Family Room One Room Challenge Week 3: Moulding, Moulding, Moulding.

If you are new to my blog, welcome! I’m Sanda Stojakovic and I’m the creator of My Design Playbook. A year ago my husband and I bought a 1970 Colonial house that needed many updates but we were so excited about this purchase that we knew we could turn this house into our home. Ever since we started on this journey to modernize our house I realized that we really enjoy this type of work and it quickly turned into something we love doing together. Follow along as we renovate our family room over the next few weeks for the Spring 2020 One Room Challenge and mark your calendar for the final reveal on June 25th!

Fall 2019 ORC can be found here.

If you missed previous weeks they can be found here: Week 1 and Week 2.

It’s week three of the One Room Challenge and majority of the week has been spent fantasizing about my favorite part of the family room renovation which is wall moulding. I have spend many hours reading about all different types of trimwork, how far apart moulding boxes should be, and the overall process of installing moulding panels. I have found so much inspiration in the images below.

The simplicity of the long panel moulding draws the eye up and gives the illusion of higher ceilings, which is one my main goals with the eight foot ceiling we have in the family room.

I love also love chair rail and paneled moulding with the dark moody color.

The intricate moulding here is makes a statement even with white walls. The addition of the floral decorative onlay pieces added to the panels really give it the Parisian vibe.

My trimwork design began with these two mock ups.

Option 1:

Option 2:

The red line represents wall moulding panels. After comparing option 1 and 2, option 1 felt too modern for the design esthetic I’m trying to achieve. Option 2 is more traditional and the better choice but a bit too busy with three sets of wall mouding panels so I simplified option 2 by removing the two extra panels presented there.

The next step was to determine how to best frame the walls with the panels. In particular, how big the panel box around the fireplace should be. I sketched out several different options but landed on this one. While not the best drawing it served its purpose. I decided I would split the fireplace wall into three sections with the middle section the largest and the two supporting moulding areas equal in size to create balance.

To get a better idea of the spacing of the moulding I used painters tape to create all of the moulding boxes that I will be installing. The painters tape also helped me get a better idea how far up I should place the first piece of trim. I decided the I would leave eight inches from the ceiling in case I want to add crown moulding later and six inches between each panel.

When I outlined the panel moulding between the two french sliding doors, I noticed that the space above the doors looked empty so I created another narrower moulding mockup to give me a better idea if should add moulding above the doors. I left the right door without the panel moulding for comparison. When I took a poll on my Instagram to see what everyone else though I should go with, almost everyone voted yes to add panels above the doors and I agreed. The painters tape was also a great visual for determining the thickness of the panels and ended up being very close to the size of the moulding thickness I ended up ordering.

Now that I have a good sense as to how I’m going to lay out the wall panels, I’m feel more confident in my choice of moulding design. Before I made a mockup using tape, I talked about my idea of adding moulding with my neighbor.

Today, the same neighboor gave me a book called 1001 Ideas for Trimwork. The Ultimate Source Book for Decorating with Trim and & Molding by Wayne Kalyn. What a timely gift. I spent some time reading through the book and it confirmed my suspicion that trim work make rooms feel larger and the ceiling taller.

If you don’t believe me here is an insert from the book by Wayne Kalyn;

“You might be concerned that extensive trimwork will make small rooms feel even smaller. In fact, the opposite occurs. Through a phenomenon called “geometric illusion”, trimwork often makes a room appear larger and wider. Long horizontal lines, for example, can cause an observer to feel that a room is larger and wider than it really is. Likewise, long vertical lines can make a lower ceiling appear higher than it actually is”.

The last sentence is the key. Before I received the book, my theory was that if I added long vertical lines without any breaks accomplished with chair rail, I could make my eight ft ceilings appear higher. Now I’m more confident that is true and I can’t wait to start installing all trimwork.

Thanks for following along. Be sure to check out other participants progress here. See you next week!