Painting Trim

A few years ago I had a painting company come to paint my foyer – it’s two storeys so I couldn’t have done it myself – anyways, while they were doing the estimate they asked if I’d like the trim repainted.

They told me that patching and painting the trim – even the same colour – really made a huge impact in a room. At the time I thought they were just trying to up-sell me on something I didn’t really need, so I didn’t get it done.

Little did I know how right they were.

Step 3 of my family room makeover was to get all of my trim painted and looking fresh and crisp.

I was nervous about doing it, but given that the built-ins had been done, the base below it looked disjointed somehow – so I had no choice.

I found a tutorial on Apartment Therapy showing how to paint baseboards on carpet – but since I don’t have permission to use their photos, I thought I’d take my own and share it (again) here:

Take some packing tape (I put black marker on it just so you could see it) and run it along the carpet and about 1/4″ up the baseboard.

Take your putty knife and tuck the top 1/4″ underneath the baseboards and lightly pat down the rest onto the carpet.

Do this all the way along making sure that the tape is tucked under – any exposed carpet is likely to end up a different shade.

Then paint away!

This is the baseboard beneath the built-ins and along the front of my fireplace so it went Metropolis grey.

The baseboards in the entire room needed a clean up, so I re-did all of them in white along with the windows.

The tape saved the carpet and I painted slightly up the wall so that when I repaint the walls I’ll be able to have a nice clean edge.

The one thing I will say is that once the tape is down you have to commit to painting the baseboards.
It can stay on the carpet for a day or two, but anything more and you’ll run the risk of the carpet becoming gummy with the adhesive.