HOW TO INSTALL BASEBOARD. Everything you need to know for an easy flawless install

so in this video i'm going to show you how to install baseboard basically foolproof methods to get a flawless finish every time and we're going to cover measuring cutting and installation along with diagnosing and fixing common issues that come from installing over bad floors and walls so before we move forward with the tutorial the baseboard being installed is the wobm004 uh and that is a seven inch slick beautiful profile made by windsor one and you can find it at windsor one.com and of course with a shoe anyway let's uh cut some wood so we're gonna measure for baseboard one of the tape there the other end here so it's common to measure from the bottom because it keeps the measuring tape stable but what it also does is it doesn't give you a true number so right now this piece is as tight as it can get to the wall okay so if i was to cut this measurement at 131 and a quarter which is giving me it's gonna be too tight especially if you're mitering so what i do is i use a scrap block not only does it check the wall but it gives me a true stop and where this piece is going to stop at the wall and this piece of scrap i have it at 10 inches so i can just measure up to here so it's going to be 121 and an eighth so i add the 10 inches it's 131 and an eighth and that's what it's giving me here so i do this so i don't have to keep basically traveling from the saw back and forth and i can just cut a piece once and know it's going to fit i don't worry about this too much with coping because you can be a little bigger and the cop's still going to snap in but if you're mitering i strongly suggest using a black format so now we're measuring this wall on the right side we just measured this one so this one butts up against casing and again i'm taking my measurement if you're mitering use a block to get that true measurement but i'm not mitering i'm coping so one thing that i am going to check is since this piece is a left piece and this piece is going to get the outline cut so it can meet perfectly against sorry against this one i am going to butt two of them together like this when i'm taking the measurement for the cope side which is this one to check for any potential gaps these gaps will happen at the bottom or the top and we'll get into how to fix them same thing when you're measuring pieces that butt up against casing or cabinet or what have you is you take the measurement below and you got 115 and you write it down right you're measuring on the bottom but then when you put your scrap you have this extra eighth of an inch gap so your true number is going to be 1 15 and an eighth so you can either write down that 115 and again note on your notes that you got to add this eighth of an inch to the top or you can cut the entire thing at 1 15 and an eighth and come in and adjust it which i will show you how last scenario is measuring two exterior miters so say you come in you measure 55 you cut the piece at 55 you go to fit it and it is short at the top by a quarter inch again this is just due to bad walls floors ceilings you name it right a lot of these homes are older they're not going to be perfect so what you would do is you measure but then you put your scrap block you notice that the top of the wall is sticking out quarter of an inch so you take your 55 and add that quarter of an inch making your true number true measurement 55 and a quarter last step when measuring to an exterior corner is we're going to check the angle they're not always going to be 90. so it's important to check this so you don't cut them out of 45 and you're left with a big gap at the back or front so we're going to check that all right cool that's 44 and a half so we can go 45 it's not a big deal but it is important to check every exterior corner so we're getting ready to cut the baseboard now two things are gonna happen with these taller baseboards this one this channel is not going to allow the piece to sit completely flat against the fence because it's too tall for the fence so the cuts going to be leaning back so it's going to be off and another thing is well let me show you a lot of times it's not going to cut all the way through actually most of the times it's not going to cut all the way through so i'm going to show you one solution that takes care of both of those things the solution is putting plywood over your fences and screwing them from behind so this way even with the channel the piece can sit flat against the fence and it's not tilted like this and also it pushes the material out just a little bit so it can clear a bigger radius of the blade helping you cut all the way through so let's see it in action there you guys go we have our total wall numbers from end to end but we're coping right so do you account for the code what do you do you still measure and cut your piece to this number so on the left i always cope my left side we're going to have a left miter that we're going to cut out later and then on the right side we have a flat piece so a flat cut like this that doesn't change you don't have to account for the cope nothing we're still going to cut our miter measure 131 and a quarter and cut it flat we need to cut our miter now generally i would just flip this piece upside down line up my mark on my zero clearance and get a precise cut but if that's not an option what i'm gonna do is something my buddy gary cat showed me and that's creeping into the cut and that's precisely moving the piece back and forth while keeping a safe distance so say this is the mark i'm going to cut right here i'm going to line up my blade just a little in front of it and that's so i can creep into the cut so how you creep into the cut is you keep your index finger against the fence so if the piece was to pull you in you have a stop right here and you would just use your thumb to slide it back and forth so that's what we're going to do we're going to roughly line up the cut and creep into it [Applause] [Music] so again we cut our left side we got a miter we're going to hook onto that miter to the long point and then come here and mark the 31 and a quarter inside of the cut and cut that flat okay so we have our mark at 131 and a quarter now we're going to line it up with a serial clearance and cut so we have this interior 45 corners so what do we do with it in layman's terms we're going to remove anything that is in white and it's going to leave us with a cope so a coke is basically an outline and that allows you to have one of the pieces that go in the corner flat like this and still get a nice beautiful corner like this and the beauty is that the wall doesn't have to be 90 it could be a couple degrees off each way it could be a couple degrees off this way or that way the floor could be off this way or that way and you're still going to get a nice tight fit with a coat now let's try that with mitering mitering is still good but you have to be really precise because with a cop we can always round up and you're still going to get a pressure fit it's still going to fit with a miter that's not going to happen if you're a little bigger one of the pieces going to dig into the drywall like this if you're a little smaller obviously you're going to be able to see that and it's hard to shim it and adjust it and also if the floor is off you got to adjust for that if the walls are off you got to account for that miter so adjusting a cope is infinitely easier so [Music] so you guys just saw me cope using a jigsaw in the collins cold foot a colin's coat foot is a rounded base that replaces your flat base and allows you to steer and maneuver easier on complex cuts um i don't use a grinder because it's just way too dusty for me and it can be dangerous if you're not paying attention and a coping saw still a great way to do coping but sometimes i'll sit there and do 30 or 40 of these at once if it's a big job and i can't do it by hand it's just way too fatiguing so so that's why i prefer using the jigsaw anyway with a lot of these moldings if it's a flat piece like this that's this long you can just flip it over after you miter and cut this with your miter saw and a nice back bevel i tend not to make that a habit because i'm not always installing moldings by rinse or one that are stored properly a lot of times some of the moldings that i deal with are going to be a little cupped so i can have a nice straight coat like this but when it meets the other piece i'm going to be left with a gap at the top and bottom because of that belly so so now that we covered what coping is this is still the 131 and a quarter piece so it had the miter but we did the cope on it so now let's go fit it so we're getting ready to install this piece right here but if you guys remember when we were measuring and we did the mock-ups there was a little gap at the bottom so i'm gonna show you how to fix that right now so this is the wall where we're gonna install that long piece but if you guys remember when we were measuring we put our two little mock-ups and we noticed that there was a gap at the bottom so that means that if i just fit this piece as is and just nail it by the time i go to fit this piece i'm going to be left with a big gap at the bottom so say that the gap is 3 16 all we're going to do is take these pieces off and put a screw in the corner that sticks out three sixteenths just like that then we're gonna put our piece back and check the fit boom there you guys go another scenario say that you go to fit your mock-ups and you get a gap at the top again we accounted for that gap so we added the size of this gap which is 3 16. we added 3 16 to our overall number so then we come in with a coat we fit it we didn't change the angle or anything and we're just going to take the scribe to it just like that and then we're going to cut this with the jigsaw we're going to take our piece and just cut it with a jigsaw so we got it cut so now let's go fit it last step before actually installing the pieces i found one stud and then i checked 16 to the left and then 16 to the right i have studs there too so i'm going to write down this number 43 and three-quarters from the right and i'm going to transfer this to my piece hook my measuring tape on the right side come in mark 43 and three-quarters and then move it to the nearest 16th mark 16th marks are layouts for framing and they're going to be marked on red so once i have it there that means that i can come here mark this one i know i have a nail there i know i have a nail there and then come this way so i got all my marks and you can always just mark the 43 and three-quarter put the piece in there and then lay your tape down on the floor and follow the red marks with your nail gun i don't do it that way i like making a habit of marking the stud locations on the piece because of crown molding if you do this on crown molding it is a million times easier than trying to float your measuring tape so we're ready to put this long piece in we're gonna go cope first right there get it as tight as we can and we're going to pop a nail in that corner we roughly put our coat here we're going to pop a nail right on this bottom side here and it might look a little open but once we snap the other side in place we're going to come back and check it out we fit the cope on that end now we're going to fit this other end this is really simple one hand is pushing out and the other one is pushing in and that's for snap copes all righty now for the fun part there you go all right so we pressure fit the piece now coming back to check on the left coke as you can see there's no caulking or anything it just closed right up and it looks looks as tight as it can get now so uh yeah let's uh get this piece nailed push these in and nail it on my marks i'm using a 16 gauge nailer and i'm going to go bottom plate and cleat it into the stud okay so we're getting ready to install this piece if you guys remember that is the corner that we adjusted so we know that the cope there is going to fit but now coming up to here we could have cut the angle when we put our mock up and notice any gaps we could have cut that angle but i left it a little long so i can show you guys how to field adjust really quickly so to field adjust i'm just going to make sure that my left side is tight and i'm just going to take what's called the preacher block this is a block with the height of the baseboard and then the thickness of the casing and the baseboard cut out and that's why i can put it right next to it it's going to be tight up here all the way to the top and then i can just mark the top and the bottom and this way when i cut it it's going to meet with the casing perfectly but as you can tell right away we have an eighth at the top and almost nothing at the bottom so let's go get this cut so to cut this piece i have two different marks i have to mark at the top and the mark at the bottom so i'm going to line up this top mark on the seam right here that's the scene between the metal and the insert so i'm going to line that up right where those meet and then i'm going to swivel the miter the seam again to where it meets the mark at the bottom so it's just slight but i'm going to lock it in come in close line it up with my cedar clearance and cut and all right so we got to cut now let's fit the cope like that and now this side alrighty no visible gaps now let's go check the code code looks great as well okay so now let's talk exterior miters now again we took our measurement put a scrap to account for any indifferences in the wall and also took the angle of this wall because it's not always 90. so we took that so we can cut our miters to the correct angle so they can fit nice and tight like this um and again that's because your wall's not always going to be 90 so you've got to cut the 45 and it's a 94 degree wall you're going to get an open miter and then you're going to fill it in and do all that one thing to note is say that you used to scrap but for some reason you're getting say you're getting a gap at this bottom right so what you would do the beauty about moldings is that they have this channel so you would just run this through the table saw or just run a foot down with a jigsaw to make basically flatten up the piece so it can meet a little nicer with the bottom and you can do that for the top as well all right so now to glue and clamp through a little glue on the miter on this one as well so we're going to fit it like that and then clamp it and the reason why we are clamping is because it allows it to stay tight during moisture changes and also anybody coming around the corner kicking it you don't want that miter falling apart so if you don't have these called miter clamps basically what you can also do is just glue it up let it sit like a minute and then pop some nails in it it can be a little tricky and they can slip and slide not allowing you to get a tight corner but that also does the trick if you don't have miter clamps so say we got a wallet 20 feet that means we got to join two pieces together your first instinct would be to miter them so they can meet this way but here are some issues with this is that with moisture changes even if you were to get a really good glue up these are going to slip and slide all over the place that's why any home you walk into that's got this type of joint you can see the seam immediately and also they are impossible to line up a much better joint in my opinion is going to be two straight cuts with vowels in between so this basically is not going to allow the pieces to slip and slide like a miter would and we're coping so we can pressure fit this so even if we get a slight gap once you snap those pieces into place this is going to tighten up giving the glue the proper pressure to um to work efficiently so obviously you don't want to pressure fit these if you are mitering and if you're mitering you can still use this method just throw some pinch dogs in between and that's going to clamp up this joint but in my opinion this joint is going to look better it's easier to sand and finish it's a lot more durable and it's just easier to install so as long as you get a method to throw those dowels in perfectly which i will eventually show a video um this is this is the best method for joining two pieces together so so now we're getting ready to do the shoe molding i don't want to spend a lot of time with shoe molding but what i'm going to do is i'm going to cut that piece that goes along that way flat this piece flat sorry what's going on with my hands and i'm just going to measure this one cut it and do a double cope so we have 129 and three quarters so i'm going to cut a miter on both sides and cope it so for that 129 and three quarters i'm just gonna cut a miter on the right side hook it to this miter right here and mark the left all right so we got a hook on the right side now we're marking the left 129 and three quarters so we're going to cut this miter real quick now we're just going to cut it and cope it on to coping shoe molding still going to use a jigsaw probably just as quick with a coping saw just shoe molding but i'm going to make a relief cut down the middle and then carve out the rest and even if there's a little residue i'm going to show you a cool trick to clean it up super quick all right i didn't get as much residue but if you do have a lot i'm going to take a piece of scrap shoe molding wrap it around some sandpaper and just file away that way get the perfect profile so only works in single cut profiles so shoe molding would be a perfect example but anyway so now with my middle piece cut all i got to do is cut that one and that one flat no reason to go to the miter so i'm just going to use some scissors so this one is 154 and this one is 114 and a half super quick got both of them marked again no reason to go back to the miter saw and i'm just going to trim them with the all right again we cut those flat ends and they're going to be a little tight but just got to pressure fitting and you're good even if you've got a slight gap there no worries the cop's going to cover that up now for the right side same thing flat and flat and just going to pressure fit it in and nail it so now fitting our double coke got the cope on the left shot and nail now let's go to the right and shoot a nail there all right so now we got the coat on the right we're just going to put a nail there and again it's very important to shoot into the bottom plate not into the floor okay so now with that there we can push this in and it's going to tighten up the cops on both ends so that about some setup for the baseboard installation hopefully you guys learned something new hopefully you guys enjoyed and again this profile is by winsor one and the link to it is in the description uh and next to the videos we're gonna cover crown molding so i will see you then take care

Channel: CARPENTRY BY MAR

Views: 35,011

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Id: nTOkXwrrj48

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Sun May 08 2022