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One Room Challenge Spring 2024 | Week 4 | A case for casing! Week 4 of the ORC was all about casing. Casing wasn’t something I had given much thought to, until we moved into our home and there was none of it. The windows were bare with deep window recesses covered in textured paint and the doors had small 2” white borders all around them. For the first time, I was acutely aware of how casing makes a difference to the eye. Casing is the earrings of the house. It can really help finish off a room and in some cases even set the tone of the room. There are a lot of different styles from modern sleek flat trim to ornate multilayer Victorian styles. In planning for the upgrades to this house, I knew I wanted more robust casing, so I focused my visual inspo searches on European styles and British styles of casing that have a lot of detail and grandness to them. With the dining room we went more streamlined with three separate window casing, but in the loft, I wanted to make these windows look like one giant window. I wanted more curvature to the casing and more height compared to what we had done in the dining room or in Jaxson’s room.
Left: Jaxson's finished craftsman style window casing. Center: mid-project of living room window casing and beadboard chair rail. Right: Loft starting point with no casing.
Building out casing is easy. It’s just layers you add to a base. For this particular build, we used a lot of repurposed baseboard and culled lumber into creating the stool and inner casings. When I cut out the three pieces to create the stool, I made sure to account for enough overhang on either end to ‘carry’ the end casing pieces and still have a little room left over.
As well as, have enough overhang to meet up in the sections in between the windows with the adjacent stool piece. With careful planning and cutting, the seams become invisible with glue, wood filler, sanding, and paint.
To create the appearance of a giant window we needed uniform casing overlying the 8.5” of window framing in between the windows. Instead of buying giant boards, we used 4” primed mdf placed side-by-side to cover the area and then added a nicely detailed half round trim piece over the seam. This also covered the stool seams as well and instantly gives the appearance of one giant window.
Of course, don’t forget about your inside casing. Usually you install the stool, then the header, then the side jambs to complete the interior. With the header, depending on your design, you may want to incorporate a bigger depth to add a profile that sticks out from the window, giving the appearance of a ledge. Other times, you can add a piece of trim to create this, while other times, you may not want this look. It depends on the style you’re going for. In this case, we opted to add a 5” repurposed baseboard as the architrave sitting directly on top of the outside casing side jambs. We then added a piece of based cap on top of that to create a transition from the half round profile to the architrave that felt more deliberate.
To finish off the architrave, I used thick door casing, that matches our doors, to build the height, depth, and detail up of the top border. It wasn’t quite enough, so we found some quarter round to beef up the bottom border and voila the architrave was complete. Now onto the apron.
Left: Architrave Build Out Components. Center & Right: Finished Architrave
If you’re not familiar, the apron is the bottom portion of the window casing underneath the stool. It is the base of the window and balances out the architrave. This time, I wanted to play around with using crown for the apron, instead of a big piece of board. I love it!!
Both Images: Crown installed as the apron.
It gives the curved, more feminine details I was looking for, and some added depth, since it sits cantilevered away from the wall. To finish off the look, I found this really beautiful, delicate piece of trim, that I nailed into the outside edge of the still. It covers the seams of the three pieces coming together and just finishes off the look of the apron.
All, in all, this casing is amazing and I’m so happy with how it turned out!!
Stay tuned for another blog post on door casing, but for now, follow along in IG stories for ORC’s week 5 big push to build the custom cabinets and bookshelves. I’ve never built cabinets before and I’m excited and a little nervous about how they’ll turn out!
Follow @LueckyHome for more DIY fun!
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