Layered door and window trim molding

Want to upgrade your door and window casings without removing the existing trim? it’s easy to create custom casings by adding a second layer of trim – outside the existing one.
My Maryville, TN house had really narrow, basic casings on all the doors and windows. It’s a very big house and I didn’t want to have to remove ALL that trim in order to have more substantial casings. This method allowed me to create the bulky casings I prefer – without doing any demo.

Turn basic door casings into wide, custom trim moulding without any demo!

I chose a molding that would work well with my existing trim. What I looked for:

  1. a molding that was slightly thicker than the outside edge of my existing trim.
  2. a rounded inside edge to coordinate with the rounded outside edge of the existing trim.
  3. at least 3/4″ (preferably more) thickness on the outside edge of the new molding. I tend to add railings, planking, and other wall treatments and I prefer to have them terminate into casings which creates a cleaner, professional, well thought out look.
Adding a second trim to the existing builder basic moulding to create a wide, custom door casing.

I installed the new trim with mitered corners just like the original casings were installed. Once painted, it looks like one big, bulky, expensive door casing.

Wide door and window trim molding created by layering two styles of trim together.

I did have to remove the baseboards because there wasn’t any way to work with those 3″ throwaways but the doors and window casings are perfectly satisfactory with the additional layer of trim.

Before adding a layer door and window trim.
Bulked up window trim without removing original, builder basic trim.
Bulked up window trim.
Create awesome door and window trim molding by layering
easy layered door window trim

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28 Comments

  1. Dear Sawdustgirl please tell me exactly what the name of the exact casing moulding that you put around the existing door casing. Thank you very much.

    Javed

  2. Where’s the actual “sawdust”?

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  4. Love this!! Thank you for posting! Do you also have posted somewhere how to do it? How did you affix the molding on the walls/original door trim? Suggestions/tips for doing this for completely ‘naked’ windows with no trim?

  5. I love this! None of my windows have any trim at all, and the doorways are sad little things. Now if I could just find some decent-looking baseboard ideas to add to what I’ve got. I don’t want to rip out the old, but also don’t want to do the “paint-in-between” thing that I’ve seen elsewhere.

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