Baseboards & Trim near you

When baseboards and floors change together, the sequence decides how clean the edge looks, and it shifts a little with the type of flooring going down.

Floating and nailed wood floors stop short of the wall, and something has to hide that gap. Quarter round is a quarter circle in section, so it projects as far from the baseboard as it stands tall. Shoe moulding is taller than it is deep, so it covers the same gap with a slimmer profile that many finish carpenters prefer. Both flex enough to follow a floor that dips between joists.

Either one should be nailed into the baseboard rather than down into the floor, so a floating floor can still expand and contract beneath it. The other option is to skip the extra moulding and set new baseboards thick enough to cover the gap directly on the finished floor, which gives a cleaner line but only makes sense when the baseboards are being replaced anyway.

Baseboards take more abuse than any other trim, from vacuum heads, boots, toys and wet mops, and in a basement they sit right where water shows up first. That makes the room, more than the style, the best guide to the material.

Baseboard style is largely a question of proportion. Taller baseboards suit high ceilings and older homes, while low, simple profiles fit modern rooms and basements with lower ceilings. Whatever the height, choose the baseboards and door casings together, because they meet at every doorway in the house.

Few rooms are square, level or flat, and baseboards expose every flaw because they run along the wall and the floor at once. Coped inside corners, which stay tight when a corner isn't square, are standard; on tall, detailed baseboards, cutting those copes is a large share of the labour.

Old baseboards can often go back on after a flooring job if they come off without splitting and the new floor is about as high as the old one. A thicker floor, damaged or water-stained pieces, or a profile you never liked are good reasons to replace them. A single damaged length can be spliced with a matching piece, while replacing a whole room at once avoids an obvious mix of old and new.

In older homes, baseboards and casings usually carry many coats of paint. Health Canada says a home built before 1960 probably contains lead-based paint and cautions that sanders, heat guns and blowlamps turn it into toxic dust and fumes. Prying baseboards loose cracks the paint along the top edge, and the chips land on a subfloor that is about to be covered, so have the paint tested before a flooring or trim project begins in a house of that age, and ask how debris will be contained and cleaned up.