Sorting the Trim

January 1, 2026

With all our house projects this year, one of the things that fell by the wayside was our trim. In our planning, the trim work ended up taking a backseat to some of the other things we wanted to do, so it just… waited.

For those that may remember, we got our first floor trim a while ago (a long while ago, actually), back in 2024.

What happened then was: we did an inventory, identified some missing or problematic pieces. And then got a second delivery, to address those issues.

While we were doing this inventory, we tried to figure out what we could use. While a certain board might have had a gouge or some problem, we calculated the workable length and tried to fit that into our assessment.

TL;DR – we had a incredibly complicated spreadsheet, identifying certain boards to be used for certain parts of certain rooms. We got really granular.

Fast forward nearly 20 months, and we found ourselves revisiting the stacks of trim in our basement. Trying to figure out what we had, what was useable, and how to proceed.

To make things even more fun: our space in the basement is really limited. Liz has a good approach for staining the trim using a sprayer. But how we’ll actually carve out space to do this is a big TBD.

Our goal today: sort through trim that’s specifically for our windows. We’ll start with the window trim, which will yield shorter lengths. We can work on spraying/staining all the window pieces, and in the process hopefully whittle down the inventory we have here in the basement.

And once the windows are done, we can move on to the bigger guys (like the baseboards).

Looking out over our stacks of trim. A bit daunting.

Liz, giving me the side-eye. And with good cause. Because I was a grumpy Gus for most of the process, and slowly got better over time. But it still took me a while.

I’m someone who likes having a set of instructions, a clear series of steps to execute. And this trim project has… a lot of complexity, and a lot of unknowns. We were figuring out a lot “on the go,” and talking through things a lot in the moment.

Despite all that, I think we landed on a good system.

We actually had an incredibly meticulous spreadsheet from 2024. And we were able to mostly backtrack things, to identify good pieces vs. problematic pieces. And were able to figure out how to best allocate our workable pieces to the various windows on the first floor.

Liz, looking over the window trim. We set up a set of horses, where we were able to stack and assess each piece.

Our new system: marking each board with a note, indicating its length, and where it would be used.

The good news: we’ve been able to re-use a lot of damaged pieces, and have a few extra boards here and there to work with.

We didn’t quite get to cutting trim and staining pieces. And I expect we’ll be in this sorting and organizing phase for some while yet. But we’re a step closer.

The trim is a daunting bit of work, something neither Liz nor I have attempted before. But it’s the next thing to do, and it’s darn near the last bit of work needed in our rooms. So it’s equally daunting and exciting, to actually start down this road.