Adding or upgrading trim is a great way to update and improve an old house. But what about all those weird and wonky angles? Here’s how to figure out those angles for trim with items you already have handy in your home.

In this house, there’s only one master of moldings, and that’s Chris. We have all kinds of wonky walls and so many different angles for trim going on in almost every room and Chris has always seemed to be able to get everything to fit just right, no matter what. I hardly ever have holes or gaps to fill. Really, it’s ridiculous. I’ve never quite understood how he was able to get things so perfect like he does, especially when he’ll measure out a section of wall in a bedroom upstairs and then he’ll go aaaalll the way downstairs and outside to the garage to do the cutting.
Angle-y Weirdness
When you’ve got angles that are 90 degrees, or even 45 degrees, everything’s all easy-peasy, but what are you supposed to do with the walls in these weird old houses? Get out the protractor? Ain’t nobody got time for that!
When we were working up in Kennedy’s room, I caught a glimpse of part of Chris’ measuring process and I knew I had to steal a photo of it really quick so I could share it with all of you. It’s so ridiculously simple, it’ll make you say “Well, duh! Why haven’t I been doing that all along?”
It involves an old pizza box, and scissors, and that’s it.
He just takes a piece of cardboard and trims it down until it fits right into the section of wall he’s working on, and then he has a perfect template that he can use to line up his saw and see if the two pieces of molding that he just cut line up the way they should. All that without having to go all the way back up and down those steep steps a million times to test if everything fits just right.
Necessity is the mother of invention!
Another Handy Quick Reno Trick – The White Glue in the Nail Hole Trick
So that’s it! Hope you find this little trick helpful! I know we’ll be using it a lot more in the near future trying to figure out all the angles for trim in this house!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.