3 High Impact/Low Cost Remodeling Jobs (Part II – The Baseboards)

Being hard-headed and foolhardy and deciding that I hadn't been punished enough from painting the kitchen cabinets, I took on the task of updating my baseboards, which has provided me with fodder for this blogpost.

My house came with skinny little wood veneer baseboards that were something less than attractive. I decided that a taller white baseboard (5") would better complement the walls that I had just updated from 'bone white' (which really did have a grayish tint that you would associate with the inside of a dried out bone) to a creamy french vanilla. In hindsight, I can confidently say that swapping out the baseboards provided the best remodeling bang for the buck.

I was able to save thousands of dollars by updating the baseboards on my own with the assistance of a crowbar, miter saw, and semi-gloss paint. I measured the entire perimeter of my house to determine the number of baseboards I would need (I bought baseboards that came in 16 foot pieces) and then set up a spreadsheet to determine how I would utilize each baseboard to maximize each board's full length. I set the baseboards down in the garage and used a paint roller to layer on a coat of antique white, semi-gloss paint. While waiting for the paint to dry, I tackled the task of removing the existing baseboards in my house.

Using a crowbar, I pried out the nails that held the baseboards against the wall. Surprising, I found it therapeutic ripping out the strips of low quality wood; it felt just like removing a deeply lodged booger. After the baseboards had dried, I set about using the miter saw to cut the appropriate edges for the corners of each of the rooms. I attempted to perform as few cuts as possible by documenting the number of inside and outside edges I would need to cut and leveraging the natural creation of an outside edge from an inside edge and vice versa. Check out the following video for a useful demo.

After cutting the baseboards, I hammered in a few thin nails to secure the trim and used wood putty to smooth out the indentation left by the nail head, and lastly touched up the trim with a few dabs of paint. Although it is recommended that you caulk the baseboards, I skipped that final step and still came out happy with the transformation of the rooms in my house.