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Dec 09Avoiding the Splice
by in Bring Your Own Code on 2010-01-20One mistake that rookie carpenters will often make is to measure for trim molding – baseboard, casing, crown, etc – by the linear foot. Take the casing on a 7’ door, for example. Each leg of the door requires 84” of trim and the header needs 32”. If your house has 16 doors, and each side of the door needs 200” of trim, then that adds up to 533’ 4” (16 x 2 x 200”). And since you can get casing in 16’ boards, you’d need to order 34 boards to get the job done, right?
Not quite. You’d actually need 38 of those 16’ boards. Although each 16’ board can easily fit two 7’ door legs, the remaining 24” should be scrapped, as a splice in a header casing is about as professional as modHmm. And while door casings are relatively easy to measure for, baseboard and crown molding can get trickier.