How To Hide Nails In Trim

Synopsis: Tyler Grace, remodeling contractor and Fine Homebuilding ambassador, lays out a handful of tips, tricks, and principles that will help you lot hone your skills and get the all-time finish carpenter that yous can be. From acclimating your materials to taking care of your tools, existence precise with fasteners, and keeping your workspace neat, these 10 essentials draw what'due south needed to accomplish trim installations that are precise, effortless, painless, and pristine.

As a remodeling contractor in southern New Jersey, I perform the work of diverse trades on each of my projects, just finish carpentry is something I enjoy more almost anything else. I am a scrap of a perfectionist and a stickler for the details, and so what could be ameliorate than getting paid to possess those personality traits on the chore and then manifest them through my work?

By the time you get to the finish phase of a job, you do not want to exist aggravated, stressed, frustrated, and out of patience. Trim installations should be precise, effortless, painless, and pristine. You are past the betoken of heavy hammers, beater blocks, and brute force. In my opinion, what separates a skilful carpenter from a great carpenter is someone who can think ahead and plan, comprehend their tail, account for inconsistencies, remain organized, piece of work fluidly, and be efficient while doing and then. Hither you will find a scattering of tips, tricks, and principles that volition assist you hone your skills and become the best terminate carpenter that you tin be.

1. Plan for trim from the get-become

A quality cease-carpentry project requires acceptable forethought and planning. Success is not a fluke or coincidence. If you want to deliver a corking product, you need to plan to do so. You cannot simply show upward on 24-hour interval 1 with your tool chugalug and expect to knock it out of the park.

I of the best things yous can practise is have the time to walk the task afterwards mechanical crude-ins are consummate. Mark all of your studs on the subfloor, and highlight critical areas such equally the location of utilities and where blocking is needed. And document the job site with photos. I constantly refer back to my phone while trimming to meet what is backside the walls. It's saved me many errant nails over the years.

Now is also a not bad time to install whatever blocking that will aid in your trim, millwork, or cabinetry installation. Ensuring you have structure where kitchen crown will be installed, cabinets will be hung, stair skirts are located, and trim will be installed will save y'all boatloads of fourth dimension throughout the duration of the project. Information technology will as well reduce the number of callbacks yous have downwards the road. Start wrapping your head effectually the finish carpentry to come at the rough-carpentry phase of the project. Information technology will make your life much easier when the time comes to break out the compressors and saws.

2. Acclimatize your materials

Wood moves. It is affected by temperature and moisture. You must do everything that you lot can to go your textile to the task site as early as possible to acclimate. The job site must also be conditioned. It does not thing if your trim or cabinets testify upward to a task a year early if they're sitting in a hot and humid work site. As soon every bit the HVAC is fired up, and the moisture is drawn from the space, those tight joints volition not be so tight anymore.

There is no specific amount of time that it will take for your trim and millwork to acclimate to a site. You lot take to mensurate the wet content of the woods and the substrate to which yous are applying the material. I have had molding dropped that was in a safe range to install on 24-hour interval i, and I take had lumber dropped that after a week still required dehumidifiers to reduce the moisture content of the wood. I recommend getting to the job when the material is delivered, measuring the existing site conditions and the moisture content of the wood, and tracking them until they are both inside a stable range independently and with respect to each other.

I do my best to ensure that the moisture content of trim in a conditioned infinite is between 6% and 10% prior to installation. Typically it gets delivered from an unconditioned infinite and arrives with a wet content between 12% and 14%. The relative humidity in the room will affect how quickly that newly delivered trim will acclimatize. I as well aim for the moisture content between the material and the substrate to which it will exist applied to be within 2% to 3% of each other. Installing properly acclimated trim with a 7% wet content onto plywood or drywall that has a moisture content of 16% will wreak havoc on that installation. They are nine% off from each other and the trim will describe the moisture from the substrate.

3. Stabilize your materials

Acclimating your materials and dialing in site conditioning is a fantastic start, just it is not ever enough. My feeling is that nosotros should exercise all that we tin to ensure our installation remains intact for years to come up. How do we do that aside from acclimation? Here are a few things that I do to assist command pesky material movement.

Prime number all of your drywall or plaster prior to installing trim. Primer seals the surface of the substrate and reduces the transmission of moisture from one cloth to another. As well, back-prime whatever unfinished lumber to ensure the material is completely sealed. The more we can control how much moisture can penetrate the materials, the better off nosotros are.

Ensure that areas around windows, mudsills, doors, and floors are air-sealed. Leaking air will create temperature fluctuations inside the space which will affect your installations. I carry around a can of spray foam while installing trim. That way, I tin seal off any drafts prior to installation.

For interior millwork, I do non seal my terminate cuts with primer. With proper acclimation, you should not take plenty movement to create any major moisture manual through those surfaces. I exercise use mechanical joinery whenever possible. Although zero tin actually prevent wood from moving when it wants to motility, glue, adhesive, tenons, pocket screws, biscuits, and other mechanical joinery will help immensely. It is an additional layer of protection to ensure a long-lasting installation.

four. Sort and break down stock wisely

Properly sorting and breaking down trim and millwork parts is not only one of the first steps of many trim jobs, simply done right, it improves the quality of the piece of work, makes the most of the material, and saves you trips to the lumberyard when you run brusk.

Running baseboard is a good case. While it may exist more user-friendly to run down your cutlist and cut each piece of baseboard in sequential social club, you should instead cut all of your longest lengths first and set them bated. There is nix worse than needing to purchase more stock because you ran brusque of long lengths, and there is no demand to cut a xvi-in. piece of baseboard out of a sixteen-ft. piece of stock unless you have no other pick. As you lot go, save all of your fleck pieces to employ for returns, closets, and other choppy areas like halls and bathrooms.

Place damaged boards aside to use in an inconspicuous area. Painters can oftentimes fix damaged boards, but use them inside of a closet, backside a sofa, or in an cranium or basement space where imperfections affair less. Do not utilise the worst piece of trim in the antechamber of the home where it volition exist seen as soon every bit you lot walk in the door.

Finally, e'er double-cheque your lumber at delivery, non when you are strapping on your tool chugalug and setting up your saw. Ensure that you lot have extra stock and that what was dropped at the site is what you ordered. It would be very disappointing to show upwardly to a task with the cease-carpentry crew just to realize that yous are curt on material, or the fabric is incorrect or damaged. That's time and coin lost while the crew waits for the right material to arrive.

5. Employ the correct fasteners the right manner

Not all fasteners are created equal. Information technology is important to sympathize how fasteners work, when to utilise various gauges, and why we use different fasteners for unlike applications. Some concur ameliorate than others, some accept more drawing ability, some are easier to conceal, some are used in the identify of clamps, and some accept a higher shear strength.

When I first started installing trim, I always questioned which fastener to use when. I believe there are no steadfast rules, but common sense is an incredibly powerful outset. Most trim is ornamental and simply needs to exist able to back up its own weight, such every bit casing, baseboard, wall details, crown molding, and cornices. Other trim and millwork needs to be able to handle loads, similar door jambs, cabinetry, and thresholds. I prefer to use the smallest fastener possible for each task to aid create a ameliorate pigment or stain finish.

Cabinetry must be held in place with structural fasteners. Drywall screws have very niggling shear force, and cannot support the load of the cabinet and their contents. If you lot have gotten away with installing cabinets with drywall screws in the past, it is probably because of the friction caused past the pressure betwixt the wall and the chiffonier, and not the shank of the screw. You must ensure that you penetrate the framing adequately besides and choose an appropriate-length fastener for cabinetry. I prefer using a fine-thread structural screw with a head that locks into a specialized drill bit. These screws are stronger and easier to bulldoze, and your driver won't jump off the fastener and damage the cabinetry.

Prehung doors and door jambs require a fastener that is long plenty to penetrate the framing, but also thick plenty with a substantial head to reduce move. Typically jambs and prehungs are installed with 15-ga. nails, but I oftentimes get away with 16-ga. nails, ensuring that I adequately boom my casing into my jamb. This locks the assembly together and secures information technology equally ane unit of measurement.

Baseboard, casing, and crown molding can exist installed with 18-ga. or xvi-ga. fasteners depending on how much holding power you need. I like assisting my installation with adhesive so I can use a smaller-gauge fastener, which finishes meliorate and the piece is yet fully supported with the adhesive. This technique is great for prefinished cabinetry trim and millwork. You tin dorsum-glue the trim and use a headless pivot to hold information technology in place until the agglutinative cures, which requires less putty and results in a cleaner install.

6. Be precise with placement

Every subtrade should have the following trade in mind. Carpenters are not an exception to this rule. Typically the painters follow the trim carpenters, and you should do all that is within your power to make their lives easier. Whenever it is possible, y'all should attempt to hide nails where they will be covered by succeeding layers of trim. Nail casing where a backband will cover your holes, blast baseboard depression enough that the shoe molding or quarter-round laps over the fasteners, nail fascia or frieze where the bed molding will hide the brads, and so on.

Moldings should exist attached in a specific blueprint and consequent manner. Ensure that nails penetrating the jamb are in the aforementioned horizontal plane equally the nails for the casing. Line your nails up on baseboard, cap molding, and transitional moldings. Does this bear on the structural integrity of the installation? It does not, but it shows that you care, information technology makes the painters' lives easier past non having to search for fasteners, and it ensures that you do not miss whatever necessary fastening locations.

When fastening prefinished moldings or stain-grade trim, nail placement is even more critical. Divide your cloth length into equal segments so that whatever visible fasteners are uniform and neat, ensure the nail is non proud or also deep, and boom with the grain where possible to disrupt the grain of the wood as little as possible. A nail placed with the grain of the wood will enter the material and set itself without burdensome and damaging the expanse around the fastener. All of these efforts show that yous have integrity for your craft, and they also make for a better finished product.

vii. Take intendance with your tools

Y'all tin own the all-time tools in the world, but if you lot do not know how to utilize them, how to maintain them, or how to melody them, they are worthless. Always protect your tools. I violent drop of a miter saw can create out-of-square cuts that will make you lot want to pack it in and quit. Every good carpenter should know how to tune their miter saw. Y'all need to understand how to ensure that the fence is square to the blade and coplanar on each side of the blade. You should be able to inspect the table of the saw and adjust the height, detents, bevels, and miters. A well-tuned miter saw is worth its weight in gold.

Make sure that you know when it is time to sharpen your bits and blades. A good carpenter understands when you tin get away with a quick cleaning, when yous need a full sharpening, and when you lot must supervene upon a bit, blade, or chisel. After every job I sort through my sawblades, router bits, knife blades, chisels, and aeroplane irons and inspect them. I dispose of those items that are past their usable life bridge, I package blades that demand to be shipped off to exist professionally sharpened, I clean pitch off blades that are however in decent shape, and I sharpen my irons and chisels on sharpening stones. Having sharp blades is not simply safer, but information technology creates cleaner and tighter joinery.

It is also important to make clean your tools to ensure that metal is not rusting, bearings are lubed, electronics are clean, and brushes are fresh. At the end of the twenty-four hours I always vacuum the sawdust off of my tools. Many people accident compressed air into their tools, which drives dust and droppings into the motor, electronics, bearings, and seals. This is not platonic and will create problems down the road. Invest in high-quality tools and routinely take intendance of them; yous will be rewarded with well-performing, reliable equipment for years to come.

viii. Minimize your steps

In order to be efficient as a end carpenter, you lot must understand economic system of motility. Each chore and movement must be purposeful and deliberate. Each added step and trip dorsum to the saw reduces efficiency and in turn reduces profitability. Therefore, each project should be broken downwards into repeatable tasks. If possible you lot should consummate each job prior to moving onto the next. For example, y'all should prep your entire chore for trim prior to beginning trimming. It is non as efficient to cut back drywall, sand down mud, and address out-of-foursquare corners as you go equally it is to do it all at once. If you have to stop what y'all are doing to grab dissimilar tools and then make clean up earlier getting back to it, you are losing a lot of time and wasting a lot of energy.

Exercise your best to batch-cut parts. Information technology is possible to mensurate each window and/or door and and then summate all of your dimensions for stools, aprons, and casing at once. Yous tin can do it at a workstation or at the saw—it does not demand to exist done at each window or door. You lot can pre-cope all your ends at once, so that you do not need to constantly be adjusting and switching the saw, back-cutting, and filing. Information technology is much faster to line up all your cuts at once and accident through each task entirely than information technology is to hop back and forth.

Employ hand planes whenever possible. Yous tin can relieve a lot of footsteps and trips back to the saw by having a quality low-angle block plane to conform miters, back-bevel a scribe, or relieve the back of a slice of molding to flush out a miter. Every finish carpenter should accept a high-quality plane in their tool belt.

Exercise your all-time to reduce the amount of times y'all switch between nail guns or fastener sizes. Ideally, use multiple nailers—merely if that is not financially viable, learn to nail off molding in a way that allows you to switch nailers once throughout the chore. Billowy back and forth between an xviii-ga. and a 16-ga. nailer for every door, window, and baseboard can waste product a lot of time.

nine. Know when and how to scribe

A decent cease carpenter should comprehend the fundamentals of scribing. You lot must understand if you lot are scribing to be parallel or scribing to exist plumb, level, and foursquare. Non all situations telephone call for plumb, level, and square, and doing so can, at times, make the irregularities more pronounced. You must be able to grasp the nuances of each and know when to employ the appropriate principle.

Scribing to an irregular surface volition draw attention to that transition. At times this is practiced, and at times this is less than desirable. A complex scribe around a natural rock or brick wall can showcase your carpentry talent and create a tight articulation that makes an incredible focal point. On the other hand, scribing a baseboard to an irregular or uneven tiled floor can highlight the undesirable flooring irregularities, and is at times meliorate bearded with i gradual cut.

Scribing should be an accurate and finely tuned technique. It helps to back-bevel the molding you are scribing, and then that once y'all are ready to make a final laissez passer, you do not have to grunter out so much cloth. It is easier and more accurate to but remove a portion of the stock when fine-tuning your scribes. I typically apply a combination of a tablesaw, a track saw, a belt sander, a Festool RAS (a grinder-blazon tool with grit collection), and a hand airplane to scribe moldings and millwork.

10. Keep it neat

Terminal just not to the lowest degree, you must maintain a clean and organized workspace. Finish carpentry requires skill and patience. You lot are oftentimes working in and around completed spaces and components that must non be dirtied or damaged. Having a tidy, well-idea-out, organized workspace can brand or interruption morale and the overall project.

A carpenter should accept the forethought to set their workspace for the duration of the projection. Y'all do not want to exist constantly altering, adjusting, or moving your setup for various tasks. Adequate space to function and preclude impairment to existing surfaces is critical.

I adopt to create stations to perform each task. I will create a cut station for my miter saw, a station for my tablesaw and outfeed, a large area for assembly, a place to break down larger pieces of plywood or cabinet parts, a infinite for scribing, and a identify for fasteners and tools. At the end of each day you must reorganize, neaten up, and provide a clean slate for the following day. Starting each day with clutter creates haste, inefficiencies, and mistakes, and reduces quality. Having a make clean, organized workspace and chore site likewise shows your customer that y'all respect their dwelling house, you respect your craft, and yous respect yourself.

Tyler Grace is a Fine Homebuilding ambassador and owner of TRG Habitation Concepts in Haddon Heights, North.J. Drawings by Dan Thornton.

From Fine Homebuilding #303