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Interior Trim is a material carpenters use to hide gaps or spaces where different materials, like drywall; windows and doors, meet. Drywall or the sheetrock is the material that covers the framing of a wall and insulation on exterior walls. The trim that is used to hide the gaps where the drywall and window or the drywall and door meet is the casing. The baseboard is the trim that covers the spaces found where the drywall and the floor meet.
There are many different interior trim designs that a homeowner can choose from. They can be simple, which is comprised of a lone piece of wood or elegant and extravagant which can be made up of a number pieces of wood to form a complicated design. The designs chosen will be dependent on what will match with the home and at the same time the cost. Usually, homes today install the same type of trim all over the home.
Types of Trim:
In the old days the baseboards were considered to be the most important quality of the home and thus the designs of these trim where guests usually met, were the most elegant.
Nowadays, with prices going up it has been more cost efficient to use simple baseboards with one particular design all throughout the house. Although if you decide to have a different one installed it can be easy just as long as you make sure that the replacement you choose is as tall as the previous baseboard so that you will not have to repaint the walls.
Another option if you want to change your board is to build it up. No need to replace the existing board just an addition of a quarter round to the bottom of the board. A quarter round is a one quarter of a circle with one side that sits on the floor while the other side pushes up against the vertical baseboard. This type of trim is usually used to cover tile grout cracks or sheet flooring that curls at the edges.
If you decide to use even more elegant baseboard designs, they consist of 3 pieces of wood at least 6 inches high and 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick. They are what you call the flat plank, a decorative cap molding placed on top of the plank and a round shoe molding found at the base. These are usually made and installed by carpenters.
The casing's role besides accenting your home's windows and doors is to cover the gaps where the drywall and the door jambs meet. There are casings that are tapered where the outside edge is heavier than the inside edge that touches the door or window jamb or it can have the same thickness on both sides which is usually called the square casing. This casing can be decorated with corner blocks and/or plinth blocks.
