Priming and Painting Trim… a lot of Trim.

Our room renovations are coming along nicely. All of the dirty demolition and building work is complete, and it’s now on to the tedious detail work. After painting, the next step is to install all of the trim. The old trim was really not salvageable so we decided to buy and install all new trim in the two rooms. We decided on getting solid pine since we were planning on painting it to match the rest of the house, and pine is significantly cheaper than most other hard woods.  And solid wood that we paint ourselves apparently meets my wife’s new chemical-free safety criteria that she has imposed on the house.

Saturday morning we headed out to purchase all of the trim necessary to finish the two rooms that we are remodeling. We didn’t expect it to take long, but of course the Home Depot was completely packed with DIYers.  Who were apparently all getting the same thing that we were. After about 2 hours of measuring, calculating, and cutting a few pieces down to size we loaded it all up in my Dad’s truck. The 16′ crown molding didn’t exactly fit so we had to use some wrap to tie it to the tailgate and the passenger side mirror.

The only trim that didn’t come pre-primed was the widow and door casing. Of course at this point after priming all of the walls in the two rooms we were out of our Olympic no-voc primer, and the nearest Lowe’s is about 25 minutes away. Lucky for us, we found out that Kilz makes a similar product so my father-in-law picked up a can of that at our Home Depot.

Our weapons of choice for priming and painting the casing were a small foam roller, regular brush, and a foam brush. We applied a generous amount on the wood with the brushes and then smoothed it all out with the roller to give all of the trim a nice consistent look.

We used some light weight saw horses to set all of the casing on as we painted. One of us would use the brushes to apply the paint while the other used the foam roller to smooth it all out. It worked really well and actually went pretty fast. We did two coats of primer before applying the final coat of our Decorator White Olympic paint.

As one section was completed, we set it in the other room to fully dry. Here’s all the window and door casing for the two rooms. It always looks like a lot for these two small rooms, but it is the right amount.

Next came the pre-primed base board. We only had to apply one coat of our final color to these, and there wasn’t nearly as many of them.

We also polished off the small quarter round that attaches to the bottom of the base board.

All of the doors in our house are hollow core veneered pine. For the nursery room, Rachel thought it would be good to get a solid wood door for sound dampening purposes. We only got the two coats of primer on that so we’ll have to finish that one up later.  Also since we only got the door and not the whole pre-hung door frame we’ll need to cut out the hinges and handle hole before we can install it.

The only trim that we didn’t get to was the 16′ crown molding. It was way too long to paint in either of the rooms so I decided that I would cut it to length later on and then paint it before installing it.

Here’s a sneak peak at what the base board with the quarter round will look like when we’re all done.  But of course it won’t just be up against this white.  I still have to get to the gray stripe part of this wall.

We are so glad that a lot of the trim that we purchased came pre-primed because it was a huge time-saver. But painting over it with our no-voc paint will seal in any of the toxic aspects of whatever kind of primer came with it.  The next step is to first install all of the door casement, then the base board and quarter round. After that the window casement and the crown molding will go up. And we just heard the good news that our windows will all be here by January 7.  Our two rooms are certainly starting to look normal again, and the best part is that they are dramatically warmer than they used to be so hopefully all of this work will also knock a few bucks off of our winter heating bills.