Holy cow, installing trim! If you’ve done it before, you know there’s a bit of a learning curve. I’m not here to tell you how to make the cuts to fit them together – there are plenty of tutorials from pros like Home Depot and Lowe’s just a search away. But I want to share a few things we learned along the way.
The Trim
Before we started stenciling, we knew we wanted trim. How do you install trim on a vaulted ceiling? You don’t. I mean, you can, but it doesn’t always look nice. I was actually inspired by rail moulding in my grandma’s mid-century home and Cuckoo 4 Design’s bedroom. To achieve it, we actually used chair rail (this one from Lowe’s, second in the image below)! It worked perfectly and laid flush on the wall.
The Blade
I’ll just get this one out of the way because I screwed it up. We have an out-of-the-box blade on our miter saw, but I knew we needed something with more teeth to get a smoother cut. Unfortunately, I didn’t do much research and grabbed the highest tooth count blade I could find, 180T. Um. Nope! That’s for plastic, plywood, OSB, etc. Luckily, it was relatively cheap and I’m sure we’ll use it for some other project. For cutting trim, all you need is 60-80T – that one ran us $50. A hefty price tag, but we will absolutely be using it in the future.
The Nailer
Full disclosure, Ryobi sent me its 18V cordless brad nailer to try out. And full disclosure, I LOVE IT. Ryan loves it. It’s fantastic and killed it with the project, no question about it. There’s no compressor to attach, it’s battery operated, and it’s perfect for trim, moulding and small furniture projects. Oh, and it’s super fun to use. KA-POW. KA-POW. KA-POW. So much power – can you tell I like it?
We just used the brad nails that came in the kit and they worked perfectly for nailing the trim to the wall.
Other Tools
We used a laser level to make sure the trim was straight on the stretches without the ceiling to guide us. Overall, I’m kind of indifferent to the laser level. I found myself using our big bubble level anyway, first to double check and later as the primary leveling tool.
I filled nail holes and joints with wood filler as opposed to caulk (because caulk shrinks) and sanded it with a 320 grit sanding block. I did, however, use white caulk to fill the gap between the trim and wall. See the little shadow between the white ceiling and the trim? I caulked there too, to get rid of that shadow.
The trim was already primed, but I used a primer + paint semi-gloss in off-the-shelf white to paint it, which took about three coats to get full coverage. I was pretty sloppy with painting, but only because I cut back in with blue paint to clean it up.
On the flip side, I was super neat with the stenciled wall – I used FrogTape to protect the stencil from both caulk and paint.
I also painted the ceiling, which is the worst thing ever. EVER. Up and down the ladder, ad nauseum, until my shoulders were screaming. I slept well that night.
Again, I used off-the-shelf flat white paint. I didn’t intend to do the ceiling, but once I put the paint on the triangles above the trim, I saw how gray the ceiling paint was. Yuck.
What else am I missing? Overall, it was a good project! We’re much more confident with cutting trim now, which wasn’t as bad as I expected. Once I got the visuals of how the pieces would fit together in my head, I was good to go. It was nice to bring the paint line down and make part of the wall feel like the ceiling. It makes the room cozier, for sure!
Tell me about your recent trim project. Or maybe you’ve painted a ceiling? If you have any tricks, do share!
