When you are designing and building your dream home, the luxury home you have been dreaming of for years, you want to make sure to get it right. You want a home that will look amazing and will feel luxurious.

One of the best ways to elevate the look and feel of your home to that uber-classy level is top-quality wood detailing.

Wood Details Make a Home Remodel Stand Out

The vast majority of home remodeling today is done on the cheap. Homes are designed and built to be temporary. Many people actually strive to make the house look bland or plain because they are thinking 5-10 years ahead to when they will be re-selling.

They don’t want to put too much of their own creativity into it because likely it will be all torn out when the next owner moves in. If they get too creative then it can look like a lot of work for the potential new buyer.

Wood Details Count

But it’s different when you build for yourself, when you are designing the home that you have always wanted. That’s where wood details can take things to that next level.

Custom woodwork is built just for you and is designed to last. The look and feel of custom wood details cannot be matched by off-the-shelf design products. Look at these examples and see how they make the difference between “cookie-cutter” and “dream home.”

Custom Wood Work in Home Design

There are a number of different terms for wood details in a home. The glossary below should help you sort out which is which. Here are some examples:

See here the use of wainscoting (wood paneling extending up to 1.5 meters up the wall) in a dining room. You know, just looking at this picture that this dining room “ain’t no Taco Bell,” you know you are walking into a top-notch dining establishment (even if it’s your own home dining room).

The standard big-box stores now sell a number of fancy-looking baseboards that are made of particle board and designed to look like custom mill work. But you still just can beat the look of true custom mill work in your home. It’s the details like this that really make it pop.

Anyone can frame a door but not just anyone can make a custom casing. Details like this around every doorway in your home shows the care and attention that you only see in the upper end of home designs.

When you are designing and building the home you have always wanted you know you will want to live there for many years. You may want to live there for the rest of your life and possibly even leave it to your children. So you can take that extra step to make it a place of luxury and quality. And top-notch wood trim is a simple but elegant way to make it the sort of home you will be proud to live in for years to come.

Glossary of Carpentry Terms

Molding is a strip of material with various cross sections used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from wood or plaster but may be made from other materials such as plastic.

Base or Baseboard Molding is a wooden board normally three inches to twelve inches high, covering the lowest part of an interior wall. Its purpose is to cover the uneven edge where the flooring meets the wall. As a secondary function, it protects the wall from kicks and scratches and sometimes prevents furniture from being pushed right against the wall.

Crown Molding is a decorated plaster or wooden trim along the top of interior walls where the walls meet ceilings.

Chair Rail is a type of molding fixed horizontally to the wall around the perimeter of a room. Although the purpose of the chair rail is mainly aesthetic in modern homes, it provides the wall with protection from furniture and other contact.

Wainscot or wainscoting is a paneling style that, today, is used mostly for decorative purposes. It is applied to the lower portion of an interior wall up to around 1.5 meters. It extends from the baseboard up to the chair rail. It is traditionally constructed from “tongue and groove” boards or decorative panels such as a wooden door might have. “Wainscoting” may also refer to other materials used in a similar fashion.

Casings or Case Molding is the molding that is used to trim a doorway, windows or archway. Its design and weight must be balanced with the architecture and other moldings.

A typical mantle is the shelf that projects from the wall above a fireplace.

This is for reference only, we no longer provide custom cabinetry in-house.