DIY: How to Add Decorative Moulding to Your Home

If you're interested in adding a little face lift to a room in your home without spending too much money, decorative moulding may be perfect for you. It's inexpensive, but can make a dramatic difference in your room and in your room's appearance.

To begin adding your own decorative moulding, the first thing you need to do is measure your room. Measure the length of the top of each wall up at the edges of the ceiling. Measure each wall, add the numbers together, and then add a bit more, to account for the fact that you'll be cutting and seaming pieces together. If your room has four walls, a foot or two extra will give you plenty of wiggle room.

With your measurements in hand, go to your local building supply or home improvement store to pick out your moulding. One moulding for the top of the wall where it meets the ceiling is called quarter-round moulding. It is one quarter of a circle. Imagine a pie cut into fourths. Take one of the pieces, and push it up into that crack, and you'll see how the rest of the moulding is rounded over. That's a 'quarter-round', one quarter of a circle, rounded.

That's the most basic piece of moulding. Other options include having decorative grooves cut into that round edge or using entirely different shapes. You'll probably find a large (and possibly confusing) selection of different kinds of moulding to choose from. Consider how big your room is, and try to pick something that will look proportionate; a larger room can take much taller piece of moulding up top, while a smaller room may be overwhelmed by that.

While you're at the building supply place, be sure to pick up a package or two of finish nails. Finish nails are small with very small heads on them. This is so that you can push them all the way into the moulding and not have any heads showing after you're finished.

When you get home with your moulding, you'll start by laying it in place along the top edge of your walls. You may wish to hold it in place by adding little glue to the back of it, and then tap in your finish nails about every two to three feet. Make sure when you tap your nails, that you tap them until they are slightly below the surface of the wood. This will leave space to putty over them, later on.

As you come to the end of each piece of moulding, you'll need to join it to a new piece. The easiest way to do that is to cut both pieces at an angle, so that one of them slides behind the other. Then make sure to put a finish nail right through that splice to hold it good and steady.

When you come to the corners, you'll want to miter cut, this means that you cut each piece of moulding through its face at a 90 degree angle. Then when you put the pieces against each other in the corner, you won't have any gap. Again, you'll want to make sure to put a nail on each side of that corner to hold the ends securely in place.

Once you have all your moulding up, you'll go around and fill all the little gaps above your nails with a bit of wood putty. Smooth it with your finger or a damp cloth, so that the place where the nails went in is completely smoothed over. Now you can paint or stain your moulding. You'll be able to paint or stain right over the wood putty, and not have any nail heads showing. This will make for a professional looking job.

Adding decorative moulding to your rooms is a quick project that really adds a lot of character to the room. It is an inexpensive way to update your home and a project that you will probably have a lot of fun spending an afternoon doing.

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