Power Tools Rater: DIY Easy Craftsman Window Trim

Hi, friends! It’s Lauren from Bless’er House, and I’m thrilled to be back sharing more DIY goodness from our latest house shenanigans.

If you’ve never visited my little corner of the web, my husband and I are on a mission to bring lots of character and charm to our very basic builder box house.

This time two years ago, our living room looked like this:

Since embarking on our homeowning journey, we’ve discovered that the top three ways to transform a space in a huge way is with paint, long curtains, and architectural details.

We already tackled the paint and curtains part last year, and when we threw our DIY faux fireplace into the mix, the space suddenly looked 10 times bigger! But one thing it was missing in the character department- window trim.

So we decided it was time to fix that.

By the way, Pandora radio is a must-have in any DIY project at our house. Turn on some 80s jams, make it a date, and get to sprucing up the place.

Aside from your tunes, here’s what you’ll need.

Simple DIY Craftsman Window Trim

Can’t see the video? Get it on our YouTube channel here (and subscribe while you’re there

Supplies list:

(The below supplies are what you’ll need for one standard 35.5″ x 59.5″ window.)

1″x2″x8′ board
2- 1″x4″x8′ boards
1″×6″x8′ board
2-in brad nails
Wood screws
Combination square tool
Pencil
Hammer or nail gun
Drill
White trim caulk
Wood filler
Fine grit sandpaper
Paint (I used Sherwin Williams Pure White to match our fireplace and baseboards.)
Jigsaw
Circular saw or table saw

We had five windows to add trim to, so we had quite a bit more wood than what is in that list. The best part though is this requires very elementary carpentry skills, so this is an excellent project if you’re a beginner at home improvement. No complicated angled cuts!

The Steps:

1 – We started out by building the header first and measured the top width of our window then added 10 inches to that measurement to allow for a 5 inch overhang on each side of the window.

We marked that measurement on a 1″x6″ board using the square tool to mark a straight line.

Then, using our circular saw, we cut the 1″x6″ board.

We used the same measurement from our 1″x6″ to mark and cut two pieces of 1″x2″ boards. Since we had three windows clustered together to make one large window, we worked from a 12 foot length board.

Once the 1″x2″s were cut, we attached them to each side of the 1″x6″ board with wood screws (as shown below).

Our header had to be very long for our large window, and since we couldn’t find 1″x2″x12′ boards, we had to cut and attach our 1″x2″s in 6 pieces to the longer 1″x6″x12′ board.

Then we had our header!

Once we centered our new header over the windows, we nailed them into place. We used a good ol’ fashioned hammer since the size of our nails wouldn’t work in our nail gun.

Lookin’ better already, right?

2 – Next section was the window sill. We worked on this larger window in thirds too. Your entire window sill should be the same length as your header was.

We marked the width we needed for the sill on another 1″x6″ board and cut using our circular saw.

Then, using the newly cut 1″x6 “board, we marked on the wall where the sill should end (5 inch overhang) and held up the board to mark the window’s edge.

We measured the window’s depth too.

We marked those two measurements (the window’s width and depth) on the 1″x6″ board.

Using our square tool again, we marked the straight lines between the measurements.

Then cut it out with a jigsaw.

After our cuts, here’s what our 1″x6″ board looked like.

We fit our newly cut 1″x6″ board into place and nailed it in to form our window sill.

3 – To make the sides of the window, we used 1″x4″ boards.

We just measured the height between the bottom of the header (from step 1) and the top of the sill (from step 2) to know at what length to cut the 1″x4″ board.

In working with our large window, the two sections in the middle of our three windows were a little wider than a 1″x4″ board at 4.74″. So we had to cut two 1″x6″ boards lengthwise to make them the exact width we needed.

We lined the sides up on the edge of the windows and nailed them into place.

4 – For the last carpentry step, we added our apron (the wood piece underneath the window sill).

We measured the width from the outside edge of the 1″x4″ side piece to the other outside edge of the 1″x4″ side piece to find how long to cut the 1″x4″ board for the apron.

If you’re a visual person, this might help to show you how we built the trim for our larger window.

5 – Then caulk like crazy! Also known as a carpenter’s best friend.

Read tips for a perfect caulking job here and more tips (including a video) here.

Caulk all of the seams and fill the nail holes and knots with wood filler. Let dry and sand until smooth.

6 – Finally, paint all of your new trim. We did two coats of primer+paint in one.

We took advantage of the situation by tricking out…er…trimming out our dining room window too.

After we put our curtains back up, I was amazed at the difference it made! It’s like our windows were destined for Craftsman trim all along.

Our windows look beautiful with our fireplace too. Very soon, we’ll be putting an area rug in here to make this space finished. And I hope to put beams on our ceiling eventually, but I might be pushing my luck there.

As you can tell our dog, snoozing on the back of our loveseat there, is very impressed.

You can see more sources and DIYs from this room over on Bless’er House.

What do you think? Something you might attempt? Trimming out windows really is a big room changer. I can’t wait to tackle the rest of our upstairs windows with it.

Blessings,

Lauren

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