Many moons ago (over 7 years) a close friend and colleague (I’m looking at you Matt Theule) told me that as a new home owner his favorite DIY magazine was The Family Handyman, A reader’s digest publication.  Yeah I know, that’s what I thought, what could Reader Digest do for me, even in an DIY mag? So I subscribed: Curse you Theule!

I send that little curse because of the extra work and responsibility and cost that I have now incurred due to that magazine!  How you ask, well it all starts with a little article from The Family Handyman that at the time seemed really neat and a great idea.  In the November 2003 Issue was an article on How to Install Craftsman Trim.  this is the picture that caught my attention.

Now isn’t that Just Great?  And the way the magazine takes you thru it, it seems so easy! It’s a Snap!

If you are wondering, here is how you make up all the elements of the molding.

So for almost 7 years now I have had it in the back of my mind, that some day I would put this in a house I own.  Silly Me!  You see, when it came time to plan out the house we are building and decided on the interior details (and materials) that were to be included in the price of our Kit-set home, when they asked me, what type of base board and door molding (they used the term Architrave) I thought to myself, “This would be a good time, to finally put in that craftsman molding I read about all those years ago” and so I told them, “leave those supplies OUT of the kit-set, I will supply my own!”.

So they did, so my house as assembled by the builder will have NO Moldings around the baseboard, the doors or the windows… which means of course I have no choice but put in the molding myself! What the hell was I thinking?  And not just one or two rooms, no the whole bloody house!  It seemed like such a great idea at the time!  So why am I sharing this with you?  Besides the benefit of of being able to whing publically? Well I’m going to meet with my cabinet maker to discuss what types of wood / cost are available to see if he can help me get my wood at a good price that will look good.  The original article called for “plain sawn red oak”, we will have to see if that is economically viable.

Here it is translated to a Metric (meaning Rational) measurement diagram

As you can see the base from which most is built is the 19mm x 89mm ( 3/4” x 3-1/2” ) board.  So first let’s calculate the perimeter measurement for all my rooms (which will give us the straight run of length we will need to cover).  I’ll do windows in a later cycle.

Here is our house by measurement again

So my Linear MM running areas are

So as you can see, I have my work cut out for me, on the positive side, I will be able to get a tablesaw, a compound mitre arm saw, and a planner all as part of my house construction (completely legitimate purchases), so the core of my wood working shop will get started.

Minor edit, so how much length of each type of board do I need?

MCH