A view of one's own

The window moulding trims aka window casings were in a "rough beat the heck up, crapy state." Dogs had gone through and damaged a good chunk of them. I laugh now, but when we first bought the home I adamantly refused to remove and replace any of the trim pieces. I thought it would take forever.
Boy do you end up learning a lot when remodeling. This project took about 2-3 hours with the assistance of my mom and hubby.

Rather than buy more mdf trim that is ridiculously overpriced, we decided to rip off the modern updates and go back to vintage trim.  Over the last few weeks we have been scouring our neighborhood for inspiration and looking at pinterest (of course).

Meanwhile hubby, mom and I have installed sheetrock, textured and painted a lot of crap stuff. I'm beat.

  

So as you can see the trend, here is our lil mock up for inspiration... 

We went with flat, preprimed pine at what Ana White calls the Orange store. It was surprisingly cheap, especially compared to that mdf junk.   Each window used 7 pieces that came precut and about 8' long. We could have gone with the longer boards but we had our small car with us that day and didn't feel like making another trip. However this turned out to be great because we are using the scraps for the staircase trim ...one day...maybe. 

 (Sizes are approximate)

• 3 stools (name uncertain?) (1 x 1.5" W)
• 1 header piece (1 x 3"W)
• 3 Left/right sides and one bottom apron ( (1 x 2.5" W)

Tools:

• tape measurer
• pencil
• brad nailer / nails
• chop saw

After we removed the existing molding (a little victory as I still don't know how I convinced my hubby to go with this) we noticed (duh) that the now green wainscoting was cut perfectly around the old trim. I really love thicker trims but I didn't want to mess with the charm of the beveled wainscoting.  Also we didn't glue these in as we wanted to be able to make any necessary changes to the windows in the future. 

Step one: measure, cut and install the bottom piece first- aka the apron. You want the side rails to match the width of the apron. This is easy as NO pieces are angled. Tip: keep in mind the width of your saw blade and cut long if you are worried about cutting too short. You can always cut it down. 

Step two: add two inches to the apron's measurements and mark all three of your stool trim boards. If you have wainscoting like we do - measure the depth of the wainscoting and cut that depth out of ONE piece of your boards.  

Step Three: Add your side boards. This should extend from the bottom stool to right above the head jamb.

Step Four: On the ground- or a prep table assemble your header (the top three pieces shown). Make sure the apron (aka window top casing) is flat and position the bottom stool flush. Affix with the brad nailer. Repeat with the top stool. Comprende?  Once assembled, attach to the wall.

Step Five: fill holes, let dry, sand and then paint. 

Voila! Isn't my garden beee-utiful?

xoxo,

Mr. and Mrs. gleeful

sources: 1. Source unknown 2. This Old House 3. Bathroom windows by Laughing Sun 4.  Natty by Design  5. This Old House