Farmhouse Trim – Budget Friendly DIY Remodel

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When remodeling your home, costs can add up extremely fast — especially the finishing touches. One large expense for a room can be the trim. Window, door, crown and baseboards – it all adds up quickly and can easily be a few hundred dollars. Today I’m going to show you my farmhouse trim tutorial and how we trimmed our entire mudroom for under $40!! That’s right – baseboards, ceilings, window and 3 doors – all under 40 dollars! This farmhouse trim tutorial is a game changer when working on a tight budget.

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Farmhouse Trim – Tools and supplies

• 3/8ths good one side fir plywood
• table saw
• palm sander & sandpaper
• white paint in satin finish or matte
• roller and tray
• paintbrush
• miter saw
• finish nailer, 16 gauge nails

Instructions

Take measurements

We had some 3/8ths plywood leftover from our shiplap wall, and that’s when the idea came to me that I could create farmhouse trim for the entire room and save a small fortune. First I measured all the wall lengths, then the doorways and the window last.

Then I decided how wide I wanted my trim to be. Our old trim was 2″ 1/4 fiberboard. I wanted something a bit wider so opted for 3″ for the ceiling, baseboard and doorways trim. I choose 4″ for the window in hopes of a farmhouse look and to help cover up the same badly damaged drywall.

Then I figured out how many sheets of plywood I would need. I needed one sheet and approximately 1/4 of a second for all the trim in this room. So off I ran to the store and picked up two sheets of good one side fir plywood ($22 a sheet wow!). I needed half a sheet for my laundry table and it never hurts to have extra for when inspiration strikes!

Trim can run anywhere from $10-$40 for 8 linear feet. Fiberboard trim is a cheaper way to go but still costly. Wood trim is high end pricy more for finished and ready to install. In total, I needed approximately 160 linear feet. The cost could be anywhere from $200-$800 for this one room alone.

I was able to do this entire room for under $40 and a day of labor. A little bit of hard work can pay off huge!

Cut your boards

Using a table saw is the easiest way to do this and gives you the ability to keep your 8 ft lengths. I bought this table saw and stand a few years back and it has gotten so much use. I really love this thing, it is easy to use and portable.

We set the table saw to 3 inches using a measuring tape for accuracy. Once we finished cutting our 20 pieces of 3 inch, we adjusted to 4 inches and cut out the trim for the window.

Sand your boards

I strongly dislike sanding but unfortunately, this is a step in most cases you just can not skip. Grab your palm sander and around an 80 grit sandpaper. I mainly focused on all my cut edges then switched to 220 grit and sanded the entire board.

This is a messy job, so make sure you use proper protective equipment such as a mask, safety glasses, etc.

Paint your farmhouse trim

Finding enough space for this can be rather difficult so I worked on 6 or so at the same time then switched them out. I laid them on a flat surface and used my roller to go over the fronts with my satin white paint.

I let the boards dry for a bit then stacked them together and rolled paint on all the side edges at the same time. Then I flipped them and did the opposite side.

Last, I took each board one by one and painted the surface once more and moved them standing straight up and down off to the side to dry. This also allowed me to have more room to start working on the next boards.

I didn’t have my paint sprayer then, or this would’ve gone much more quickly. It’s amazing how much time my sprayer saves me now!

Install your trim

Installing the trim is quick and easy. Because of the style I wanted, I didn’t cut any angles in my trim to splice them together. Instead I used straight cuts for a bold farmhouse look.

First, I started with doing the window trim. I decided to make my top board a bit longer (2″) just to give it some extra detail.

Using the miter saw, I cut the boards to the lengths I needed and nailed them onto the window frame making sure they were hitting something solid.

Then, I went around doing all the baseboards. Measure, cut, nail into place. My finish nailer is my favorite tool. It’s amazing how fast this goes!

I also did the same little overhang above the doors. I needed help for the top farmhouse trim. I tried to do it on my own but balancing and attaching to the wall is much easier with two people versus just one.

You can add caulking to the seams if you like. I chose not to since I wanted rustic farmhouse trim. And that is really all there is to it!

Farmhouse Trim – Complete!

What do you think? Now that you have seen how you can add farmhouse trim on a budget, are you ready to add this to your home? Which room are you going to tackle first? I would love to hear what you think in the comments below!

Be sure to check out our other DIY projects too!

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