Miles and Miles of Trim, Oh My

I had a vision and a plan, as I had many times before with this project, that I'd be in a position to get all interior trim painted prior to it being cut and installed.  Well, as visions and plans go, this one was no different - reality intruded and the advance painting was just not going to happen before the trim work was scheduled to be done.  We had a small debate (not quite rising to the level of a great debate) in which Rob insisted that it could be painted afterwards and I insisted it would be SO MUCH easier to paint it prior to installation.  (In fairness, Rob's trying desperately to keep this project on a reasonable timeline, and my weekend warrior work isn't getting the job done.).  Because I wasn't there when the trim was delivered, he kept trying to explain, over the phone, the enormity of my plan.  "There's about a quarter mile of trim in here, Amee, you just don't have time to get it painted ahead of time..."

I stewed for a while and finally was equally adamant that I was NOT going to have to TAPE miles and miles (note my tendency to exaggerate) of trim in order to paint it (which I would have to do once it was installed, since the walls are "mostly" painted).  Ugh.  I could not think of a less efficient way to proceed, I really couldn't, and I despise inefficiency.  Also - I hate taping, the paint results are never as neat and edges as clean as they should be, and I was going to avoid that at all costs.  The remedy?  The EDGES, and only the EDGES of all of the trim would be painted in advance.  That would delay installation by only a few weeks (again - keep in mind that I only have weekends to work on my projects) and would save me countless hours of taping (not to mention, rolls of painters tape). 

When I arrived in VA to paint, I quickly realized that Rob was right - there was a at least a quarter mile of trim - which might as well be miles and miles - here's one small pile of 20 foot sections.

The Adam's casing we had selected to frame the windows and doors came pre-primed, but I have to admit it was not in the best of shape - the primer was okay, but very sloppily applied, and the wood was so rough that I had to sand all the edges (using my now familiar old friend, the palm sander) prior to painting.  That added a few hours to the overall scope and did not make me happy.  After sanding, I carefully had to line the trim up on sawhorses a few pieces at a time, and then proceed to put two coats on both edges of each piece - four edges each piece in case you haven't done the math - that meant, I was painting miles and miles of trim edges TIMES FOUR.

At this point, you might be wondering why, if I was going to go to all this trouble for the edges, I didn't just paint the face of the trim, too, and be done with it.  Well, despite the compromise we had struck, trust me, I considered innocently (or not so innocently) doing just that.  But that would have added days to the project and, the clincher for me, all the trim still had to be cut, the edges mitered and then sanded, and after all that, the touch up would be enormous AND would not look as good as it would if I painted the faces all at once.  So, I stuck with getting the edges done.

Adam's casing, base boards, and crown molding all submitted to my single brush and, although it took a while, I was eventually able to get all edges painted on everything prior to the trim work install.  I did paint the full face of the crown molding - although I always wanted dentil molding, I was cursing it by the end.  Each dentil is a royal pain to paint and I finally stole a cheap kids watercolor paint brush from Val's watercolors to get the job done!

Pretty cool, huh?  Unfortunately, we just learned that they shorted us on baseboards, so another delivery will be made and 1/4 of the baseboards will still need to be edge-painted.  Never a dull moment!