Now I got to sort their mess out or otherwise the customer will think I can’t even cut straight.
Above the sink the trim is touching the ceiling and a meter to the left and I can fit my fingers between them.
cut straight.
Well there’s your problem! Unless you’re prepared to skim coat and flatten the ceiling, you’ve got to scribe your trim to it (and even then the result will be “less bad,” not “good”). Straight won’t work!
You can’t do trim on trim because it’s too much ornamentation for those modernist cabinets.
This is a perfect example of what folks often don’t understand about modernism: they think it should be cheap because it has simple shapes without fancy ornamentation, but they don’t realize the ornamentation hides all the crimes. To do modernism right you have to have precision instead, and that actually costs more than fancy trim.
Frankly, the drywaller needs to be called back in, because he didn’t understand the assignment.
would another scribed trim like a shoe work? it’ll thicken the trim above the cabinets, but be the scribable piece.
A shoe molding is thin enough that it could bend to follow the ceiling contour and wouldn’t need to be scribed (which is the point of it). It would effectively hide the imprecision, but it would diminish the modernist aesthetic.
true. i am new to moulding. it is fascinating to me - the history and different camps. :)
Lots of the time scribed material looks worse than a gap. I agree, bring back the guy to fix it
Wood filler and paint make me the carpenter I ain’t.
There is no other option than to simply tear down the whole house and build a new one.
Nuke the entire house from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Try your best, caulk the rest.
Can’t caulk as it needs to be removable. Got to install trim on my trim.
Caulk is removable
Anything is removable with the right tools and know-how, but I know for certain the electrician isn’t going to redo the caulking here. So I build it so it can be removed non-destructively.
I could just caulk it and call it a day, but I wouldn’t do it like that in my own home, so I’m not doing it for a customer either. If the ceiling guy had also taken the next guy who’s working here into consideration, I wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.
What does the electrician need to get up there for? It looks to me like that is already done. I’m not saying you’re wrong just that I think caulk is the best you can do to finish it out from this point both in terms of finished look and ease of removal in the future. Of course it would be better if you had a square and plumb room to work with but that ship has long since sailed.
There’s some cheap LED lights installed under the cabinets, but they’re wired from above. There’s a hole on top of the cabinet that the wires run through, and they’re plugged into an outlet inside it. If I permanently enclose it, those lights become impossible to replace without destroying the caulking when they inevitably fail in a year or so. My reasoning with stuff like this is that it’s just a matter of time until someone needs to get behind there, and when that day comes they’ll be thankful it’s only held on by screws.
I work as a handyman and have to deal with so much inconsiderate craftsmanship from other people that I don’t want to add to it myself.
Ah, that makes sense. If only straight lines were the norm 😁
Yo dawg, we heard you liked trim…
Looks the ceiling sagged a bit once they did the lighting. Probably started straight but poor quality drywall or incorrect install.
And why can’t you caulk? Trim would be more durable, but caulk should also be fine. But you are expecting to remove these cabinets without demoing in the future? Why does it matter if there’s some demoed trim with caulk on it?
There’s electrical wiring above the cabinets behind the trim that needs to be left so that it can be accessed later.
Holy shit, I wish most contractors were like you. My house is a total mess of completely unmaintainable pipes and wiring.
I have internal pipes against an outside wall that I’d need to remove plumbing and sleeves to get to, and they’re not lagged. I also have a shower drain with an upward angle (and pressure on the join) that drips slowly, and I’ll need to rip out half the shower to fix it.
The DIY’ers who owned my house before me were very confident in their ability and proud of their accomplishments*.
They shouldn’t have been. Inside corner trim cut at a 45° with the gap filled with wood filler. Chair rail molding installed in the dining room with up to a quarter inch gap between the molding and the wall.
Of course, I’ve had hardly any better luck hiring professionals. It seems like no one has any logic anymore.
To a certain degree, some screwups add to the character of the house. A closet door frame noticeably out of square becomes quaint when the finish carpenters match the odd angles perfectly when cutting the trim.
* Neighbors who live next door told us about the previous owners bragging about the work they did.
I made the mistake of trying to 3D model my home.
There’s not a square corner anywhere in it.
My house is a ~130-year-old brick Victorian that was picked up and moved about 40 years ago. There’s no sense even suggesting any part of it should be square. However, the closet I mentioned was very obviously always that way.
With all it’s gone through, nearly all the repairs we’ve needed have been related to modern changes. The only failure we’ve had from the original structure was when the wooden dowels that a radiator was hanging from finally gave out after a hundred years and dropped the radiator on the kitchen floor.
Mine is pretty modern, and I realize no one is finishing studs to be square, but being an amateur carpenter it does bother me.
I still haven’t decided whether I should model it with the actual angles, or what they should be.
My dad was notoriously cheap when it came to hiring contractors. Many, many years ago, when he built a building for his office, the results were ridiculous. Everything worked, but it was clear no one knew what they were doing.
The plumbing for the sinks in the bathroom was roughed in with the hot water on the right, and the cold water on the left, and then the pipes crossed each other under the sink to align with the correct valves.
When you stood at one end of the hallway, and looked to the other end, you could see that the walls, although parallel, twisted from one end to the other about 30 degrees.
I tend to go with the more expensive contractors, and I usually get screwed.
Part of my problem is people in the US don’t know how to work on old houses. We just redid our powder room. When I insisted on plaster instead of drywall, my contractor had to find an older guy who still knew how to do it.
The plasterer did a great job, but then the painters screwed up. The plaster wasn’t ready, they used the wrong paint, and after it dried the paint just fell off the walls.
Our contractor had to find a painter who knew how to work with plaster. Once he did, it was fine.
I’m not entirely happy with how they did the tile work. They did a sloppy, lazy job, which is probably what they’re used to doing. However, that wasn’t bad enough to keep fighting over.
Still, it looks nice:
Add a piece of quarter circle?
Yeah I’ll do something like that. I’m doing the baseboards here aswell so already have my mitre saw and finishing nailer at hand.
Are the cabinets level? This whole kitchen looks off.
Caulking around the large cracks and some matching paint would make it look much better.
If this was professionally done I’d call them back and have them fix it. Seems like craigslist level workmanship.
Are the cabinets level?
Nothing here is level. The cabinets are hung from the top to a board that’s attached to the wall but there’s nothing to compensate on the bottom so they all lean forward. If it wasn’t for the modern hinges all the doors would swing open due to gravity. There’s no storing bowling balls in these cabinets.
It’s an IKEA kitchen that the previous owner probably installed by themselves.
