Someone Tar and Feather Me

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Yep I think its time someone tarred and feathered me. Maybe its the drywall dust and paint fumes that are getting to me, or maybe its the lack of sawdust I have been making lately. I am not sure but I am about to make the most egregious, naughtiest, nastiest mistake any woodworker can do, and I am about to do it knowing full well I know better...

Yep I am going to use White Pine for my baseboards.

The problem is, I realized while I have tons of hardwood, I don't have tons of hardwood of the SAME SPECIES. I got Ash, Oak, Basswood and Popular, but not a thousand feet of he same stuff and that is what its going to take to do all the baseboard in my new house.

Now the questions...

Do you think its a good idea to use pine for the baseboards, then do something else for the door trim? What I mean is, I could use a good hardwood like Cheery or Ash for the door trim, but how would that look getting tied into the baseboard? I am even tempted at using white pine for the door trim too. Its just that its easy to obtain. Here in the Pine Tree State they practicably give it away and it comes surfaced on all four sides. If I use my rough lumber, I will spend the majority of my time getting it into a finished board.

I got one more temptation too, and that is adding curves and brackets to make the baseboard and door trim look seemless, kind of like I did on the outside of my house. Its hard to describe, but basically the top of the baseboard would be horizontal, then sweep upward in an arch as it entered the vertical stiles of the doorframe. In the end the baseboard and door trim would look like it flowed around each room in an un-ending ribbon of straight and curved wood.

Any thoughts?
 
Pine............. PAINTED pine would last and be fine on the baseboards, but on the doors etc, it might get tatty looking real soon.

Why not do your baseboards PAINTED pine, and then the door trim etc in a hard wood :dunno:

Cheers! :wave:
 
Travis

I'm with Stu on the painted baseboard. And I'm not too sure I like the idea you're proposing, maybe I'm too used to "square stuff" in houses but I think the flowing look wouldn't be too great. I'm sure you could pull it off based on the work of yours that I've seen, but I don't know if it really would be worth it in the long run.

Jay
 
As long as TLOYL is not as wild with a vacuum cleaner as TLOML is, it should be fine.:rofl: Ours get banged up and dented pretty good from hits with the vacuum cleaner. The dogs probably don't help either. Just a thought. Jim.
 
pine is just fine for trim travis but if you`re planning to buy pre-run trim how do you propose to manufacture "seamless curves"?
another thing to think about....what are your doors-n-windows? if they`re pine too stain and a clear finish will look great!
if you`re able to buy s4s pine boards for 50-75cents a bf look seriously at popping for a williams-n-hussey.....run your mouldings and if you decide you don`t like the machine for whatever reason they easily bring 75% of new or more on e-bay...( you`ll keep it for life though:rolleyes:)
by doing homemade trim out of affordable material and spraying a clear finish instead of paint you should save several hundred bucks over even the cost of mdf trim and still come out with a hussey....
 
if you`re planning to buy pre-run trim how do you propose to manufacture "seamless curves"?

One thing I failed to mention is that I always make my own baseboard. The pre-made kind out of real wood is too expensive for the amount I need, and the cheap stuff is...well...cheap looking. As a certified logger I am not one to buy foam board or whatever that crap is they try to pass off as wood either. Nothing wrong with it really, but I do prefer real wood.

As far as the Hussey goes, I have heard good things about it, and that is a good idea but still above my budget on this. My plan for the addition has been to keep the material costs down, and then give the addition a high end look by going the extra mile with the labor. What I mean is, shingling a house is cheap, its the labor involved that makes contractors cringe. I went overboard and fancied up the trim details. It made shingling a lot harder and time consuming, but it gives the house that added look. It doesn't look like I just slapped some corner boards on the sides of the house and started shingling. It looks like I put some thought into what I was doing, and I am thinking about doing that here.

Jay, I deeply respect you, but after mulling this all over yesterday, and doing some thinking, measuring and cost figuring, I think I am going forward with my curved wood idea. I know, its not right to come on here and ask a question, then forge ahead with my plan anyway, but I think I can get the curves to work.

They are not going to be big in any case. I know full well what you mean by keeping things square in a house, I mean this isn't a yacht right :) ? I did take some scrap plywood and started doodling up some curves. I liked what I saw and even decided to add them to the corners of the room, along with the door casings.

Well I started running the baseboards, laying down the majority of the baseboard along the walls, but will in-fill the corners and door casing/ baseboard intersections afterwards. In doing this I found something I really like. This allowed me to really lay down some baseboard in a hurry. It also kept the number of joints along my walls to a bare minimum. In fact in the whole addition I will only have 3 joints that are not intersections or corner sections. By keeping the corners and intersections separate, I can concentrate on these complicated areas in manageable lengths, and do them up in a production mode.
 
Hi Travis

Well you know we're going to want pics!

I don't understand what you mean by this:

I know, its not right to come on here and ask a question, then forge ahead with my plan anyway​

Of course it is fine to do what you think is right, heck you asked for opinions and got them, I think that is what is so valuable about this place. But I wouldn't expect someone to do something just because I posted a reply.

Have a great day

Jay
 
Southern yellow pine has been used for trim around here forever. Painted and stained. Not a fan of the stained that much but it's not uncommon at all.

Eastern White Pine is quite a bit softer than Southern Yellow Pine unfortunately. I have seen both used in flooring however. Actually wide pine floors (24 inch wide or so) are a very common site here, but they are soft. They were very common in the old houses of the 1800's.

The woman that runs the local hardware store had wide pine floors put in her new home, then to give the floor that "patina" of age, she dragged heavy chain around her new floor to ding and scratch it all up. After about 10 years of life though, the floor was too dinged up so she had it sanded down and redone. Too each their own I guess.:dunno:
 
so travis, are you profiling the base or putting it up square? what are your doors, paint or stain? how `bout the floor....carpet or hardwood?
most trim is installed by casing out the doors first and butting the base into the casing.....you`re runnin` the base first? how does that work?
i`m tryin` to get on the same page.....help me out:eek:
 
I wish I had more time to explain here Tod, but I will try with what little time I do had (its that whole gotta get to work thing).

Yeah the baseboard I made is out of pine boards and I routed the upper edge with a roman Ogee. Nothing super fancy for sure, but a lot better looking then a square baseboard.

On the Door casing I used the same material but routed both edges with the roman ogee. I put these on with straight cuts top and bottom. For the top of the door I did not 45º them...instead I placed a lintel type casing overhanging the verticle door casings. It kind of looked like this at the top of the door....
__________
\_________/
] [ ] [
] [ ] [

Now I cut the door casing short by 11¼". Then when I ran the baseboard, I left the baseboard 11¼ as well. This "gap" will later be filled in with a piece of 1x12" pine board cut with in a deep cove with the bandsaw. In other words, rather than be butted up right tight to the door casing in a 90º angle, I will have a intersection that is rounded.

Now on the corners of the rooms, I went a step further. I kept the baseboard back another 11¼. On those corners I am going to use 1 x 6 pine boards and add a like curve to the baseboard. In other words it will run along the wall at 4 inches, then when it gets to within a foot of the corner, the baseboard will rise up in a gentle curve, hit the corner, turn, then after a foot, drop down another sweeping curve back down to 4 inches again and run again until it hits a door casing or the other corner of the room. Every corner will have this little detail so each corner of my baseboard will be a bit higher.

Now in my daughters room, I am going to add another little detail. In each corner of her room, where there baseboard makes this taller corner, I am going to make heart shaped cut outs. With her light purple walls already painted, the baseboard will have heart cutouts around the outside of her room. The great part is, since this piece is only 11¼" long, when she gets too old for heart shaped motiffs, I can pry this baseboard piece out and replace it with another board without having to tear all my baseboard up.

This is probably as clear as mud, and its a bit unorthadox, but I strive on that. :) How is this all going to look? Custom? Gaudy? Disgusting or Beautiful? I have no idea, but I am going to do it and see. I am hoping by adding some time and effort into a different design, this will off-set mt rather utilitarian material (1 x 4 pine) and give me a house that looks custom built.
 
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so in trimmin` lingo you`re using oversized plinths and corner blocks radiused to the casing-n-base? except in your daughters room where you`re using the same plinths-n-blocks only with hearts cut out...
for the door and window heads look to building three or four piece heads you`ll be much happier with the outcome...
 
so in trimmin` lingo you`re using oversized plinths and corner blocks radiused to the casing-n-base? except in your daughters room where you`re using the same plinths-n-blocks only with hearts cut out...
for the door and window heads look to building three or four piece heads you`ll be much happier with the outcome...

Yeah, something like that Tod, just in less than 10,000 words. :)
 
Yeah I'll get some pictures. I had the 1 x 4 pine, but not the 1 x 12 or 1 x 6 pine so those over-sized plinth blocks and corner blocks cannot be made yet. Without those I don't have much of a project to take a picture of.
 
I got to back Travis up here.
The wife and I are building on a small acreage. We want this place to look almost lodge-like, inside and out. We're planning on using knotty pine for baseboards, trim and casings. Not stained but cleared.

You can tell from my post count that I'm new here, but trust me, my new friends, I have a very thick skin. Feel more than free to post your thoughts:thumb:
 
I got to back Travis up here.
The wife and I are building on a small acreage. We want this place to look almost lodge-like, inside and out. We're planning on using knotty pine for baseboards, trim and casings. Not stained but cleared.

You can tell from my post count that I'm new here, but trust me, my new friends, I have a very thick skin. Feel more than free to post your thoughts:thumb:

First of all Tom, welcome to the forum...

As for your pine idea, I don't see anything wrong with what you are proposing. Personally on MY house, I thought the baseboard would look better painted, but SWMBO (she who must be obeyed) said she just wanted them polyurethaned so that is what we are going to have.

Our existing house has #3 pine ceilings and I really like the look. We too live out in the country so our home has that country type of feeling. I think pine adds to that overall feeling. We also have wide planked Ash floors and a lot of Black Cherry trim, cabinets and other woodwork. All in all I think it works. I'll let you decide with a picture at the end of this post.

The one mistake I feel others make in this regard however is having too much pine. A friend of mine built a house and used #3 V-Matched pine everywhere. On his walls, on his ceiling, as his trim, everywhere. I think it was just too much. You could not tell where the casing stopped, the walls started, or even the cathedral ceiling began. It was like an explosion of knotty pine. You might have even seen this in some of the log home magazines. I think a little painted drywall in a house helps break this up. Even on a log home where your exterior walls are pined you can still use drywall on the interior walls and help break up that over-abundance of pine.

Now Tom, this is something I did that I think makes "green sense" and overall "health sense", but is somewhat controversial. Anyway on my V-matched #3 Pine ceilings I did not polyurethane them at all. They were put up as raw wood and have remained that way. My thinking is this, what am I protecting them from? Other than an occasional dusting, what do I need to scrub them clean from? Why bother to take the time and money to clear coat them if they don't really need the protective finish of anything?

I put my ceilings up 10 years ago with no finish and never regretted it. I got a good looking ceiling that is entirely non-toxic, does not off-gass fumes as poly does, and other than being aged a bit, looks the same as when I put it up. You might consider doing the same thing. Obviously your door casings and baseboard need to be protected, but the ceilings are fine in raw wood. Just something to consider.

Here are some further thoughts about pine for what they are worth. Pine boards, such as a ceiling or on an exterior wall gives you an extra R-factor per inch. If you use V-match or Shiplapped pine you also get a better "seal" that helps prevent drafts and heat-loss. The other thing is v-matched pine ceilings are very inexpensive. There is very little waste on a V-match pine ceiling if you biscuit joint the ends of the boards that fall in between the rafters, ceiling joints or strapping. At the same time v-matched pine ceilings are very easy to put up and fast. Sheetrock ceilings on the other hand are very slow and about the same money when you factor in taping and mudding.

My kitchen..the crown molding has since been added since the picture was taken however...

Half_Done_Kitchen_Ceiling2.JPG


My custom made "Dog Center" for feeding for my Black Lab, Basset Hound and Miniature Schnauzer (kind of different). Note the "timber frame construction" of my kitchen cabinets. I love timber frames and decided to use the design in my cabinets.

Kenworth_Eating4.JPG


Close up of my kitchen cabinets...

Cabinets2.JPG
 
That's pretty much the look we're going for as well Travis. I even got the green light to pull the trigger on a couple antler hanging light fixtures. She must be feeling guilty about something:p

Our kitchen cabinets are to be Hickory and wood floors pretty much troughout except bathrooms and bedrooms. Haven't selected the floors yet. Doors will be 6-panel knotty pine with black T-hinges. Gonna be sweet:thumb:

The great room will have a cathedral ceiling going up to 14feet. I really like your pine idea for the ceiling. It'll be drywalled but not finished. We also have a pellet stove for the corner that will burn wood pellets or corn. How's that for going green?

I really enjoyed your pictures Travis. Thanks for sharing them with us.

I've got no pictures to post as of yet, they're just finishing the framing.
 
Glad you liked the pictures and understood what I was talking about. That was a lot of typing...not that I mind though :)

Sounds like you are going to have a nice place and very big. But then again you did say lodge. That is cool and I will be looking forward to the pictures.

By the way what part of Nebraska are you from? I have been to every point on the compass in that state from Lincoln, to Alliance, to Crawford to Scotts Bluff and even to a tiny, tiny town called Thedford just north of North Platte. Of course that was in my railroading days (UP and BNSF) so I have been to every town along those points as well.
 
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