BASE AND CASE By Randy Mate

By: New Castle Remodeling  10/07/2011
Keywords: Building Construction, Building Contractors, Remodeling

 Base, short for baseboard, is the decorative wood, or other material, at the base of the wall. Case, short for casing, is the material that goes around the outside of the door or window opening. If the decorative wood is at the top of the wall, it is called crown molding. You can change the look of your "castle" by changing the trim (meaning case, base, crown, etc.) You can pick a large base molding and then complement that with a similar crown molding. It could be painted or stained wood. You can then change the casing to match your base and crown. If you like, you can do a detail at the top of the casing around the door, putting in some type of a plinth block (square piece at the corner of the casing). The main point is that this is just trim and it can all be changed out (replaced) without moving walls, without a major remodel. Yet, it can make a big difference in the look of a house. Depending on the age of the house and how many layers of flooring have been put in it, that depends on how to proceed. Sometimes the trim is buried in the floor layers. Sometimes you end up with a hole that is 3/4" deep. In older houses, if trim is removed and leaves a hole (such as trim that looks like it is only 1.5" tall, but is really just buried behind layers of floor), you can put the new trim on with the bottom at floor level, then put a shoe molding (small trim) on to hide the gap. To replace all trim, strip everything there, base, case and crown. First, the thing you put back on is the casing down to the floor and any plinth blocks. This is done first because the baseboard stops at the casing. The joint where the base and case meet is a butt joint (two ends together with straight cuts), not a mitered joint (two joints meet at a corner, each cut at a 45 degree angle to make a 90 degree corner.) Then, you normally put on the base. You can do the crown molding before or after the case and base because it is independent. The fact is, all this sequencing is a general rule. Any given house has to be looked at as far as sequence, such as molding running into a doorway or into windows. Before starting, go into a lumber store or a store that sells trim, and get samples of base and case. See how they tie together. Get a couple of samples of the casing and a plinth block to lay out how you want it to look, because the size of the plinth block and size of casing have to be compatible. It will also make it easier when you have the contractor come over for him to know what he’s going to be doing and what’s involved in your project. Realize when picking out your material, you can go multi-layered on molding. This means you may start out with a 6" piece of molding to which you attach a 4" and attach a 2" on top of it to create a profile. There is a lot you can do with changing the molding in your house. In a house we recently did this for, it made the doors seem bigger and gave it a more modern look. Give us a call and let us consult you. Happy trimming!