Installing a Simple Wood Floor, Part 3: Installing Baseboards

Your customer will sometimes ask you to install baseboards as part of your job. Guess what? There is no baseboards installation school. There is no baseboard magazine or an installation guideline book. Well then, we all install baseboards. Where and how did we learn to do it? My experience was from years of reading wood-related literature like woodworking magazines or books, and watching finish carpenters on the job site. The magazines sometimes had articles related to trim and moldings installation. Sometimes baseboards would be covered under finish carpentry topics. The finish carpenters were usually on the job with decades of experience building anything from wall paneling to staircases. No matter how you acquired your skill, whether reading articles or watching finish carpenters at work, everyone does it differently and most do it wrong.

So, what's to know? You cut it, fit it, nail it and then use a lot of putty and paint caulk. Some base installations I've seen I think had more filler in them than actual baseboards. At least, that's the way it seemed. Here is some of the useful advice I'd like to share:

• Most paint-grade base material is either MDF (medium density fiberboard) or wood like pine or poplar. The most common ones come primed. I recommend having your base with at least one coat of paint before you install it. Make it easier on the painter, for once.

• Miter your outside corners and cope your inside corners. No corners are ever a perfect 90° so sneaking up on a good fit sometimes takes more than one cut.

• What are and how to cope inside corners - one piece of base is butted to the wall. The adjacent piece is mitered and the material is removed from the back of it following the profile. It is the quickest way to install baseboards, and even if the corners are not perfect, the joint will look tight.

• Nail your base to the wall studs. Use a nail that will penetrate the stud at least by ¾" (1.905 cm). Use a stud finder to find the studs. Nail in the wrong place and you might hit a water line or an electrical wire.

• Scribe the bottom of the baseboards. Scribing is cutting the work piece (baseboards in this case) so that it follows the contour of the floor. Take a look at these photos; first we have a high spot in the floor that creates a gap on both sides of the baseboard:

And here it is with the baseboard scribed:

If you lack the skills of scribing and coping, please stay away from hardwood baseboards. Leave it up to the professionals.

This blog post is not about wood anatomy, wood science or how to make a crazy install. It is about a simple thing most of us don't pay much attention to. It is as important as everything else you do on the job. The baseboards are a part of the finished product you were paid to provide. It is what your client sees after you leave (and his friends and family and you know how much they don't like criticizing your work). Make sure it is tight and pretty. Being a professional means you do everything right, even if it is installing a cheap MDF baseboard.