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Crown, casing, baseboard, wainscot and stair trim built into our Houston remodels, with joints cut for a house that moves.
Crown, casing, baseboard, wainscot and stair trim built into our Houston remodels, with joints cut for a house that moves.
(281) 883-9927Free estimates · Monday – Friday, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
An outside mitre that closes tight in August can show a hairline in January, when the heat is running and the stock gives up the moisture it took on all summer. That is the whole problem with trim in a Houston house, and it is why the stock gets acclimated inside the conditioned space, why outside corners get glued as well as nailed, and why fasteners go into studs, plates and blocking instead of into drywall alone.
Trim is rarely the whole job. It is the last few days of almost every remodel we run, and after more than 15 years in the trade it is usually where a job is judged: the reveal on a door casing, whether inside corners are coped or mitred, whether a base run reads as one straight line or as three pieces. On a kitchen remodeling or whole home remodeling project it also carries the transitions, closing the gap between new drywall, new flooring installation and finished cabinetry.
What the job includes
Base runs are laid out so joints land on studs, with coped inside corners, glued mitres at outside corners and scarf joints cut at an angle on walls longer than a single stick. Casing is set to a consistent reveal off the jamb edge, typically 3/16 in., so every opening in the room reads the same. Shoe or quarter round is nailed to the base rather than to the floor, which lets a floating floor move underneath it.
Sprung crown is cut on its spring angle, most often 38/52 and is only as good as the plane it lands on, so wavy ceilings, bowed top plates and old soffit lines get corrected in drywall first. On taller walls a single stick usually looks undersized, and the profile is built up from crown plus a flat backer or bed moulding. Long runs are joined with a glued scarf, the two ends cut at matching angles so the seam laps rather than butting square, which keeps the joint from opening into a visible line when the stock shrinks.
Panel layout is measured from the finish floor and balanced across the wall so the last panel at a corner or door is not a sliver. Beadboard or panel stock, chair rail, panel base cap and the base itself are treated as one assembly, with blocking added where a rail has to take weight. Terminations at door casings, outside corners and stair walls are worked out on paper before anything is cut.
Skirt boards are scribed to the treads and risers or mitred into the stringer, then the wall base is mitred into the skirt at the top and bottom so the run continues without a butt joint. Tread returns, riser edges and landing base are handled at the same time. This is fussy work and it is normally cut in place, one piece at a time, rather than pre-assembled.
When a wall gets thicker, jambs are extended and ripped to the new wall thickness so the casing sits flat instead of rocking. Stools are notched to the opening with a consistent overhang and horn, and the apron is cut to match the casing width. This is common where an exterior wall was furred out or a window was replaced during a larger remodel.
Light rail, crown on upper cabinets, scribe and filler strips, panel ends, island panels and toe kick are the pieces that make factory cabinet boxes look built in. Scribes are cut to the actual wall, which in a house that has moved with the slab is often out of plumb. This work is normally sequenced with the rest of a kitchen remodeling or bathroom remodeling scope.
Water damaged base, trim cut back for a wall removal and open concept job, and runs that stop dead where an old wall used to be all call for matching the existing profile rather than re-trimming the whole house. We take a sample or a cross section of the existing profile and either match it from stock, build it up from two or three pieces, or tell you plainly that the closest available match will read slightly different.
Materials and specification
Specifications vary with the house and what we find once it is open. This is the standard we work to unless there is a reason not to — and if there is, we will tell you what it is before we change it.
Local conditions
Gulf Coast clay, humidity and a storm season are not background detail. They decide how this work gets built.
Greater Houston sits on shrink swell clay, and seasonal moisture in the soil lifts and drops slab foundations. That movement is what opens drywall corner cracks, makes doors stick and pulls base away from the floor along one wall and not another. Trim is installed to the condition the house is in at the time, with coped inside corners and glued outside mitres that tolerate a little movement,.
Long humid summers and dry heated winters change the moisture content of wood trim after it is installed. Stock delivered straight off a truck and cut the same afternoon will shrink in place, so it is stacked flat inside the conditioned house with the air running for several days first. MDF is stable across its face but wicks water badly at cut ends and unprimed edges, which is why cut ends get sealed before they go on the wall.
Bare MDF base within splash range of a tub, shower, toilet or dishwasher will swell and mushroom at the bottom edge, so those runs get poplar, PVC or a factory primed composite instead. After a plumbing leak or storm water intrusion, base has to come off, the cavity has to dry and the bottom plate has to meter dry before new trim covers it. Reinstalling over a damp plate traps the moisture and the problem shows up again in the paint.
Pulling base off is one of the few times the bottom plate and slab edge are visible, and on the Gulf Coast that is where native subterranean and Formosan termite damage and old moisture staining turn up. If we find mud tubes, hollow plate or rot during trim removal, work stops on that wall and you see it before anything is covered. That is a treatment and repair conversation, not something to hide behind new moulding.
Interior trim is finish work, and on a remodel the permit questions almost always come from what is behind it, such as removing a bearing wall or moving electrical. Permitting on a remodel is driven by what sits behind the trim, not by the moulding itself, and the FAQ below covers which office handles it. Because Houston has no conventional zoning, trim and posts on a street facing patio cover are more often reviewed by deed restrictions or an HOA architectural committee than by any zoning rule, and outdoor trim needs corrosion resistant fasteners in this air., and outdoor trim needs corrosion resistant fasteners in this air.
How it runs
We measure linear footage room by room, photograph the existing profiles so new work can be matched, and check how doors and windows are operating. We also look at what the trim has to land on: ceiling flatness for crown, floor flatness along the base line, and whether a removed soffit or a patched wall needs drywall correction first. Estimates are free.
You see actual profile samples held against the wall, not a catalogue page, because a 3-5/8 in. crown that looks right in a photo can look thin on a 10 ft wall. We settle material by room, paint grade or stain grade, and whether painting is in our scope or yours. That decision changes the order of operations, so it gets made before delivery.
Trim is delivered into the conditioned house, stacked flat and off the slab, with the air conditioning or heat running. It sits for several days before anything is cut. If the house has no working HVAC yet, trim waits, because installing dry stock into a humid house or humid stock into a dry house is how joints open.
Runs are laid out so joints fall over framing, inside corners are coped where the profile allows, outside mitres are glued and pinned, and long walls are scarfed rather than butted. Casing reveals are set with a gauge block so every opening matches. Crown and wainscot are installed to a laser or level line, not to the ceiling or floor, when the house is out of level enough to show.
Nail holes are filled and sanded flush, joints are filled and feathered, raw cuts are primed, and the wall line is caulked with a paintable siliconized acrylic. Caulk is a finish detail, not a way to close a bad joint, and gaps large enough to need it get recut. From here the work hands off to interior painting.
We walk the rooms with a light held at a low angle along the walls and ceilings, which shows joints, proud nail holes and waves that a ceiling fixture hides. Anything on that list gets corrected before the job is called done. You get told which lines are caulk joints that may need renewing after a season of slab movement.
Questions
Hanging, taping and finishing new board, plus crack, ceiling and water damage repair with texture matched to the room.
Prep-first interior painting for Houston homes: walls, ceilings, trim, doors and cabinet finishing.
Tile, luxury vinyl plank and engineered wood floors installed over properly prepped, moisture-tested Houston slabs.
Free estimates
Call and talk to someone who has been doing this for 15+ years. We will look at the space, tell you what the work actually involves, and put a number on it — at no cost.
