Blending Differing Baseboards

It can be tricky working with all the different options of baseboards, trim and mouldings. But what do you do when you DIY update a room only to find that down the hall your new baseboard doesn’t match with the existing? And what if changing the whole hallway is out of the question? Or, just for fun, they meet at an uneven floor transition!!

This sort of situation doesn’t happen too often. In fact, it’s never happened to me before now and admittedly it was a bit of a head scratcher, but it’s amazing what you can come up with when you stand and peruse the trim and moulding aisle at the hardware store. Couple that with some outside of the box thinking and this is my imperfect, but decent enough to placate me sort of solution.

You know how one completed project often creates another. Well last spring I updated and very outdated sun room. With 12” tile flooring and a matching tile fireplace and hearth that ate up 4’ of the room’s floor space, amoung several other idiosyncraties, I knew it needed a revamp. Pine trim and ceiling, knotty even, talk about that 70’s feel. The ceiling was the worst part by far. (For more info on this diy update, see my blog post with more details on how and what I did.)

Before

After

However after all that work the last bit sat unfinished for at least a year before I got around to it. In actuality I couldnt get a transition with the correct depth that wasn’t going to cost an arm and a leg. Finally after several amazon returns, I got this one, and even though the color didn’t match I knew I could paint it to blend in.

With the transition solution in hand, I began to puzzle out the baseboarding.

How to make this work?

Lucky for me the transition between floors created a nice break point. In a situation like this, its better to not fight it and instead use it to your advantage. This is a pretty good rule of thumb when dealing with issues where imperfections cannot be hidden.

Tip: slide a piece of card stock or anything that will work behind the trim for painting. I knew I didn’t have any of this wall paint so I knew I had to be careful. Little inexpensive art brushes are also good for those tight detailed areas too.

I opted for this corner trim piece (see above). I’ve seen these installed in older homes in corners to allow baseboard installation without miter cuts. But for my purposes this little trim effectively created a stop/start point. It also served well to tie things in on the other wall.

Using a my dremel maxi tool I carefully cut the existing trim to accommodate the block.

After triming up all the sides, I reinstalled the floor transition, then used my nailgun to attach the blocks. Then I cut the remaining baseboards and quarter round to butt up to them. I used a DAP shrink resistant putty to fill in all the gaps, and finished with some fresh semi gloss trim paint. All in all it was nice to get the job done.

DIY TIP: A big time saver is to use an icing piping bag and small tip to get the DAP into gaps.