Our home was built in '64 and has pretty simple finishes - no fancy moldings or trims here. We have basic baseboards and some oak quarter round trim that was likely added after the shag carpeting was ripped out by prior owners. Why do I know there was shag carpet? All the doors in our home have a generous gap at the bottom to accommodate the amber waves of polyester that used to cover lovely wood flooring.
(New doors are in the plans)
Here's a corner of the living room to show you what I mean:
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| (Late night iPhone pix) |
I noticed that in some rooms the quarter round was painted and in other rooms it was not. I decided to use our hallway as a test site and restore the banged up baseboards and try painting the quarter rounds. First, I sanded them down and scraped off layers of shoddily applied paint. Then, I wiped them down with a damp rag and taped off the wall and floor with green
Frog tape. (I find this works better than blue painters tape.) I slapped a few layers of some leftover semi-gloss on the baseboards and trim, being careful to remove the green tape prior to the paint drying for smooth lines.
Here are my results in the hall:
I think it looks better with the quarter rounds painted. It gives the baseboards more heft. Looking around the house, I now get to work on the trim in the living room, dining room and master bedroom so everything is uniform. Joy, projects!
2 comments:
Yay! It looks great!
I don't understand why some people don't paint quarter rounds. They're trim, not flooring. They're just put down by flooring guys, so I guess they don't get painted until someone else is involved.
my house was built in '63 and has the same issue. we ripped up the gross blue carpet to find wood underneath. we had those sanded and refinished and they replaced (and painted!) all the quarter round. i certainly didn't want to do it.
we also added crown moulding and some extra trim work here and there to spruce it up.
new to your blog :)
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