supplies instead of ordering them online is, actually handling the different products gives me new and interesting ideas.  But, one caution I have is, don't buy it if you can't envision how you're going to use it.  I have a "materials graveyard" full of fun components I have yet to find a plausible use for.  I'm sure that, someday, inspiration is going to strike...but in the meantime, I'm stuck with them.

The first thing I do is clean out the dollhouse.  Do you do it, too?  Do you leave little bits of sandpaper in the rooms you're not currently working on?  How about your brayer and x-acto blade dispenser?  Come on, you know you do.  Remove them!  Put them away!  Dust the dollhouse!  You want it clean and tidy--and empty--before you even touch your trim.  

The second thing I do is place the trim I want to use for a particular room inside that room.  Here, you want to do a little measuring.  For the crown moulding, do you need two strips or three?  Give yourself a little leeway (for cuts), not less than 2" but not more than 6".  It might seem like this procedure isn't necessary...you have a general idea of what goes where, maybe even a highly specific idea.  Do you really need to physically place everything where it's going to go, just so you can take it all back out again and cut it?  In a word, yes.  First, you're going to surprise yourself, when it comes to quantities.  You're going to need much more trim than you think in some rooms, and much less in others.  The last thing you want is to find out, half way through installing the trim, that you don't have as much as you need.  In this business, nothing is certain--sometimes manufacturers discontinue trim, and sometimes they actually change the pattern.  Once, I was working on a very elaborate roombox, and, halfway through cutting the trim, I discovered that I didn't have enough.  I ordered more of the same trim--I knew it was the same because I had the part number--from the manufacturer, but when it came, it was subtly different.  Much to my dismay, I learned that the manufacturer now cut that pattern out of a shallower blank.  The two trims, the old and the new, didn't match--I had to start again from scratch.  Second, you're going to get confused.  It gets harder and harder to remember, as time goes on, what trim goes where.  Trust me on this!

Now, grab some rubber bands and some sticky notes.  Gather up the trim for each room, one at a time, and gently bundle it together.  If the rubber band is too tight, then it can cut into the wood.  Write the name of the room on a sticky note, and slip it inside the rubber band.  Now, put the trim bundles aside.  I favor small plastic wastebaskets from Target for this purpose--they're cheap and useful, an awesome combination.  As you work on each room, you can take the trim bundle in question out of the wastebasket and use it.  This is a great method if you want to maintain a certain level of organization.  I often work with expensive supplies, or work on multiple projects at the same time, so organization is essential for me.  

A note on scrap wood: I keep two separate containers for scraps, one for basswood strip scraps and one for trim scraps.  Often, a particular piece of wood is too short for my current project, but perfect for a future project.  Wood is very expensive, so I try to get as much bang for my buck as I can.