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window trim photos

15 years ago

Hello all, Hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful. I have been pondering this question for awhile now, and having absolutely no idea about house styles i thought I'd bring my question to you. My house was built 1993 (I'm not the original owner). It is a colonial, with a front porch that wraps around the side of the house, cedar.

You enter the front door into a 2 story foyer with a large window at the top of the front wall.

There is a great room on each side of the house, one room is a family room that is about 15 by 24 or so. The other room is the same size and we use it as a dining room/living room. In between is the kitchen, breakfast nook, powder room and a long hallway.

Ok so now for my question. Each room has 2 windows on the short front wall and two windows on the short back wall. The long wall has a fireplace and 2 more windows on either side. Not a lot of wall space here. it's been bothering me lately that the windows have no wood around them - they are just plain. Even the sills are not finished. They appear to be just painted. Can I add wood to these sills? I wonder if this was done as a style choice? Or did they not want to spend the money on trim? Are there house styles where it is appropriate to not have trim on the windows? If anyone could explain the way these choices are made and how you know what's appropriate for a particular style I would appreciate it. I hope this is not too vague a question. The way it looks now is spare and neat, but I do love the look of wood. I'm just not sure that it would be right for this house. Thanks for any insights you can give me.

The rooms with this paper has paper on the sills, ugly and not well done.

This room has bare sills, not very finished looking up close, just painted.

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Comments (3)

amylville
15 years ago
I think it was done to save money. I don't see why you couldn't trim them out (around the window and sills). Wood trim adds alot of architectural interest. I think soutwest adobe homes dont have trim on the windows, but it is perfectly appropriate in a colonial. A very common type of wood trim is called "colonial trim", so there you have it.
caroline94535
15 years ago
Your room sound so big and spacious! You can trim the windows out in any way you like. Here's what we did.

This is the north facing window in my sewing room. The room is no where near completed yet, but you get the general idea. They put the corner rosette blocks on first, then cut the fluted trim to fit between the blocks. No miters to cut and everything went up very quickly.

The corner blocks are maple so they had to predrill the holes first to keep the wood from splitting.

This is the longer, east facing window. The old wall register has been replaced with a floor vent. The crown molding is not bowed. My little camera distorts things.
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Hey Everyone, Thank you for the responses. I never thought of installing a buck - that's probably what I am going to do. I actually appreciate the response of fixing the current window and evaluate each of my windows as I address them with this in mind. I like the old glass and understand the advantages of my older wood windows. That being said, some of my windows are simply not salvageable beyond building new sashes and starting over - the cost of which in terms of money and time would, at least according to my analysis, exceed the cost of a reasonably high-quality replacement. Some of my windows are also very difficult to access (I have a few 3 stories high in dormers) making the swap of the storm and screen difficult at best. The owner before me installed aluminum storm windows on some of these, but as far as I can tell they are garbage for the most part. All they did was succeed in causing a lot of damage - those are the only windows in the house (out of more than 40) that have rotted sills and jambs. Anyway, thanks again everyone. I am really thankful to have this forum and others like it. I have been working to renovate my house for the last 5 years and simply could not have done it without your help.
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igloochic
15 years ago
They're appropriate in stone buildings (quite common in europe in the old structures) and in sw style homes, but in modern homes, mimicing other styles like yours is...it's done to be cheap. I know this to be a fact because I asked the builder of my husband's texas home about it at a party once. The savings on wood trim and labor is pretty huge. Drywall is so much cheaper.

You could easily trim them out nicely with a thin wood on the inside (you can find that at home despot) and trim on the outter edge. You can easily see how much it does for caroline's windows to trim them.

To sell my DH's home I trimed them with standard mitered corner trims. Carolines idea is actually probably better suited to your home style, and it's easier :) It does cost a bit more than the basic stuff, but for a DIY, it's very easy and looks fab!

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