Baseboards

I’m now breaking into the next project: baseboards. My handy old man, who’s got a wood shop out at his ranch, was gracious enough a couple weeks ago to cut me about 120 feet of material for the base molding of the place. Thanks Pop!

He ripped 120 linear feet of three separate molding pieces:
— the base
— the topping, which he rounded off with a router
— the ribbon

I went with black to anchor the room down. Last week I stained all the material Minwax Ebony #2718 , figuring to match the floor and lattice. I forgot to take pix of the freshly cut wood beforehand, but I trust you can use your imagination.

After the stain dried, I realized that pine is probably not the best wood suited for stain. (Write that down.) It’s too soft. So I backed up, went out and picked up a quart of Black Magic in eggshell, threw down some plastic last night, and painted the bases and some of the ribbons. They’ll dry by tonight, after which I’ll grab the toppings out of the garage and do those in another session with a foam brush. Then it’ll be time to pencil off the math, break out the chop saw, and grab the hammer. I could probably rent a nail gun this time, but I’ve grown to enjoy the Zen of pounding nails by hand.

Base molding is all new to me, but my guess is that it’ll be a cakewalk compared to the binary floor job.

To be continued…